Chinese Linux developer Red Flag Software has joined Open Source Development Labs, (OSDL) a nonprofit industry consortium that promotes the use of Linux in the enterprise, the companies said Monday.

Red Flag will join OSDL working groups on desktop, data center and telecommunication applications of Linux. Through its membership of OSDL, the company aims to contribute to the global Linux community, and to promote Linux in China, in Asia and around the world, it said.

The Beijing company's experience of putting Linux on the desktop could prove useful for the global software community: in 2002, over 1.15 million PCs shipped with Red Flag's Linux distribution, according to the company's Web site. Since its creation in June 2000 by the Software Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and a venture capital company, Red Flag has also supplied and managed numerous back-office IT systems, mostly for Chinese government institutions.

Red Flag is not the first Chinese company to join OSDL: Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software Co. signed up in January 2004, and the Beijing Software Testing Center is also a member.

Other prominent OSDL members include Computer Associates International, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems. The organization operates a development lab near its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and another in Yokohama, Japan.