Ningbo builds open-source ecosystem around manufacturing base

Ningbo is building a citywide open-source ecosystem focused on industrial applications, as Zhejiang province works to strengthen its position in open-source technology.

A provincial policy issued in July calls for one to two globally influential open-source communities, more than 50 high-quality open-source projects, and over 150 open-source companies by 2027. Ningbo began laying its groundwork earlier, launching its "Spark Plan" in December 2024 and NBopen, Zhejiang's first city-level open-source community, in April 2025. 

The initiative brings together government departments, universities, technology companies, and industrial parks. NBopen has more than 2,400 registered members and has identified 222 locally developed open-source projects across chip design, smart manufacturing, and healthcare. Twelve projects have been selected for a key development program.

Industrial applications are at the heart of Ningbo's approach. The city has 25 open-source projects related to manufacturing, covering industrial internet platforms, IoT operating systems, electronic design automation tools, and industrial datasets.

One example is Open supOS, an open-source industrial operating system developed by BlueTron. According to the company, its predecessor has been deployed in more than 11,000 industrial companies across more than 30 industries.

Ningbo's automotive sector has also produced F5-TTS, an open-source text-to-speech system developed by Geely Research Institute in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Cambridge. The project has attracted more than 15,000 stars on GitHub.

The city is currently transitioning promising projects from code repositories into industrial applications, while also fostering talent development and investigating sustainable business models for open-source initiatives.