A rapid fame might not be Wang Yang really wanted, but it was his first reward after a high-profile advocate for open source software.

Wang, who also calls himself Wang Kaiyuan (literally means Wang "open source" in Chinese), interrupted a photo shoot of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and winners of a programming contest at an award ceremony at China's prestigious Peking University on April 20. He defiantly walked on the stage and held up a banner reading, "Free Software, Open Source."

Soon after the incident, Wang announced in his blog to quit from the post of chief representative of Linux Professional Institute (LPI) in Beijing, which he joined at the beginning of this year. LPI is a non-profit organization specializing in the certification of Linux professionals and the movement for realization of free computer software and open source programming in the IT industry.

"I am not attacking, not protesting, not even anti-monopoly, but I want to make the public aware of free software in China, " said the open source fan in an interview with Sina, one of China's major Web portal. "I will continue to promote this in schools, factories, and rural China to let more people know what open source is and help them benefit more from free software."

Previously, Wang had created an open source community for sharing of programming information and was instrumental in introducing "World Software Freedom Day" in a joint effort with Peking University and China's Open Source Software Promotion Union.

Open source computer programming works on Linux, whose programming coding is open to all users, and allows the followers of this operating system to share it for free and edit it for individual use. It is popular not only because of its benefit to common users, but also for its countermeasures to proprietary commercial software.

Open source solutions first appeared in China in the late 1990s and have since gained momentum. "It is nothing new to insiders," said Wang. "The biggest obstacle facing open source is the money-making commercial sales (of software)."

Most supporters of open source software agreed that, the open source could devise China a solution for mounting costs of commercial software and the further development of indigenous software industry.

"The long domination by expensive foreign software in the Chinese market is not only a potential risk to country's information security, but also will widen the already prominent digital divide among different social groups."

Ni Guangnan, a computer scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

"Software users have to pay for expensive copyright, otherwise they will choose pirated ones. When some giant software developers are making big bucks, the smaller market players need to pay for costly proprietary commercial software for further R&D. There should be a fair mechanism and the open source could be a better solution."

Liu Youtao, General Manager of a Beijing-based ERP (Enterprises Resources Planning) software development solution company

Points:

"A man has passed away thanks to whom a whole new epoch was born."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking high of former President Boris Yeltsin who died on April 24 due to heart failure

"We won't increase the stockpile overnight as a large increase would impact global prices."

Chen Deming, Vice Minister of China's National Development and Reform Commission, announcing on April 21 at the 2007 annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia that the country will gradually increase its strategic oil reserves to the equivalent of 30 days of imports by the year 2010

"What we want to be sure of is that these new instruments will also hold up in more adverse economic environments."

Bundesbank President Axel Weber, calling for more oversight on speculative hedge funds on fears they could pose wider risks to the stability of the financial system if they ran into serious trouble

"It's as much a crisis of governance as a crisis of leadership."

Dennis de Tray, Vice President of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, claiming that the recent furor surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz over a scandal involving a promotion for his girlfriend exposes the need for overdue reform of the six-decade-old development lender itself

"I believe very strongly that a strong dollar is in our nation's interest."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, pleading in an April 20 interview with PBS television after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet warned that excessive exchange rate volatility was "undesirable" as the euro flirted with all-time highs against the dollar