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Europe Is Falling Behind On Open Source 263

Posted by Zonk from the pick-up-the-pace dept.
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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Europe Is Falling Behind 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
        • I think this would limit the usefulness of patents for small inventors. The kind who can't afford to have an army of temps watching for patent slots to open up. I would suggest ammending your idea: the patent tax. The tax would be a percentage of sales of the product and/or a perctentage of total revinue for the specified time period or until the holder relinquishes it. patents that aren't actively making money would become a burden on the company and quickly dropped. This would also prevent taking ou
      • Patents are here to stay, whether we like 'em or not.

        Which patents would they be, precisely? Software patents are currently illegal under EU law, and since that is what we are disussing, they are not here at all.

        Let's not start out by trying to confuse matters needlessly, shall we?

        They are required to protect the IP of both a startup or an (evil) corporation.

        Yeah, right. Because NDAs, Trade Secrets, Licencing and Copyright have done such a poor job right. Look at Microsoft - poor Bill hardly

      • "Patents are here to stay. They are required to protect the IP of startups"

        Tell me again how this startup gets the money to file patents? Most startups I know aren't exactly rolling in cash.

        Or what they do while they're waiting for the patent to be processed? Just delay their idea for a few months/years while their competitors build proper businesses and get all the customers?

        And if they patent something, rather than (say) keeping it a secret, where will they get the money to ligitate patent-infringers
    • 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.
    • I dunno. The EU's been thrown into a bit of turvey, and if it means what a lot of analysts think it means, Europeans are very unhappy with the way the EU functions. It's precisely these unelected Eurocrats who are pushing through stuff like software patents, and hopefully the rejection by France and Holland of the constitution will mean that sober heads can start analyzing how to make the EU function better as a political entity.
    • It seams that Microsoft and other organizations in favor of closed source software have done a very good PR job.

      Whenever, the software patent isssue comes up, there is always sombody saying this will be the end of open source. And yes, software patents would be bad for open source, just like it would be bad for any software project, open source or not.

      In fact, traditional closed source companies such as Microsoft may be just as much at risk, perhaps even more. Sure they many patent issues could be resolve

  • 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

    • Isn't whining mandatory for political figures?

      In reading past the whining he is presenting an assessment of the EU's strength as a producer of software and presents abstracts of a possible solution.

      "...We should decide whether we want a European software industry or not..."

      He sees a dependancy of European nations on the software developement capabilities of other countries and he presents open source as a means to build a strong EU software industry.

      "...barriers to open source adoption included the stro
    • What's the true motivation here? Anti-MS? What exactly is the driver behind embracing open source that the EU is so worried about "falling behind" on?

      Fact is, there are some closed source apps that are much better than their open source counterparts. Database servers, for one. Oh, MySQL and PostgreSQL are some sweet projects and certainly run a significant portion of the web, but MSSQL and Oracle are just better.

      OSS has its place, but it seems that there must be some other motivation behind this aside
      • Maybe 'SOMETHING' is just the process of recognizing the superior quality of mature Open Source Software for other industries. Open Source is at least as good as proprietary Software and saves every other industry billions in duplicated effort.
  • 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..
    • The problem is that open source is often used to decrease costs and increase productivity. If Europe wait for the rest of the world to start really using it, they will be on disadvantage.
      • Well, he also says in the article that Europe has to start playing ball in the software industry which implies it needs to start writing open source software/get involved more. Not just use it...

  • 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.

    • Re:Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)

      by PaxTech ( 103481 )
      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.
        • How we differ from most Americans is that we don't believe that laissez-faire capitalism will solve all our social problems.

          I didn't know that the economy was supposed to solve social problems.

          As for which is better:
          France's unemployment rate: 10.1%
          Germany's unemployment rate: 12.7
          USA's unemployment rate: 5.1% and falling

          • Re:Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Fred_A ( 10934 )
            Since they aren't computed the same way, the comparison is meaningless...
      • I think that a lot of Europe thinks capitalism and free markets are a fad.

        They do, and Europe was migrating en masse to socialism during the late 19th and early 20th century, right up until we saw what happened to the pioneering socialist state - Germany. Around then a German (or maybe Austrian) economist published a still-controversial book linking socialism to Fascism, and the general trend of government-managed economies to produce governments that must manage societies and lives.

        America and Britai

        • a German (or maybe Austrian) economist published a still-controversial book linking socialism to Fascism

          The full name of the nazi party was "National Socialist German Workers Party". Nazism is a socialist ideology in its economic issues. Strong central planning of the economy, state owned corporations such as Volkswagen, welfare programs for workers such as "Kraft durch Freude", are typical examples of the implementation of socialist ideas under nazism.

          The reason why socialism has such a strong tendency

          • The reason why socialism has such a strong tendency to turn into a dictatorship is because socialism is intrinsically elitist. The idea that the government should control the economy implies automatically that people in the government are superior to the general population in their mental capacity. This goes contrary to the notion of democracy.

            And this is evident all over American sociey today. There's this belief that everybody is too stupid to make their own decisions so we need to tax them and use the

      • 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

        • A limit on the number of hours worked is a limit on the number of hours worked. If my number is off, it doesn't change the fact that you have laws that tell people they aren't allowed to work hard, and bust their ass to get ahead, by their own choice. You think that's a good thing? How exactly do you reconcile that with personal liberty and freedom?

          A lot of the commentary I've been reading on the EU Constitution rejection says the No votes were vastly driven by those who believed the proposed Constituti
      • We're talking about Europe though, land of the government enforced 35 hour work week.

        It's already been pointed out that it's not 35 hours. But, I work 35 hours a week. And I get 37 days a year holiday (25 gauranteed and up to 12 flextime days).

        My brother works in America. He's expected to work about 50-60 hours a week. The overtime is unpaid. And this is normal. And he gets ten days a year holiday.

        I breathlessly await an explanation as to why we should be unhappy with the government about our workin

        • I breathlessly await an explanation as to why we should be unhappy with the government about our working conditions.

          When an (American|Chinese|Indian) company with workers who put in those 50-60 hours a week takes all of your business and your company closes down and you're out of a job entirely you'll be unhappy.

          Of course, maybe you won't be, since you'll get European style unemployment. As long as somebody's still working to pay for it that is. It's a Ponzi scheme, and a house of cards. It won't be p
          • When an (American|Chinese|Indian) company with workers who put in those 50-60 hours a week takes all of your business and your company closes down and you're out of a job entirely you'll be unhappy.

            A common enough argument from Americans who are desperate to convince themselves they should be happy they're spending large chunks of their life working for free.

            But it doesn't bear close scrutiny. For starters, it's an established fact that "hours spent at work" != "hours being productive"

            But if we're t

    • Re:Free Market (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gowen ( 141411 )
      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
      • Yeah, I'm interested to see how that will work out in the next couple decades. When everyone else in the world (US, China, India, polish plumbers...) is willing to work longer and harder, why would anyone want to locate their new offices \ factories in France?

        I think everyone would love to take summer long vacations, but not at the expense of seeing twice the amount of unemployment and the resulting negative wage pressures.

        Still, I think the US will see a trend towards more vacation and less overtime as c
    • Although the article is slim on details of his speech I think he pointed out how governments in Europe are impeding open source and that is why he is proposing changes to provide support for open source.

      "...Villasante said that barriers to open source adoption included the strong political lobbies of traditional businesses, weak political interest in open source..."

      The closed source proprietary corporations are trying to use the government to force the market they want, what Villasante is proposing may cr
    • 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.

      Amen. Open source has managed to claw, fight, scratch, and bite it's way into the mainstream of business without any economic planning or meddling, despite heavy-handed anti-competitive practices by der Konig. Every time a government comes along and decides it needs to stick its hands into an otherwise free market, we introduce a foreign object to the cogs that d

  • 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.
    • 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.

      Don't believe the idiotic political/media spin on the European consitution. There are plenty of strongly pro-Europe, pro-unification people who abhore the monstrosity that is th

  • 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.
    • Perhaps the article is "loaded in such a way as to imply that working toward an open source future is a good thing" because in the opinion of the speaker it IS a good thing.

      In case you haven't noticed open source is fairing quite well in business and in government.

      http://production.linux-mag.com/linuxsolutions/LN X Sol_GovHome.html [linux-mag.com]

      There is no need to wait and do an assessment, there are plenty of case studies you can use for an assessment now.

      And if you do check out some of the case studies please not

      • In case you haven't noticed open source is fairing quite well in business and in government.

        http://production.linux-mag.com/linuxsolutions/LNX [linux-mag.com] Sol_GovHome.html

        There is no need to wait and do an assessment, there are plenty of case studies you can use for an assessment now.

        For countries who have been around many hundreds of years longer than the US, 10 years is a ridiculously short term. OSS has simply not demonstrated it's the smart play. I think FOSS is a good thing(tm), but you can't seriously t

        • Hmm, if EU countries wait 30 years to collect data and assess the viability of new methods then I'd say they don't need to be worried about the current OSS movement. I doubt much of the OSS developed today is going to compile and run on their Altairs, Apple IIs, and TRS-80s.

          They are probably too busy trying to locate parts just to keep their old equipment from the mid 70s running.
          http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm [about.com]

          Seriously though, I don't think he was saying that the EU needs to dump all c
        • For countries who have been around many hundreds of years longer than the US, 10 years is a ridiculously short term.

          The Federal Republic of Germany has only been around since 1948.
          Besides, adopting FOSS doesn't necessarily mean adopting it everywhere. We know that Linux performs well on servers, so it might be an idea to deploy Linux based servers instead of Windows based ones, for example.

  • 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. :)
  • Europe should put all of its resources into the production and installation of open source software in all areas of government, industry, and commerce. Europe must also take active measures to ensure that closed source software will be illegal throughout the continent. People should not be allowed to make, use, sell, or otherwise traffic in closed source software.

    This is the most important issue in the entire continent, and must be addressed immediately. If Europe fails to properly embrace open source softw

    • Why not let well informed people make a voluntary choice? I use a variety of closed and open source software. I am free to choose as a consumer. As a software producer I am free to choose an open or closed licensing scheme for distributing my work. Nobody is compelling consumers or producers to do anything they do not want to do.

      Why would anyone want to use force (government power) to deny those freedoms?

  • Slackers! (Score:3, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday June 03, 2005 @09:55AM (#12713971) 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
  • I can only account for Sweden since thats where i live and work (Network Tech). In Sweden there are a few companies that has most of the market. Microsoft, Tieto Enator and a few others work in close relations. The big application providers do not support linux in any way. Its not a matter of Windows vs. Linux but rather what applications the government sector chooses. Frankly the applications my employer use suck real hard. Upgrading mostly break them, they draw silly amounts of memory and CPU and the supp
  • I'm from the UK, and although I'm not following computing-based subjects academically (studying Physics instead), I have a great interest in computers and OSS, I use Linux on my desktop, and I am trying to teach myself to write software. What that means is, I end up hanging around CompSci students in University, and I used to hang around with the computer geeks at school, so I feel I have a pretty good idea of what's going on with the culture there.

    OSS, Linux in particular but also BSD, is very much the
    • Let me put it to you this way: when I was at University I never met a student who wasn't either a socialist or a progressive radical. We haven't had a revolution yet and SWP usually gets less than a hundred votes even in council elections. What happened? I don't know but I see some of those people today and they are civil servants, corporate officers and lawyers who don't take legal aid cases.

      Seriously, the first sniff of a decent tuition-fee offesetting pay cheque and people change. Before your eyes almos
  • Europe can fall behind if they want to. The rest of the world is progressing, and I find it absolutely ironic that Linux was born in Europe, SuSE was born in Europe, Mandrake / Mandriva was born in Europe and MySQL was born in Europe. I'm sure there is a lot more, but the point here is that Europe is going to have to see the light sooner rather than later, and Perhaps Munich & Berlin will be a good place to start.
  • How, exactly, does one "fall behind" in open source research? It's not exactly a space race where each researching country hides its discoveries.

    I call marketspeak on this article.

  • That is the question to answer before you get into a discussion of how Open Source can be used and who is going to move the agenda forward.

    I am not interested in creating something that I think will benefit people in some sort of fashion unless I get paid for it. Companies are the same way . Your business plan involves making profit; if you can put Open Source to a good use, then go for it. What if companies realize that they either cannot profit from this model or that their margins will be low? Has anyb

  • That is something I's really like to see:

    US and EU competing who is the biggest supporter of FLOSS !

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