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Europe Is Falling Behind On Open Source

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jun 03, 2005 08:29 AM
from the pick-up-the-pace dept.
Linux Business Government Education Politics
Superentity writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that an official at the European Commission has called on Europe to take a more proactive approach to open source or risk missing out, and outlined steps that European businesses and governments can take to help open source." From the article: "In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines...In Asia and Latin America, we see that there are many national and regional projects to develop and to work on open source."
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  • Or in 10 years open source might well be illegal there.
    • Patents are here to stay, whether we like 'em or not. They are required to protect the IP of both a startup or an (evil) corporation. So since we cannot get rid of it what can be done to make it "reasonable"?

      First of all how about you cannot patent an idea. You have to have a working prototype. You cannot just draw something and say this could work. Show us that it works. We need to see that you have actually used some "intellect" of your own that needs protected. Just because you dreamed of something shou

      • Re:Well they could start by nixing software patent (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jane_Dozey (759010) on Friday June 03 2005, @09:25AM (#12713671)
        How about getting rid of pure software patents and letting copyright (software licenses etc) do it's work? There's plenty of protection for software outside of patenting it.

        Don't get me wrong, I've no problems with patents in general but being allowed to patent pure software is silly and unnessessary. If the software is a part of a bigger invention (perhaps an interface between the user and the actual machinary of the invention) then that's not so much of a problem; it's not just the software that's being protected in that case.
      • How's this for an alternative version of patents: there ought to be a fairly small maximum number of patents allowed (1000? 10000?). This small database should make it easier to determine whether or not a particular invention is infringing on an existing patent.

        Let whoever (people/companies/non-government entities) bid on ownership of each submitted patent, and the top bidder will get to own the patent (with all the privileges granted thereof - including selling the ownership of the patent to others).

        This
        • Is that because of litigation costs, larger companies can effectively deter small companies from starting up simply by waving around a fear of legal action. Small businesses, even armed with patents, do not have millions of dollars to defend them. So all the patent system really does is enable large companies to crush small ones. This makes businesses less competitive, not more.
    • No, software patents won't make Open Source illegal... they'll just make it impossible to produce because of the likelyhood of impinging upon a software patent "landmine" instead...
    • Yes indeed, it's very important that they block software patents. But I'm very optimistic on this one, because Europe is a place where there are many people directly involved in Free software. I mean, for instance, all these KDE [kde.org] and GNOME [gnome.org] European developers must have some weight in the battle against software patents.

  • Jesus... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2005, @08:31AM (#12713281)
    If a guy named Jesus cannot convince people to open source route no one can.

  • Whiners (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Basje (26968) <bas@bloemsaat.org> on Friday June 03 2005, @08:33AM (#12713299) Homepage
    I'm all for open source, but to me this sounds like whining. I mean: who hasn't argued with his parents that your buddy could go somewhere and you weren't allowed?

    The really depressing thing is: this is the way politics works. Seldom with valid arguments, the people who whine the most get heard the most.

    Sigh. Maybe I should whine more and work less...
    • The really depressing thing is: this is the way politics works. Seldom with valid arguments, the people who whine the most get heard the most.

      Politicians are a perverted type of managers, and if you've ever been a manager, your jobs it to make problems go away as quickly and quietly as possible. This is done by enacting legislation that promises millions of dollars of funds to be directed towards whoever is complaining.

      And on those rare occasions when we get politicians who won't cater to whichever gr

  • don't create laws to allow patenting of software

  • The city of Paris is not renewing its Windows sub. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I believe the city of Paris has announced that it will be installing Mandriva Linux on all of its computers, cutting the cost of Windows licences. Hasn't Berlin also announced this?

  • Unfortunately, they don't say what they think (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KiloByte (825081) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:37AM (#12713325)
    It's not about moving to open platforms. It's about brandishing a stick they can show when negotiating with Microsoft. We're sure to see a silent nice fat contract pretty soon.

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr.Opveter (806649) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:39AM (#12713342)
    What is this guy talking about? Europe needs to take a more proactive approach to open source or risk missing out. So what?? I get to use great open source software from somewhere else?

    Whatever..

  • Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How about letting the market take care of something for once? As long as they aren't creating legal hurdles for OSS, business will come around.
    • How about letting the market take care of something for once?

      We're talking about Europe though, land of the government enforced 35 hour work week. They never met a regulation they didn't like.

      I think that a lot of Europe thinks capitalism and free markets are a fad.

      • Re:Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday June 03 2005, @09:29AM (#12713716) Homepage Journal
        I think that a lot of Europe thinks capitalism and free markets are a fad.
        No, we like both of those. Hell, the EEC (now the EU) was initially set up to provide a Free Common Market for European goods.

        How we differ from most Americans is that we don't believe that laissez-faire capitalism will solve all our social problems.

        And lets face it, it hasn't solved America's.

      • We're talking about Europe though, land of the government enforced 35 hour work week. They never met a regulation they didn't like.

        That wasn't insightful, it was simply wrong. On both counts, actually.

        For a start, the limit is 48 hours, not 35, and there's currently an opt-out that many European nations are keen to retain. This isn't a great example of over-regulation anyway: there's a pretty good case for enforcing a 48 hour limit and removing the opt-out, based on solid information about both abus

    • By and large, Europeans don't have the same obsession with the Free Market that Americans do. We don't consider it a panacea for all economic ills, and we quite like the idea of governments that put the common good above the health of its corporations. In fact, one of the major reasons why France rejected the EU Constitution was fear that it would enforce "Anglo-Saxon" laissez-faire capitalism on them.

      Of course, even in the US unabashed Free Marketeering is contigent upon political expediency. Even the
  • From the article:
    Villasante also raised the potential of policy measures that could be taken nationally or internationally to encourage the use of open source software, such as in the areas of licensing and intellectual property rights...
    Now if he can only get the EU commission to listen, we might see an end of the attempts to establsh software patents in the EU.

  • Why not start at government level ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Slayer (6656) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:41AM (#12713361)
    Most of the larger corporations in Europe are ready to switch, having done extensive development work with FOSS tools internally. However, they never exposed their efforts since the vast majority of governments are completely tied with Microsoft and would never consider anything else.

    Doesn't it strike anyone as unusual that it actually makes headlines if a town like Munich turns to linux? Shouldn't there be many more initiatives like that in a healthy market place ?

    One reason for this complete lockin is that Europe still hasn't grown together (and might actually fall apart yet more after the failed elections about the new EU constitution in France and Netherlands), and individual governments don't seem to have the guts or the power anymore to stand up against an industy giant and monopolist.

  • Blah blah blah. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Noogie Brown (889153) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:47AM (#12713394)
    I don't like the way this article is loaded in such a way as to imply that working toward an open source future is a good thing (tm). Why should Europe be in such a rush to go open source? Maybe by waiting they can assess how other countries have faired with open source and from there make an informed decision about how to proceed. One also has to remember that these developing countries who are moving forward this open source do not have the IT infrastructure already in place, so they have a clean slate to work with. With Europe however, it would mean a costly (in terms of both time and money) switchover.

  • They can't (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2005, @08:49AM (#12713409)
    They need to call a continental committee and write it up as an amendement #1,567,804 on page 57,119,328 of their EU Constitution Defining What Rights The Glorious Motherland Of Europe Benevolently Grants It's Cogs^H^H^H^HCitizens. But they are busy now adding the amendment banning women from shaving their under arms or the other one defining the acceptable Pantone colors for cheese wrappers.
  • Efforts to increase the visibility of OSS in Europe will be an uphill battle. Why? Because as we have heard before, some of the European Union's parliamentarians are in M$'s pockets so to speak. This is evidenced by the fact that even the most obvious reasons to adopt OSS in Europe are met by belief in lies or FUD.

    To make matters worse, journalists writing about computers and technology do not see OSS an an option in many cases.

  • "What was the important thing about open source? It was that the code was available, and that is something positive," he said. "That was the original innovation. Now open source is a complete mess in which too many people try to do many things."

    Huh? So far, with Linus at the helm, the Linux codebase has not forked. Open source has done lots of other things not related to Linux, such as OpenOffice and Firefox.

    There are tons of projects on Sourceforge, some of which get orphaned, true, but many others w
    • The trouble is, people (companies, politicians, open source visionaries, journalists, etc...) want open source to be something it isn't. Like it or not, as a whole, it's not a charity, it's not working for the third world, it's not business friendly, it's not anti-business, it's not trying to make the world a better place, it's not trying to provide a unified desktop, it's not trying to undermine capitalism, it's not trying to stop microsoft. Some particular individual projects might be any of those things,

  • Remember the Fifth Generation Initiative? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hey! (33014) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:56AM (#12713459) Homepage Journal
    Japan's late 80s effort to leap ahead in information technology using AI?

    People in the US had just watched the Japanese automakers spend a decade kicking their US competitors in the nuts, and now they were fixin' to do our IT industry. Except that it didn't exactly happen that way. It's possible that it did some good; maybe it's responsibel for a lot of fuzzy logic being built into consumer goods. And it may have shaken loose some US government money in grants and contracts for our domestic AI people.

    After a while, you begin realize that fear is one of the few ways somebody with an agenda can nudge the ship of state in one direction or another. It's not always a bad direction, it's just supported with invalid arguments. Like the classic example of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, getting education reform because of the "emergency" of falling SAT scores. The reason Johnny couldn't read was that the Johnnies of the world never had been able to read. We just didn't know because we only tested kids ranking above him, the kids going to college. Because Johnny now has to go to college, he has to take the test.

    The thing is, we did need ed reform, not because Johnny is stupider than he was in years past, but for the same reason Johnny is being forced to go to college: the economy needs more highly educated workers and less uneducated ones. Right priorities, wrong reason.

    Same pretty much applies here:

    "What I think is that Europe doesn't have a software industry today. The only software industry today is the American one, and in the future we may have Chinese or Indian ones. We should decide whether we want a European software industry or not," he added.


    The illogic is stunning, if you think about it. Even supposing that somehow Europe is going to fall behind, if somebody else is going to make a product and share it with you for free, why does this matter?

    The reason it matters is control of your destiny. European companies and organizations of all sizes will be readily able to get software tailored to their needs. If Open Source becomes the dominant paradigm in the next decade or two, then the software industry itself will be transformed to be a software services industry. If it does, it will be because this model fits customer needs better, and if that's true it means customers who don't have a OSS strategy will be at a competitive disadvantage. It doesn't matter if the programmers doing the work are located in Paris or Bangalore; do whatever is economically most efficient.
  • Who, exactly, is Europe falling behind? North America, from what I've seen, isn't exactly booming with OSS. Everything I've heard about Asia leads me to believe that they're using jacked copies of MS products bought for a buck. I heard about Brazil threatening to go with Linux governmentally... but did they follow through or was that just the stick to beat the Windows price down? I don't think Africa or Antarctica will be technology leaders any time soon. How's OSS in the land of Oz?

    Honestly, I have n
    • You are not paying attention then.
      Google, Yahoo, IBM, Novell, Orbitz, The US Army, Tivo, Linksys, Apple, Intel and soon Palm are all using Linux/OSS developing OSS or selling OSS products or selling products that run on OSS.
      There are a LOT of big US companies that are working on or with OSS.
      Are there any big companies in the EU developing or using OSS software? It may be that I have just not heard of any. BT? Airbus? Phillips? Thompson? If so I would love to hear about them.
      Now the EU does have two importan

  • Our leaders here in Europe are cowards! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RicRoc (41406) on Friday June 03 2005, @08:57AM (#12713465) Homepage
    Management in Europe just doesn't have the courage to support Open Source. They hide behind the mantra of: "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".

    I work for the IT department of a large Danish company. We buy exclusively IBM products -- despite the many problems we have with them, and the availability of Open Source alternatives. IBM prices are obscene, but we keep buying them without looking at alternatives.

    We don't need a separate IT industry to support Open Source; we need non-IT companies with IT departments to support them.

    Linus Torvalds and many other prominent Open Source luminaries might be from Europe originally, but where do they work? In the States, mostly. And that is why Europe is behind the Open Source curve: not enough courage in management to choose Open Source and provide a job for the local luminaries. That's why it's dark here.

  • I am often critical of the EU, but not as a contributer to free software movement. The EU is very well represented by lots of bright people.

  • Clear strategies != good strategies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V (532678) on Friday June 03 2005, @09:03AM (#12713521) Homepage Journal
    > In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines...

    I think Microsoft and SCO have very clear strategies about open source. So does Linksys and all others on the BusyBox Hall of Shame [busybox.net]. A clear strategy to parasatise and cannibalize opensource is never good.

    > In Asia and Latin America, we see that there are many national and regional projects to develop and to work on open source.

    Have you been to either place ?. FSF India [fsf.org.in] had organized a small conference about free software with people from latin america visiting. The whole idea is to avoid being robbed blind by the New World corporates when it comes to software - not only of money (which could be better spent training their own engineers to write OSS) , but also of their freedom (like lockins that MS Word has brought upon attachements).

    If Europe is lagging behind , it's very strange that an industrialized continent replete with welfare states fails to motivate it's youngsters to learn with OSS and maybe earn a bit as well. It's a comfort addict situation.

  • Around here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZeroExistenZ (721849) on Friday June 03 2005, @09:08AM (#12713558)

    I've been seeing more and more people being trained who are taught that OS is a hideous thing to work with. If it breaks there is noone to blame it on [/get support or have someone instantly replace or fix it] and are willing to pay ALOT more and sell their souls to have something they feel they can rely on and have good support on.(it's why DELL seems to be as popular in IT-centres and companies where I've been comfronted with; PC acts funny = next or same day a replacement depending on your contract.)

    Just too many see the OS-movement as a freak hobbyist thing to do. Just a handfull are doing effort to bring the message of what it really means across and point out the possible and realistic results of selling your soul to Bill, but it seems like a drop on a hot plate...

  • There are so many Zombies in the EU. :)

  • Slackers! (Score:3, Funny)

    by chill (34294) on Friday June 03 2005, @09:55AM (#12713971) Homepage Journal
    You Europeans need to get your FOSS act together! You need to be more like:

    The Finns: that Linus kid seems pretty astute. How about getting him to be a European and do some opens source code?

    The Norwegians: a nice cross-platform widget set and development environment would be perfect if you could whip those Trolls in shape and get them to code!

    The Germans: Once the Trolls start to churn out code, how about putting together a full GUI environment. Screw with all the Americans and start every program with the letter "K" -- they'll go nuts! Oh, and while you're at it, how about a nice distribution based around all of the above? Red Hat can't do everything, you know.

    The French, Polish & Spanish: I think these guys might be able to whip together some decent distros and code.

    I'm probably missing a ton. All those little countries with all those funny languages get so confusing! No wonder you all can't get anything done!

    Oh, and there is this Welsh guy that Red Hat has locked away somewhere. You might convince him to write some kernel code or some such.

    Good luck!

    -Charles
    • Can somebody explain that to me? The corruption causes... piracy? And then people decide to make their server run MS 2003 Server because they can get a free copy, instead of downloading Debian or Fedora and doing that?

      Or Microsoft recruits lackeys in the government, puts them on the dole, and makes sure all the important IT decisions go Microsoft?

      I'm genuinely curious. Do you know first hand about how corruption works in the former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet republics, or are you just spe
      • Corruption can cause legal use and is a pro factor to MS and other expensive service or goods. It happens like this, at least here in Brazil, you send an estimate to the government, who by law need estimates from more then one vendor.

        If you're in your turn to have the ball all of your pals that are making estimates too will have bigger prices then yours, even though your estimate is 10x higher then the street price for the same product or service. You get the contract and give a percentage to the person wh
    • Brazil, Peru (Special Bill 1609, )...

      "Many other Latin American governments are of course keenly aware of the cost benefits of free software. In some countries, such as in Peru and Argentina, they have tried passing special procurement laws to more rapidly increase the adoption of free software in government. In Venezuela, the use of free software in public administration is now supported directly by President Hugo Chavez."

      From here [countercurrents.org]
    • Maybe I just have my head in the sand, but I haven't seen people on /. claiming that "[Europe] always have everything better than [America]" or that "Europe is perfect". I don't mean to sound rude, but you do sound like you are creating a mythical enemy for the purpose of ranting.

      There are so many variations between countries that saying one is better than another is entirely subjective. Rather than trying to figure out which one is better, try focussing on how they differ and why.

      IMO, Americans have

      • Maybe I just have my head in the sand, but I haven't seen people on /. claiming that "[Europe] always have everything better than [America]" or that "Europe is perfect". I don't mean to sound rude, but you do sound like you are creating a mythical enemy for the purpose of ranting.

        I see a lot of bad attitude about America no Slashdot. Not too many people claim that "Europe is perfect", but there is a significant attitude that Americans are just bumbling, selfish, uneducated idiots.

        Reminds me of a conv

      • Re:My 2 Cents. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Homology (639438) on Friday June 03 2005, @11:39AM (#12715079)
        IMO, Americans have a much better "just do it" approach to life/work and tend to value personal freedom. Europeans OTOH are more focussed on social values, society is more hierarchical and people tend to have a higher regard for style. Britain is halfway between the two.

        As social upwards mobility goes, you'll have better chance of this in Europe than in USA, according to Rags to Rags, Riches to Riches : The American Dream is More Livable in the Old World [zmag.org] :

        Hey, guess what: the social class into which you are born matters a lot when it comes to where you stand on the American socioeconomic ladder. It matters more in the United States, the supposed land of upward mobility, than it does in Europe. The American Dream of "rags to riches" is less livable in America than it is in the aristocratic Old World that America rejected when its founding document proclaimed that "All Men Are Created Equal."

        If you don't believe me, check out the front page of the capitalist Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. In an article titled "As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in the U.S., Class Mobility Stalls: Those on Bottom Rung Enjoy Better Odds in Europe" (May 13th), Journal reporter David Wessel notes that recent scholarship does NOT bear out "the notion that the US is...a meritocracy where smarts and ambition matter more than parenthood and class." In reality, Wessel finds, the odds that a child born into poverty will climb into the middle or upper class are slighter in the U.S. than they are in "class bound Europe." According to the latest and best research, the Journal reports, the U.S. and its junior partner England are "the least mobile societies" among the world's "rich countries." France and Germany "are somewhat more mobile than the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so."

    • Take away Bush and the NeoCons and the US is a pretty nice place.

      The thing we europeans have hard to accept is US external affairs wich are frankly terrible, To manage to go from 9/11 where every european soul felt for the US to current state where US is seen upon as an evil empire is a pretty amazing feat.

      We like the US, not just its überlords.
      • I'm don't think I'm going to ascribe too much weight to the opinions of man who brands entire countries as being "dumb" and yet can't spell consensus.
        • Bueno, me gustaria que tu pudieras hablar algun otro idioma ademas del Ingles...

          eso me recuerda un chiste que lei hace tiempo aqui:

          Q: What do you call a person who speaks more than two languages?
          A: Polyglot
          Q: And, what do you call a person who speaks only one language?
          A: American.

              • Ooo, I guess you're right! How dare I want to be fair! How dare I have the unmitigated gall to want to treat people with respect! Shame on me!

                If you don't want to be fair, go join the KKK or something. For those who DO respect the people they must live near, treating them with dignity and respect and allowing them to make their own choices is fine. The whole point was to try to find out WHAT his opinion is. You're basically saying "hey, he can have any opinion he wants, but you aren't allowed to as

        • The Taliban comes to the U.K.? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by alienmole (15522) on Friday June 03 2005, @09:32AM (#12713736)
          it's evident that the nation isn't just standing idly by and enjoying watching these delicious little tarts parading their flesh on the high street.

          That sounds just like the Taliban, except for the ironic inclusion of the adjective "delicious", which gives away the real issue: temptation.

          This sort of behavior is only possible in very civilized countries. In most other environments, such young women would soon encounter some unpleasant consequences of their behavior, in the form of predatory and violent males unrestricted by the threat of legal consequences.

          The reason the behavior of these young women is so frowned on is that it breaks the mostly unwritten social compact which most nations follow. This compact has been taken to its extreme by the Taliban and other Islamic theocratic goverments: don't tempt us (men) and we'll protect you (women). Tempt us, and all bets are off.

          The so-called morals referred to by the OP are in fact a reflection of a primitive culture that hasn't gotten too far beyond the caveman stage. The next time you see a semi-naked, drunk young thing staggering down the street, marvel at what a free and open society you live in, repress the urge to bonk her over the head and drag her back to your apartment, and pat yourself on the back for your own part in a real civilization.

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