Chapter 29: Theory

Tokyo is one time zone ahead of China, so the stock market opens one hour earlier than in the country; when Di Ye left the wealth management investment company, it was not yet 3:00 PM. He found a public telephone booth on the street and dialed the number for Xu Chenye's home.

"Senior Brother Xu, have you found out the situation clearly?"

"It's clear. The Telecom Data Communication Bureau is indeed testing internet access services; it should be available citywide after the Spring Festival."

"Then, Senior Brother Xu, are you interested in heading over there to find out the truth?"

Xu Chenye, nicknamed "Mr. Nice Guy," had an easygoing personality and liked making friends. He smiled and said, "I've had this intention for a while. I called you at noon, but you were never at the hotel."

"It's not too late to go now. Where is your place? I'll hail a taxi to come pick you up."

When Di Ye first arrived in Pengcheng a few days ago, he bought a tourist map and marked three locations on it: ShangriLa, Runxun Communication, and the Peng City Post and Telecommunications Bureau. Now that he had visited the first two, only the Post and Telecommunications Bureau remained.

1995 was the starting point for the commercialization of the world internet and also the beginning of internet popularization in China. Several cities that jumped the gun early eventually received generous returns, such as Beijing, Pujiang, Pengcheng, and Hangcheng.

Before coming to Guangdong Province, Di Ye borrowed Di Yan's identity to make a call to the Peng City Post and Telecommunications Bureau. He learned that the Telecom Data Communication Bureau under their jurisdiction was cooperating with a Hong Kong enterprise, planning to open up the internet via a Pacific undersea fiber-optic cable, with speeds faster than the two 64K satellite dedicated lines in Beijing and Pujiang.

In order to witness history at the Telecom Data Communication Bureau, when Di Ye went to find Ma Huateng at Runxun Communication, he specifically impersonated an employee of this department, because among the five founding members of Penguin, two had worked in this department.

One was Xu Chenye, who had worked at the Telecom Data Communication Bureau for half a year after graduating from Peng City University in 1993; the other was Ceng Liqing, who happened to be working in this department in 1995. His name was currently lying on the registration book of the receptionist at Runxun Communication.

After such a series of operations, whether it was befriending Xu Chenye through Ma Huateng or impersonating Ma Huateng to pay a return visit to Ceng Liqing, Di Ye could use this to enter the Telecom Data Communication Bureau to mess around. It could be called killing two birds with one stone—a guaranteed win with no losses.

Di Ye hailed a taxi and picked up Xu Chenye, who was carrying a Notebook Computer, at the entrance of the residential compound affiliated with the Education Bureau. As soon as he got in the car, he shouted loudly, "Di Ye, you are really wild! You actually quoted a long passage from the Selected Works of Mao in that article, 'The Definition of Open Source Software and Related Protocols'."

"Isn't the essence of Open Source 'from the masses, to the masses'?"

"But you wrote a computer paper, not a political paper."

"As long as the theories are connected, it's fine. Even the Eight Trigrams are related to binary."

Xu Chenye was in a state of mixed excitement and curiosity, saying, "The Eight Trigrams and the Selected Works of Mao are not the same thing! Once I upload these articles of yours to the internet, I don't know what kind of reaction foreigners will have, especially the Americans."

"You're overthinking it. Plenty of Americans have read the Selected Works of Mao; there's nothing to be surprised about. For example, in 1992, Tyson read the English version of the Selected Works of Mao in prison and was greatly encouraged, later specifically tattooing the Great Man's portrait on his right arm."

The taxi driver heard this gossip, looked up at the rearview mirror, and asked, "Brother, is what you're saying true or false?"

"True."

When Xu Chenye had dinner with Di Ye the day before yesterday, he heard him say many remarks that subverted tradition. He felt both novel and absurd, and was somewhat suspicious, saying, "Driver, don't believe him. This person loves to talk nonsense. It would be good if one out of ten sentences he says is true."

Tyson had indeed read the Selected Works of Mao, and he had indeed tattooed the Great Man's portrait on his arm, but Di Ye didn't know exactly when he got it tattooed, so he lightly let go of this gossip and turned to ask, "Senior Brother Xu, have you read all those articles of mine?"

"I've roughly read through them. You wrote them too concisely; some sentences require repeated thinking to understand, making me dizzy."

After Xu Chenye complained a bit, he said with great interest, "After school starts next semester, I will print out these articles of yours and take them to the professors in the department. I estimate you won't even need to take the re-examination; you'll pass directly."

"If that can really happen, I'll treat Senior Brother Xu to a week of grand meals."

"It's a deal!"

After Xu Chenye was admitted as a Graduate Student at Jinling University, he did not resign from the Telecom Data Communication Bureau. His job position was still retained, and he would return to work after graduating with his master's degree next year, so no one made things difficult for him. He led Di Ye into the server room, which had a "No Entry Without Permission" warning sign on the door, without any obstruction.

The server room office was empty, with only one person on duty. The Hong Kong team debugging the internet access service was nowhere to be seen. Xu Chenye chatted with the person on duty for a while, borrowed a network cable from him, and connected the Notebook Computer he brought to the server room's server.

This kind of operation with zero security awareness would 100% lead to being fired on the spot in the 21st century, but in 1995, it seemed to be a common occurrence. The person on duty not only didn't stop them but also took the initiative to help point out how to log on to the internet.

"If I had known this, I should have prepared some Trojan programs to leave lurking in the server; maybe they could come in handy later."

Di Ye muttered to himself, then reported the newsgroup and BBS URL provided by Liu Shaosong, asking Xu Chenye to help upload the English versions of those Open Source articles. As for DY-ZIP, since it had to be used for his graduation thesis, it was not convenient to upload it to the internet for the time being.

"Di Ye, you went to such great pains to translate these articles into English. Is it because you want to use them as a stepping stone to apply for study abroad at a famous American university?"

"I have no intention of studying abroad."

"Why? America is so good. For research, there's Stanford University, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; for jobs, there's IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. It's much better than in the country."

Di Ye was noncommittal and said, "America is good at everything, but the food isn't great. I like eating Chinese food, and I definitely wouldn't be used to it if I went, so forget it."

The person on duty sitting next to them heard him say this and teased, "Since you don't want to go abroad, why do you have to write articles in English and insist on uploading them to the internet? Just write them in Chinese and print them out to distribute everywhere on the street."

Di Ye smiled slightly and asked back, "Why must it be me going abroad, instead of foreigners coming to China to find me?"

The person on duty was stunned. Leaning back against the computer chair, he stuck out two thumbs and shook them, mocking vigorously, "You're awesome!"

At this moment, the door to the server room was pushed open. A man wearing glasses and with a burly figure walked in. Seeing this, he asked, "Who's awesome?"

The person on duty stood up from the computer chair, greeted him, and explained, "Manager Ceng, I was just joking around with someone."

Di Ye sized up this man's square face and big ears, a countenance quite full of authority. He thought to himself that this was too much of a coincidence. He stretched out his right hand and said, "Hello, Manager Ceng. My name is Di Ye, and I'm from the Yuncheng Telecommunications Bureau. I heard you can access the internet here, so I came over to visit and learn."

"Hello, hello. My name is Ceng Liqing, and I am the Marketing Manager of the Longmai Company under the Peng City Telecommunications Bureau."

Xu Chenye looked at the dead-serious Di Ye, then looked at the oblivious Ceng Liqing, and lowered his head to giggle, not exposing him.

Ceng Liqing had come to inquire about when the internet access service would be opened. Hearing from the person on duty that it would have to wait until after the New Year, he was somewhat disappointed, so he cast him aside and leaned over to look at Xu Chenye's Notebook Computer.

Xu Chenye did things very carefully. After uploading the article to the BBS, he reopened it to check it again to prevent any errors in format and layout. When Ceng Liqing leaned over, he happened to see the passage where Di Ye quoted the Selected Works of Mao to expound on the Open Source philosophy. He stared at it for a while and then loudly cheered, "Who wrote this article? It's too awesome!"

The person on duty was so startled by the cheering that his shoulders shook. He turned his head and asked, "What's wrong?"

Ceng Liqing ignored him, turned sideways to snatch the mouse from Xu Chenye's hand, dragged the article to the very top, looked at the title and author ID, and then looked up to ask Di Ye, "LRF-Di, this is you, right?"

"Yes."

"You actually managed to grasp the principles of software development from the Selected Works of Mao. Interesting!"

Di Ye felt a bit proud and couldn't help but reveal a smile.

As a student in an inland region of China, Di Ye had never developed large-scale software and had never been in contact with the internet. He couldn't convince the masses and found it difficult to raise the banner of "Open Source" out of thin air, so he found a source for his theory, which was a passage from the Selected Works of Mao.

"Gather the opinions of the masses (scattered and unsystematic opinions), concentrate them (through study, turn them into concentrated and systematic opinions), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these opinions until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these opinions in such action. Then once again concentrate opinions from the masses and once again so devote themselves to the masses that the opinions are steadfastly carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the opinions becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time."

This passage perfectly fit the philosophy of Open Source. The first part described the development model of "full participation" and "centralized management," while the latter part described the market strategy of "positive cycles" and "rapid iteration," so Di Ye placed it at the beginning of the article as his theoretical basis.

Among the five founding employees of Penguin, Ma Huateng valued practicality, Zhang Zhidong valued technology, and Xu Chenye valued communication. All three of them were not interested in theoretical things, so they did not discover the mystery in the article "The Definition of Open Source Software and Related Protocols."

But Ceng Liqing was different. He was in marketing and had a very keen business sense. Although he hadn't finished reading the entire article, he subconsciously felt that this passage contained huge opportunities, so he returned the mouse to Xu Chenye, stood up straight, and said, "Di Ye, right? Do you have a Chinese version written? If you do, give me a copy; I want to read it carefully."