Hewlett-Packard has reached an agreement with the Chinese government to offer equipment and support to help the software industry, signing a contract with the Ministry of Information Industry to set up a Linux laboratory, as part of China's Public Service Platform Initiative.

The focus of the joint laboratory will be on open-source software development, testing and certification to support small and medium-size Chinese businesses, with HP delivering $23.8 million worth of software and hardware, including high-end servers and networking connections, over the next three years to build the Linux laboratory.

In September 2003, HP and Red Flag Linux announced a development and marketing alliance, as a part of which, HP supports the Red Flag Server 4 series operating system on the HP Integrity and ProLiant server lines. Red Flag also is working with HP on product quality control, market sales, applications research, management training and applications support services.