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Does It Matter Where Open Source is Based?

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jul 07, 2006 05:04 PM
from the good-anywhere dept.
Software Linux
munchola writes "CBR has created a map of current open source software providers that contradicts the recent assertion of Alfresco's Matt Asay that "open source is not a Silicon Valley phenomenon". That statement has prompted a debate about the importance of location, involving Asay, Robert Scoble, and Dana Blankenhorn. A closer look shows that open source is very much a Silicon Valley phenomenon."
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  • Get slashdotted! (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyjeremy (857410) * on Friday July 07 2006, @05:06PM (#15679782)
    (http://users.mtrx.net/funnypics | Last Journal: Monday September 25 2006, @11:29AM)
    I'll admit that the map itself doesn't really tell us much - but it's a work in progress and hey, it's a Web 2.0 mash up, it's meant to be vague, self-fulfilling and of questionable real-world value.
    What have we learned here?
    Google map + Any story + Web 2.0 mash up = Get slashdotted

  • Makes no sense to me (Score:5, Informative)

    by p!ssa (660270) * on Friday July 07 2006, @05:11PM (#15679802)
    How does this map show the "the vally" is the center of the OSS world? It is a limited cross section of projects that the creator is interested in, his opinion / perspective is worthless and invalid.

    • Re:Makes no sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by croddy (659025) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:13PM (#15679817)
      additionally, it appears that the concentration of open source balloons on his map is much higher on the east coast of the united states than the bay area -- or the entire west coast. i'm not sure what the summary is getting at here, but it sounds like someone's just trying to drum up adsense hits.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Makes no sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zeinfeld (263942) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:59PM (#15680113)
      (http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
      Its worse than that, it treats each OSS project as if it was a geographically concentrated entity. Most are not.

      The Apache group worked together for years without most of the principals so much as meeting. It began in Chicago at NCSA and spread.

      The origin of the OSS movement was quite definitely Cambridge MA and Stallman. He may be mad as a hatter but he did start things.

      OK so there are more OSS startups based in the valley than elsewhere. That merely shows that there is more VC in the Valley and they don't like to travel. If people are going to treat the OSS startups as if they are OSS then we might as well close up show now.

      Most of the OSS startups have business models that make no more sense than Dilbert and Wally's attempt to corner the maket for Internet sales of tuna sandwiches. Boy it sure looks like 1997 again. Only difference this time is that OSS is the new Java.

      [ Parent ]
    • Silicone Valley you said? by megaditto (Score:1) Friday July 07 2006, @08:42PM

    • Vendors != producers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Friday July 07 2006, @09:07PM (#15680963)
      This might show where some of the OSS **vendors** are located, but it does not show where the people writing the code are.... and it freaks me that New Zealand and half of Oz are not on the map. I live in NZ and I've written my share of OSS!
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Makes no sense to me by vodka_au (Score:2) Saturday July 08 2006, @06:25PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Doesn't really matter where it's based (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2006, @05:11PM (#15679809)
    ... except when it is based out of Redmond, WA

  • They miss the point completely. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by agent dero (680753) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:13PM (#15679818)
    (http://www.bleepsoft.com/)
    Two points to make here, because of the nature of open source, and technology in general you don't necessarily need to have everybody at the downtown office, or a downtown office to begin with. This has _nothing_ to do with it being open source or not. A map of large tech companies I would guess is as equally diverse.

    There's a reason to go to silicon valley. The area is beautiful, and the talent pool for your $COMPANY there is tremendous, if you need 20 engineers to work on some software project, finding 20 skilled individuals in Atlanta, Georgia is going to suck. Trying to find 20 skilled people in silicon valley is a matter of going out to a busy resturant at lunch ;)

  • But where are the developers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hyram Graff (962405) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:16PM (#15679829)

    From the article:

    What this map does not take into account, of course, is where the individual developers are based - it is a representation of enterprise open source providers, as opposed to open source developers - and it would be interesting to see how different that map would look (if it were possible to create one).

    It makes sense to see so many dots in the Silicon Valley since this is a map of where companies who develop open source software are located. I would guess that if plotted where developers who have created open source software, enterprise or not, are located that you will find a *lot* more dots in Europe and a lot less in Silicon Valley.

    So really, nothing to see here, move along.

    • Right here (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2006, @06:17PM (#15680228)
      I would guess that if plotted where developers who have created open source software, enterprise or not, are located that you will find a *lot* more dots in Europe and a lot less in Silicon Valley.

      Like this [debian.org]?
      [ Parent ]

      • Re:Right here (Score:4, Interesting)

        by xenocide2 (231786) <jld5445@@@ksu...edu> on Saturday July 08 2006, @12:54AM (#15681702)
        (http://dugger.notsoevil.net/)
        The google map of enterprises looked similar at a high level, but when you zoom in on silicon valley, you find it places a TON of blips there, not 3. If you want to avoid that and examine the Debian Developer locations, I suggest this map [oldskool.fi].

        Things you'll notice is that there's still a good cluster in Silicon Valley, but there's also a good cluster in Boston, and the seemingly huge list of European locations isn't quite so huge, there's just more cities with less people. Most interestingly, there's very few Russian participants, despite there being plenty of talented software developers. Finally, the largest Debian developer area is probably Tokyo.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Right here by xnixnix (Score:1) Saturday July 08 2006, @01:56AM
    • See Finland on the map? I don't. by megaditto (Score:1) Friday July 07 2006, @08:47PM

  • duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doti (966971) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:16PM (#15679834)
    (http://barrett.9hells.org/ | Last Journal: Friday October 06 2006, @09:25PM)
    open source vendors != open source creators

    • Re:duh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jc42 (318812) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:52PM (#15680066)
      (http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @05:03PM)
      open source vendors != open source creators

      Indeed; this is the main thing I noticed about the article.

      I'm part of several open-source efforts. One is a music package first developed by a math prof in Germany. When he announced to the mailing list that he was getting too busy, at least three of us started forks of his code and implemented radically different new features (needed by different groups of musicians). All of us (including the original author) have put our source code online for anyone who wants it. This means that we aren't "vendors"; i.e., we aren't selling it. So we aren't included in this articles data. None of us developers are in Silicon Valley.

      In a different direction, I'm one of at least a thousand C developers who has a personal collection of C debugging tools. I wrote some, downloaded some, and radically rewrote a few other tools. I keep it all online. I see occasional downloads (by non-search-bots ;-), and I occasionally get email from users, often with patches to add new features. I also send occasional patches to others. None of this stuff is for sale; you can only get it free. So none of us are "vendors" of C debug tools, and we aren't in TFA's statistics.

      Talking about open-source "vendors" pretty much labels the writer as clueless. Either that, or someone trying to prove something and hoping we won't notice the verbal sleight of hand.

      [ Parent ]

  • Does it matter where open source is based? (Score:1, Troll)

    by lecithin (745575) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:18PM (#15679848)
    No,

    As long as it stays away from Redmond.

  • What an accurate map.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2006, @05:18PM (#15679853)
    Interesting map - I can't possibly guess where the originator of the article might be based.

    Equally interesting is that he somehow has forgotten where Linux started up, where iRC originated and so many other open source projects have come up. SuSE is no where on the map and the other countless German open source contributions.

    All in all, this is about as much news (or accurate) as most of the stuff on the Inquirer.

  • What does "providers" mean? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2006, @05:21PM (#15679873)
    Is this just companies that create open source solutions, like MySQL is? Companies that sell open source solutions other people primarily made, like IBM does? Places like SourceForge? What?

    How many important open source projects have one central coordinating authority, like SourceForge or LKML, and the actual project members are spread geographically over the globe?

    Who exactly is on this list, and how were they chosen? The article does not say what the selection criteria was, and I see entries on the map ranging from JBoss (an important project) to "Linux Networx" (Who?).

    If this map tosses in companies like IBM for whom open source is an important strategy but still a peripheral part of their business, but ignores people like Alan Cox living in a little cottage in a field somewhere in Britain, it may be all you've done here is make a map of "software corporations".

  • it matters and its not the valley (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GenKreton (884088) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:21PM (#15679874)
    (Last Journal: Sunday April 01 2007, @08:10AM)
    It matters a lot where opensource is based and it will tend not to be in the valley. Those projects cited are a small, select few. The opensource mentality isn't as strong there as other parts of the country and world. And the United States (as a citizen who deals with those in other countries on opensource projects, I can say this) have much better cultures and laws for open source to properly thrive. Things like the DMCA and our patent system aren't just a pain for the consumer but will cause us to lose businesses too. It may take time but when they notice it will be a bit late.

  • Not really (Score:2)

    by dacarr (562277) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:22PM (#15679885)
    (http://www.northarc.com/~ke6isf | Last Journal: Tuesday November 23 2004, @01:32AM)
    I think that the only thing that would be a problem for open source is if you insisted on sending, say, a Debian CD via FedEx to Myanmar - one of about eighteen locations that FedEx just doesn't go. Otherwise, it's the 'net that keeps it all together.

  • It's over the Internet. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eosp (885380) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:28PM (#15679921)
    (http://www.khaaan.com/)
    I don't think, with the Internet, that it really matters where OSS is based. Torvalds seems to be doing fine from Portland, and is mostly used in the US now. I don't think most Ubuntu desktop users even know that it was originally written in Finland.

  • This is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spazmania (174582) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:31PM (#15679947)
    (http://bill.herrin.us/)
    The map shows open source "vendors" not open source developers. Of course it shows essentially the same distribution as software vendors in general. The surprise would be if it showed anything else.

    It also says exactly nothing about the physical distribution of the open source phenomenon.

  • Depends on the kind of open source (Score:4, Interesting)

    by koreth (409849) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:31PM (#15679950)
    If you mean "a commercial product for which the vendor has decided to release source code," then sure, it's going to concentrate where the tech companies are. If you mean "a volunteer/hobby project that isn't associated with a company," I'd expect the map to be much more diffuse. I know I've gotten contributions from all over the world when I've run open source projects in the past.

    That said, Silicon Valley does have a much higher concentration of computer people than just about anywhere else in the world. So if there is a relatively constant percentage of developers who contribute to open source projects, naturally you'll find the most open source contributors wherever you find the most developers in general.

  • One enormous flaw... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Noryungi (70322) on Friday July 07 2006, @05:43PM (#15680015)
    (http://www.slack-fr.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @08:25AM)
    ... is that the map is about open source vendors .

    If you count open-source software companies (I have seen ActiveState and CodeWeavers, for instance), sure, it seems most of it is gathered in the USA and in Europe.

    But take a look at, for instance, the map of the OpenBSD developers [openbsd.org] (at the bottom of the link): there are individuals working on OpenBSD all over the place.

    Another case that I know well is Slackware: there are developers helping Patrick Volkerding all over the world, with strong clusters in Italy, Brazil, the UK and other countries. Mandriva is a French/Brazilian companies, with strong sales in the USA, and so on and so forth. And there are so many other projects out there that are definitely not US-centric.

    So, again: count companies and Open Source seems to be based in Silicon Valley. Take a look at individual developers and the picture becomes a lot more international.

  • It's all about image. (Score:2)

    by buzzbomb (46085) on Friday July 07 2006, @06:17PM (#15680231)
    It's just like the rap game: where you're from always matters.

    Effective immediately, my OSS support company will be keeping it real. "O.G. Suppizort" is located in the city of Compton.

  • Move Compiere to the Valley (Score:1)

    by br0k_sams0n (848842) on Friday July 07 2006, @06:32PM (#15680302)
    They are leaving Portland although their kit is still at this location, I've heard that they took venture $$$ and are moving to CA. Sort of supports the OP I guess.
  • I'm an open-source developer (Ultima Linux [ultimalinux.com], PyWord [sf.net] – just to name a few [dyndns.org]. And yet I'm living on the east coast of the U.S. In fact, so's Red Hat [redhat.com]. Not to mention Slackware [slackware.com], now in Minnesota, or even MySQL [mysql.com], who's all the way over in Sweden. I've also noticed a lot of my users tend to be from European countries – Germany, France, Sweden, England, Ireland... and that's only counting a small handful. Oh, and Linus himself is in Portland, Oregon, which is a bit closer but still not in the valley. So unless I'm missing the point entirely, I'd have to say the article must be completely wrong...

    DISCLAIMER: I will admit I haven't read the article yet, so I probably am missing the point, but may as well post anyway, since this is Slashdot ;-)

  • What about India (Score:2)

    by johansalk (818687) on Friday July 07 2006, @07:19PM (#15680521)
    This map makes me wonder about India. I have the impression that India is a big, big open source consumer, yet it seems there's not much OSS coming out of it, eventhough it has millions of programmers. Why?
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Open source /vendors/ (Score:3, Informative)

    by Craig Ringer (302899) on Friday July 07 2006, @07:40PM (#15680614)
    (http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 03 2002, @01:00AM)
    So, companies selling open source products are a "silicon valley phenomenon". Surprise surprise.

    The map of developers, which would be much more interesting, is impractical to create. I've seen partial maps for a number of projects, though, and they certainly don't show the same distribution as the referenced article. I just went looking for a GNOME one but the only one I could find was on frappr, and was clearly so incomplete as to be nigh useless (_nobody_ in Australia; only two in the US, etc).

    A more personal example is the Scribus team, which has no members in the USA. The core developers are in Germany, France, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and Australia. Of those, one originally lived in the US but moved, and one more used to live in Australia but moved. Hardly "silicon valley". The contributors see more US involvement, but not a huge amount more, and the translation teams are obviously incredibly internationally distributed. Our user base is also very international, as Scribus's translations and support for other languages is its main advantage (beyond cost) over the big DTP names.

    --
    Craig Ringer

  • The internet is the location (Score:1)

    by kingduct (144865) on Friday July 07 2006, @07:40PM (#15680618)
    Open source is very much an online phenomenon. Jesus, there have been decades of cyberpunk novels, and yet folks still don't seem to get that online is a place! That is where free software lives and it is what makes it such a great method of creation.
  • I was considering where to donate money, and KDE is something that I use a lot, I tried to look up how to give it money.. and it was in germany or something like that.. No tax deduction there!

    Or maybe I'm just confused about the whole tax thing.

    http://www.kde.org/support/support.php [kde.org]

    I found out that I didn't donate enough percentage of my money to qualify for a tax deduction anyway, It would have had to be well over 10 percent of my income to get a break larger than standard deduction.

  • Samba not Listed (Score:2, Informative)

    by zizdodrian (987577) on Friday July 07 2006, @08:48PM (#15680893)
    (http://zizdodrian.googlepages.com/)
    Not even Samba - created by Australian Andrew Tridgell, is listed! How is this credible?

  • Asay Does Not See the Real World (Score:1)

    by SwashbucklingCowboy (727629) on Friday July 07 2006, @09:32PM (#15681050)
    That guy is wrong about so many things regarding open source, this is just the latest...

  • In Canada yes (Score:1)

    by William Robinson (875390) on Friday July 07 2006, @11:06PM (#15681369)
    In Canada, it matters if you do not have something that has word `Canadian'. It has to be a 'Canadian Open Source' to get acceptance.

    If you could add that 'I am wearing canadian underwear', you have great chances to win.

  • Where the hell is the marker for South Africa?? It's only one of the most widely used Linux distros...

  • doesn't matter (Score:1)

    by MADnificent (982991) on Saturday July 08 2006, @06:53AM (#15682529)
    For now at least, it doesn't matter where it is based. It matters where it is used.

  • Well researched ? (Score:1)

    by mderdem (193403) on Saturday July 08 2006, @08:07AM (#15682707)
    According to the article, there is no open source supplier from Germany. Shall I be skeptical about the article ?

  • Gnome developer map exists.. (Score:2)

    by Trelane (16124) on Saturday July 08 2006, @08:25AM (#15682757)
    (Last Journal: Monday March 20 2006, @08:33PM)
    Why not use it [gnome.org]? Oh, right. vendors....

  • Re:Greenland and Africa (Score:2)

    by Vaevictis666 (680137) on Friday July 07 2006, @06:15PM (#15680220)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_Projection [wikipedia.org] I believe that's all that needs to be said.
    [ Parent ]
  • 7 replies beneath your current threshold.

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