Open source has become an important mode of scientific and technological innovation. National innovation and development and software enterprises have put forward urgent demand for open source talents. The 14th Five-Year Plan for the first time includes "open source" in it. In order to stimulate open source innovation, cultivate open source practice talents, assist open source ecosystem construction, explore open source education reform, under the promotion and support of the Teaching Steering Committee of Software Engineering Specialty in Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education, the Teaching Steering Committee of Computer Specialty, and the High Technology Research Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The National Natural Science Foundation of China Association, China Software Industry Association, China Open Source Software Promotion Alliance, China Computer Education Research Association, National Association of Universities and Colleges, National Association of Demonstrative Software Institutes, Strategic Alliance for New Generation Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation, and Green Computing Consortium jointly decided to hold the fourth "China Open Source Software Innovation Contest".

China Software Open Source Innovation Contest has been held for three times. (The first three contests were named National Green Computing Innovation Competition for Universities and Colleges.) He has played an active role in exploring the talent cultivation model of campus-enterprise integration based on the competition. For example, the third competition generated more than 63,000 high-quality code marks around Huawei's openEuler, openGauss, Mindspore, Kunpeng, and Ascend ecosystems. More than 100,000 intelligent algorithm applications have been evaluated and tested, and more than 150,000 practical teaching cases have been used. The innovative contributions to the open source project have been highly recognized by Huawei technical experts. The fourth contest in 2021 focuses on the country's major strategic needs in open source talent cultivation and ecosystem construction, and focuses on open source software in the "stack" software field and cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. Huawei, Baidu, Phytium, Kirin Software, Great Wall Technology, Wide View Technology, Open Atomic Open Source Foundation, and other enterprises, as well as many universities, set the competition. The competition established a steering committee, with Professor Wang Huaimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as the director of the steering committee, and invited well-known experts and professors from Tsinghua University and Peking University to serve as members of the steering committee. The competition is jointly sponsored by Peking University and Green Computing Consortium, and experts and professors from universities, enterprises and leagues are invited to form the competition committee, organizing committee, publicity committee and technical committee of each track.

The competition has made significant innovation adjustments in the competition system based on the features of open source. Four races have been set up: "Open Source Project Innovation Competition", "Open Source Task Challenge", "Open Source Practice Teaching Competition", and "Open Source Commentary Competition", and the work solicitation and carnival selection modes are adopted. Open competitions throughout the year, regular evaluation incentives, and final awards at the end of the year. The competition works continue to develop on the competition platform with the participating teams.