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Europe Is Falling Behind On Open Source
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."
Or in 10 years open source might well be illegal there.
My rights don't need management.
If a guy named Jesus cannot convince people to open source route no one can.
Especially in post Soviet countries, there's too much corruption for MS to not thrive...
One that hath name thou can not otter
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 pun is mightier than the sword
don't create laws to allow patenting of software
Some of us are doing our part
where is my fricken linux desktop - i would not give the US any credit till companies start rolling out linux corporate desktops and start forcing vendors to have their hardware supported under linux.
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?
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.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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..
Sample this!
Hope they are alteast trying ! http://news.com.com/EU+puts+funds+toward+global+re search+on+open+source/2100-7344_3-5721867.html
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,3902465 3,39130772,00.htm
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activitie s/opensource/index_en.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/eu_grant_o ss/
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
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.
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.
C - the footgun of programming languages
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.
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
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Gives a whole new meaning to the line 'What Would Jesus Do'
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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.
I'm smarter than the average bear.
Well yes... they are also teenage boys going out of these pubs and all that but... To be honest with you, I pay much (MUCH, MUCH) more attention to the girls (specially when they took their 'some' cltohes off =oP
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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.
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 which come to fruition. How can you have too many people working on Open Source? Maybe he'd like to appoint himself as the guy who says Gnome is dead, all you guys go start working on KDE, but that is not going to happen. He seems to somehow misunderstand the whole concept of laissez-faire and quality coming from the constant interaction of individuals. It's not possible to have too many people working on open source, or to have a single direction aka Bill Gates architect. This guy needs to go watch the Matrix on loop about 6-7 times and get that.
Well, it totally makes more sense (for straight men) to pay attention to the girls. To expect otherwise would be unrealistic. But would it bother you nearly as much if it were just the guys?
I have the feeling the GP and I are both anti-double standards when it comes to gender, hehe.
"In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines"
: .. and eventualy this will lead to no software pattents... until someone has the bright idea to come up with software pattents and the cycle can start all over again because people never learn from history..
I think they might be doing this because the whole pattent buisiness is unsustainable. It costs money to file a pattent, and a lot more to uphold it. The only people getting better of the whole pattent-thing are the lawyers.
When they move to open-source, there is nothing but advantanges
- no need for pattents ( only copyright)
- software writes itself : iprovements can be made and bugs can be fixed by an enhousiastic community ( provided the software is something to be enhousiastic about )
- I'm even thinking they could "move" the development of these open-source software to (spinnof) Non-Profit companies -> even if the software is pattent-infinging it's source will have spread all over the world, and it's a non-profit company, so there is no money to be made in slapping a lawsuit on these guys.
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 shouldn't stop someone else from contributing something real.
Second, make it mandatory for patents to be "usable" for humanitarian needs. Lets say your corp has invented a drug that cures AIDS. Thus you have two options:
- Your patent is valid for a short period where you make maximum profit (and let people die as they cannot afford it). Then every other company can copy it and help save lives.
- Keep your patent valid for the current time allowed but you are forced to provide cheap (or free) alternatives to help humankind.
I don't think people should worry about silly patents like say "one-click" etc. Granted they are gonna create problems, but in the grander scheme, if we can get them to agree to some thing more "reasonable" heck go ahead and patent every fucking idea or dream!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:
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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 no clue. To whom is Europe losing the race?
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
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.
Who?
I did'nt vote for that scum, and they don't speak for me, and after the week they have had, they should focus on their own jobs and answering the questions now really raised, not issuing more effing dictats.
Still, they will desperatly attempt to get 4/5s of states to ratify and reach a stage where they can take it to council and make a 'decision'.
Its high time these people stopped lauding the 'commission and friends' - they are not our friends and never will be.
We`re all equal
Of course Europe is perfect. You know, all those Zombie computers were actually working with chips designed in the US, that's the explanation. And of course, were it not for that big US corporation named Microsoft, there surely would be more Open Source in Europe.
;-)
Don't believe me? Well, prove the opposite!
[Note to humor-impaired readers: Please make sure your irony detector works correctly!]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
Firefox, hooray, linux, apache, yay.
But, sometimes, someone needs to make money.
Where do you think all the open source people get their money from?
FROM PEOPLE WITH JOBS GIVING IT TO THEM.
Open source is like the busker in the computer square, miming to everyone that they, too, should be busking.
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.
I think Microsoft and SCO have very clear strategies about open source. So does Linksys and all others on the BusyBox Hall of Shame. 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 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.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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 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.
When it comes to open source, Americans have the usual advantage of having more drive to get things done, whereas Europeans may be more likely to accept the concept due to its wider social implications.
Oh, take your PC crap somewhere else. He's expressing an opinion, not drafting a law.
He's entitled to think that teenage girls going out and getting pissed every weekend is not a sign of a healthy society. Like it or not male and female is not the same, and like it or not, the dangers for a teenage girl out drunk in the middle of the night are a lot greater than for a teenage boy. Also, as someone interested in girls (as opposed to boys), he's entitled to his personal preference about what behaviour he finds acceptable in a girl, and to not give a shit about what a boy does. Double standards be damned.
And it's "sex" not "gender".
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...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
It doesn't surprise me that software development is mediocre. A socialist culture/economy is bound to stagnate due to worker incentives and the loss of IT professionals. For example, in 2001, 33,000 H-1B beneficiaries, mostly scientists/IT guys, have left the continent in search of better opportunities due to their society structure.
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...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Also, how about increasing patent fees. Not for all patent applications. For example, your first patent application is very cheap (thus helping small businesses) and every successive application costs more. That would stop, or at least lessen the policy of large companies of making hundreds of applications per day, some designed purely to slow the patent office down and increase the chances of a more important and less valid application being accepted.
Furthermore, annual renewal fees should be charged for the life of the patent, a small percentage of the original fee. Again this wouldn't effect smaller businesses, but would help to stop "patent hoarders"
One of the good reasons to have patents (at least in a perfect world) is that a poor inventor CAN have an idea and patent it without having to produce a working prototype. It is quite possibly that many great inventions in the next century will require large manufacturing capability to get even a prototype out, so patents for such things will still be a good thing.
To bring this more back to the topic, what European companies could do is release their patents to the open source community. This kind of good deed will help the open source community in europe flourish.
No France
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 ask him for his opinion in the off chance that you make then form your own opinion about him." How hypocritical.
Boys and girls are different physically, but that doesn't mean they should be blocked off into roles that they may not find appropriate. How DARE you make a decision for someone else when it isn't your fucking life.
P.S:
Copyrights are a free-market excluder.
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.
This is my sig.
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 and GNOME European developers must have some weight in the battle against software patents.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
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.
Silly rabbit
Everybody is speaking Open Source in last years:
Countries, companies and all kind of organizations ties OSS with productivity, freedom and more
But, where is the OSS funding discussion? for example if the EU wants to adopt OSS, I think they ethically need to put a bulk a money on it, not just enjoying results.
There are so many Zombies in the EU. :)
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.
This is the most important issue in the entire continent, and must be addressed immediately. If Europe fails to properly embrace open source software, it will surely spell disaster for the entire continent, all the countries thereof, and all people living in Europe.
Open source software is the solution to all of the world's problems.
The biggest problem is that Europe only has the "everyone becomes a manager" mentality (in order to keep costs down/create as many jobs as possible), while the USA gives staff the choice of a management or technical career (manager or architect). Until that gets fixed, Europe will always lose their senior technical staff.
For the more crowded parts of the continent, this means that only company directors can afford family sized homes, so scientists/senior IT guys have to leave the continent just to be able to start a family.
Ooh! Bold text! Aren't you clever!
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
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
No, that would be Munich with its 14K computers.
I haven't heard of Berlin of switching to Linux..but please correct me, with some links.
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 support is a joke.
They are probably made very fast, sloppy and with no planning. Thats where Microsoft shines. Put easy tools in the hands of people who shouldnt be making software in the first place.
HTTP/1.1 400
How can Europe be perfect? We have the French as neighbors!
I work at a large UK based radio/tv/online broadcaster. We have a logging system developed for internal use. Now the guy that wrote it is being re-assigned to other priorities as part of downsizing, so development stagnates even with doezens of missing fixtures. Why they didn't take an OSS project and improove it? Or even release the system we have (an IE/IIS only, form over function, management creaming their pants over pretty graphics, thing), instead of redesigning the wheel and not looking forward, and letting it stagnate. No doubt we'll end up *buying* another system in future.
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 will cause the bidders to determine the "value" of each patent as they perform their "due diligence" for each patent. (In other words, you don't have to depend on the expertise of patent examiners to set the price of each patent.) Once a bid has been submitted (through escrow?), it can't be retracted & will be returned only if it is not the maximum bid.
The winning bidder pays the money _directly_ to the submitter of the patent idea. This will allow smart people who have a lot of ideas, but who might not be able to take advantage of their own ideas, to receive an amount which has been determined (by a market process) to be the "value" of their idea. With this kind of jackpot payoff, there should be a lot of people submitting good ideas into the patent process (with the hopes of becoming instantly rich).
As patents expire, or are torpedoed due to obviousness or prior art (which will either require either patent examiners or perhaps organized review-boards of industry experts), that will free up patent "slots" in the allowed # of patents, and new submissions can be bidded on to fill those slots.
Patent submissions which did NOT make it into any of the allowed patent slots wil end up being released immediately into the public domain - so submitters have a vested interest in making sure their submission is a high enough quality to have a good chance of winning the bidding.
Worked this system out myself, although I'm sure some patent/economics expert somewhere has already thought of something like it
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 big thing. Everybody's into it who's serious about computers, experienced young Windows users always say that they really want to learn it and give it a go, it just seems to be cool (believe it or not). I would go so far as to say that it is very rare that I meet a single serious computer enthusiast (i.e. somebody who I'd say is likely to end up in the industry) who is also a Windows fanboy.
So what are the implications of all this? Well basically, it means that there is going to be an abundance of IT professionals who prefer Linux, who advocate Linux, who are more experienced with Linux than with Windows. If this isn't going to be a really big incentive for the uptake of OSS by European businesses, then I don't know what will be. By choosing OSS, they'll open themselves up to a vast pool of enthusiastic, talented individuals, whereas if they stick with Windows, they'll have under-motivated people grudgingly working with what they have, with less experience on that platform.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: the Computer Science course at my uni (University of Exeter) has mandatory lessons on using OSS-based systems (according to my flatmate who studies CS), so I can imagine that too would definitely contribute to the value of OSS within businesses.
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.
HTTP/1.1 400
This:
http://bink.nu/Article1216.bink
Oh well, what the hell...
Recently, a woman from our London office came to the U.S. to assist with a major hardware / software upgrade and we got to talking about Bill Gates and Microsoft's shitty products...she was raving about what an "innovator" and "visionary" he is and how highly respected he is in Britain. When I stopped my nausea and dry heaving I had a long discussion with her basically refuting all her beliefs point by point. I won't bore you with all the details, most of you probably would have made stronger arguments than I did...my point is...has Microsoft succeeded in an expensive and elaborate PR campaign to brainwash Britons that he's the "Henry Ford" of the computer age or is she just a one-off, confused MS fangirl?
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.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Spain's CLIP Laboratories at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have extensive experience (perhaps the best in the world) in those fields and have produced an elegant and extensible FOSS logic programming system, Ciao Prolog, that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX/BSD. It includes emacs extensions, extensive WWW and XML libraries, a documentation system, and much, much more. It's incredible to see what skilled people can achieve when they focus their efforts over many years.
Microsoft has realized the significance of these technologies and is also quietly beginning to use them in their research laboratories.
One might argue that a European commercial interest in open source is a necessary precursor to the political will for such protections. Without one, there isn't enough clamor for a ban on patents in software and mathematics to withstand US counterpressure.
I sure hope it happens, but I'm betting more on regions with less interest in preserving the status quo economic pecking order. Of these China, India, Russia and Brazil have a large enough educated work force to perhaps spawn a low-cost open source solutions industry (as opposed to just products).
Interestingly, Europe may have a head start in terms of consulting companies specializing in open source (try googling for it and draw your own conclusions). In the U.S., there are some product-specific companies and some (nascent) support companies, but no one who can deliver a soup-to-nuts alternative to integrated offerings from firms like Oracle, IBM and MS no matter how hungry the market gets for it.
It's a worthy exercise to put yourself in the mind of a CIO for a decent-size manufacturing or services company and ask yourself how open source stacks up *as a category* against offerings from the big commercial players. How "pure" an open source shop could such a firm realistically get to on today's date?
It's often assumed that open source adoption is inhibited more by demand problems than supply ones, but is it perhaps the other way around?
Don't be so sure the EU will be a major force in 10 years. It's starting to crack. I was listening to an intrusting news article the other day (marketplace.org) that said the Euro was starting to fall. There were a number of reasons why it was happening, but it made me think, without the Euro being the hot currency European international law becomes marginalized. (money buys influence after all) And if the Euro gets dissolved there goes European economic dominance. If they do become marginalized they will start taking there legal cues from a bigger economy...I wonder how friendly China will be to OSS, or Brazil...
We are the Borg...
You don't want to be fair, you want people to be free from criticism except in so far as they might hold opinions that might be hypocritical. Well, hypocricy is one of the minor vices, and is practised in some form or another by everyone alive today .
So take a stand:
Is the drunkenness of teenage girls a good thing or a bad thing
Are there more bad things than can happen (or are the same bad things more likely to happen) to a girl than to a boy?
Is allowing them to think drunkenness is neutral behaviour "treating them with respect", or indifference bordering with contempt?
Is there such a thing as society, and does it have a right to expect certain (reaonsable) standards of behaviour from it's members?
Is it what you think, or what you do that matters?
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.
And, what do you call a person who speaks only one language and is another country
French
The U.S. invented the Microprocessor. The U.S. invented the modern operating system. The U.S. is the creator of all commercial operating systems with any market share. The U.S. invented the internet. The U.S. pioneered it as a standards based network. The U.S. invented the protocols in use.
I only wait for some moron to say "No, an englishman invented the Internet, because WWW == Internet".
Please stop.
The Soviet Union really bled the nazi's dry. But the Americans were smarter and handsomer and we invented Hollywood.
No, I'm not joking.
And anyway, we invented nukes. So we'll turn your little charming hamlet into grey glass if you keep being a pain in the ass.
I hope I don't have to spell it out for you.
Q: What do you call a smug wiseass?
A: xtracto.
Do like we always do and penalize the USA until the rest of the world catches up, Harrison Bergeron-style. Make American programmers use Commodore VIC-20s, 300 baud modems, and uncomfortable chairs. For the coup de grace, replace their Mountain Dew and Doritos with Fresca and granola.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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 the current EU contstition draft.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of politicians who invested their political capital in the constitution and have touted the "vote against it and you're voting against Europe" (a technique designed to quell actual criticism against the document itself and more-or-less strong-arm anyone pro-EU into voting for it regardless of its merits, and to demonize those who vote against it as anti-Europe), and plenty of media who are willing to spout hysterical "Europe is falling!" nonsense simply because people don't like the monstrosity that the politicans are putting in front of them.
The EU constitution is probably dead. One can hope. But I hardly think the EU is dead--they'll just have to go back to the drawing board, and hopefully draw up a decent, readable, understandable, and above all GOOD constitution for people to vote on. Frankly, that process should be decoupled from the "should Europe unify" question, and should probably involve a proper constitutional congress, elected by the people, rather than a bunch of treaties and position papers representing governments' intentions rather than the will of the people (and don't kid yourself, enough levels of indirection in even a democratic state and you lose all representation of the people).
As to Europe going to Free Software, there are real signs they are waking up. Microsoft and the Bush administration's continued strong-arm tactics on everything from trade issues to software patents is helping this process along nicely.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's not up to me to make their decisions for them, even if their decisions will result in them being raped or murdered. All I can do is tell them they're being fucking stupid. Same with the boys who do it. I don't presume to make a decision for someone who isn't myself. Maybe you like when people tell you what to do, but for me, all it does is make me ever so glad I still retain my second amendment right.
I never said he couldn't criticize them. But by doing so, he opens himself to criticism as well. He doesn't HAVE to be PC, but you're basically saying "leave him alone for not being respectful". And that's assuming he DOES hold women to higher standards than men, which he hasn't even stated yet.
Drunkenness of teenage girls: When they move out of being a minor and are able to make legally binding decisions on their own, then it's none of my business. If they want my opinion, they stay away from the alcohol, period. Since they haven't asked, and it doesn't affect me in any direct manner, I'm not going to shove my opinion down their throat. Do I like seeing them cavort naked in the streets? No. Do I like seeing all the stupid people going to church? No. But their drunkenness or worshipfulness does NOT infringe upon my rights.
There are bad things that are more likely to happen to a girl. All we should be able to do is point out the dangers. If they choose to put themselves in that situation, that's their decision. It's not up to society to decide the course of action in everyone's life.
Allowing them to think drunkenness is neutral behavior: it's not my right to tell someone what to do, unless they infringe upon my rights, in which case, I have every right to tell them what to do. Treating someone with respect also means respecting their soveriegn right to make their own decisions on their own lives. Even if that means letting them fuck every man alive. You don't have to respect the choice they made, but you have to respect their right to make that choice. Whether I like it or not is completely moot.
Society does have the right to expect certain behavior, but it does not have the right to demand certain behavior (provided it does not infringe upon the rights of others.) If I want to walk around my house naked and covered in mashed potatoes, that's my decision, not yours.
It's what you do that matters. You can think what you want. You can even say what you want. But that doesn't mean you're not going to be judged by what you think, say, or do. Someone who thinks people of another race are inferior to he, but does not say it, will be judged less harshly than one who does say it, and one that does say it, but does not participate in a hate crime, will also be judged less harshly than one who lynches those he feels to be undesirable. That's common sense.
The dude who started this is allowed to think what he wants. He's allowed to say what he wants. And I'm allowed to think what I want about him, and say what I want about him. Just as you are allowed to do the same about me. And then we can debate who is right, as we're doing just now, and leave that debate firmly believing the other is an idiot. But you cannot tell another person what to do just because society expects it. Only if they infringe upon the rights of others.
It's funny how fiercely libertarian I am when it comes to personal rights (almost to the point of violence, which is rather unwise and weak-willed of me), yet so anti-the-evils-of-capitalism at the same time. But that's not the point of this argument.
Things seem quite good in Spain, with most local governments releasing their own versions of localised Debian and starting to value open source (and free software).
...the amount of free time available to Euros due to their love of a religion known as Socialism and it's resultant 10%+ unemployment rates. With 35 hour work weeks you think they'd be the global center of open source development.
"In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines"
What evidence is this based on?
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 knows where his next billion is coming from...
Sorry, but there are lots of ways for software startups to protect their ideas. Patents are not needed for any of them. In fact patents hold the threat of denying a startup profit from their ideas, since a lawsuit based on a spurious can bankrupt a fledgling company before they have a chance to realise any proft from their idea however novel.
So since we cannot get rid of it what can be done to make it "reasonable"?
In Europe we don't have "it" (if by "it" you mean "software patents"). So the best way to make "it" reasonable is to see that "it" never gets enacted into law. In the States where you do have software patents, the best approach is to have them outlawed. That would satisfy the most stringent requirements for "reasonableness".
Lets say your corp has invented a drug that cures AIDS.
Let's talk instead about software patents in Europe. The purpose of clarity is not served by confusing software and pharmaceutical patents any more than it is by confusing the situation in Europe with that in the States. Furthermore, discussing measures to minimise the harm resulting from a law that has yet to be passed is a little defeatist. Or perhaps you think of it as optimistic?
I don't think people should worry about silly patents like say "one-click" etc
A lot of small businesses and open source developers would take issue with you on this, although I expect Microsoft and Amazon.com agree with you entirely.
Granted they are gonna create problems, but in the grander scheme
If they are going to create problems, why should we not worry about them? Your argument reminds me of the "adivce" supposedly given to potential rape victims: lie back and enjoy it and you probably won't get hurt.
if we can get them to agree to some thing more "reasonable" heck go ahead and patent every fucking idea or dream!
But your definition of reasonableness would make such patents invalid, would it not? Surely you're not proposing that we flood the patent office with spurious patents on abstract ideas. I can see a certain shallow, short term appeal to the idea, even if we take the most butally self interested view of the matter, only the very rich are going to have even a chance of benefiting from such a scheme. For the majority of us, all we would achive would be to condone the theft of our creativity.
To summarise: the topic is open source in Europe, sub topic the proposed legalisation of software patents in europe. This legislation is still from from a fait accompli, and we still have better options than deafeatism and self interested myopia.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
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.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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 out hundreds of patents to cover what is really one thing. If total revinue approach is taken, this would naturally exclude large monopolies from holding lots of patents (the upper limit would be 100% of revinue right?)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I work for a small company which provides Java+open source based solutions in Lithuania (mostly web applications, and java is great there).
When we talk to customers and say "we use/provide Open Source software" (PostgreSQL, various Apache projects) that donesn't make any impression at all. Even if we agree to provide support for all open source software we provide. Even if our offer is quite buzzword compatible (J2EE and stuff).
If some company comes yelling "we use/provide Oracle and Microsoft!" they are guaranteed to be taken more seriously, even if their solutions cost much more AND there are more problems with them.
Platform independency our solutions provide also never matters to anyone.
I wonder when will management around here wake up...
--Coder
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 anybody thought of that? Some companies, like RedHat and IBM, have a vision and a clear strategy of how they can use Open Source to make money. Some companies do not. If they don't feel that OS brings money, then they don't use it. This is simple!
Ultimately, everything follows the trail of money and the market forces will adjust any path. Falling behind -- which is a very vague term itself -- is not a bad thing. I would love if our government (U.S.) fell behind in terms of swiping credit cards and ranking up debt.
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 resolved by cross licensing, but that doesn't help against IP extortonists that doesn't produce any software themselves.
Now, if you are going to do a patent extortion scam, who would you target. Open source companies with small budgets and little chance of getting any rewards even if you win in court or some large company with deep pockets.
Software patent is bad for software business period. It is not something that is specific to FOSS,even Harward Business school professors is of that oppinion.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
This was essentially the idea when the only software medium available was paper and ink. Ideas weren't privately owned, just the implementations. Patents for manufactured goods, copyrights for writing.
Allowing patents for software or mathematics or any other modeling medium is allowing a concept to be owned rather than a particular implementation.
Pretty soon somebody's going to patent "boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy marries girl after all" and then we won't have any more musical theater.
I'm only 14 years old, but quite interested in computers. I was just wondering how a country in particular can fall behind in open source, what a person can't go on the internet, type in open source code, or open source snippets and get open source from other countries around the world? Also, living in Europe I kind of get a feel of anti-computerization here. Most people don't really like to use computers at all in Europe! I just did my computer studies exam, was just nothing on computers, things from the past like pseudocode, and doing documentation on a web based application, plus of course making the application itself, plus of course testing it, and plus of course giving an introduction and evaluation to it all, just to top it all off. I was disheartened by both the students' and teachers' opinions towards computers. I really do think that Europe is behind on many things, they really do need to catch up. Well, of course the USA has it's problems, but they aren't IT related ;) Hopefully, people in Europe will grow an interest and start programming more, and open source will appear :)
BURN KARMA BUUUURN!!
Xtracto
That is something I's really like to see:
US and EU competing who is the biggest supporter of FLOSS !
I'm convinced that the only reason anyone in Europe gives a rats ass about "US aggression" i the fear we might take their TV titties away!
"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 once their idea has been published by the patent office?
The "every European soul felt for the US" myth is kind of insulting to us, just so you know. I have no doubt that you and many others did, but we all read the "America had it coming" op-eds, so we know that a lot of anti-Americanism is endemic, and that "we hate your foreign policy" is mostly just an excuse.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Nice post; I couldn't agree more, except that I'm wishfully hoping for a PAID FOSS programming position that will allow me and my wife & kids to move to a country with an educated population. I'm not sure how Europe stands in relation to the US in these terms.
Anyone know what the job market for non-citizen programmers is like in Europe/Australia/NZ?
The source story of that article is from Feb. 2004. Is there anything more recent?
July 2004n alContent/0,289142,sid39_gci992096,00.html
a g=nl
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/origi
October 2004
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5409773.html?t
Oh well, what the hell...
What's the big difference between software and hardware patents? The patent is on the idea, which is information, which is software...
Patents are ok if used correctly. The problem is that they're being given out to obvious solutions when they are specifically meant for non-obvious solutions. We really need some sort of peer review going on where many eyes can reveiw these things before they can get cast in stone and you need expensive lawyers and lots of time to remove them.
"Mr President, we must not allow an Open Source gap!"
(sorry. couldn't resist)
nothing kills programing jobs faster then programers giving away software.
keep coding and giving it away and then wonder why work is harder to find.
europe already has very high unemployment rates whats a few more percent? all that welfare seems to grow on trees.
europe should not get patents so it can keep falling behind the US in employment, growth income and quality of life.
This is the first good reason I hear FOR patents.
As a European I can say that it is true we have little understanding of what open source can offer. Americans have always had a much clearer understanding of what a computer is supposed to do, provide productive results efficiantly. The approach here tends to be "Does it "do" Windows? OK we'll take 50".
http://electricguitarlessons.blogspot.com
"The patent is on the idea"
The little detail being that the patent is NOT on the idea, but on an implementation of the idea.
You can go to the patent office and say "hey, in order the end up hunger in the world we should... uh... end it up somehow. Patent this!"
No: you have to make PATENT to everyone that want to test it that you have a new way to do something, or a way to do something new. The proper way to make it patent is, of course, show your prototype (no, the papers won't do: all they can do is suggest it will do; but you won't really know till you see the thingie at work).
All that goes out of this way (like patenting "ideas" or "concepts", not "things") it's going against the very meaning of the "patent" word.
"Patents are ok if used correctly"
Patent that!
Problem is there's no known proper big scale way to use patents correctly. Testing for obviousness, for instance, is quite a taugh task: quite a lot of things seem to be just obvious... once somebody other points them out.
"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"
And how do you suggest this will happen?
On one hand you can end up on the stupid situation that a VERY ingenious company wouldn't be able to sell their REALLY great inventions; say a patent takes 20% of revenue on taxes; what about a really great product with six really great innovations within? Our really innovative company would end up giving 110% their sale benefits on taxes!
On the other hand, how this would stop Ironclad Big Megacorp from filling one bazillion patents a year (on a saner environment conceptually equivalent to your suggestion, only not so stupid)? Since they are binded to pay taxes on sales it's obvious they wouldn't pay a nickel for those (bazillion minus short n) that just end up in a box waiting for better days; those that really make money on sales Ironclad Big Megacorp won't have any problem to pay some taxes for them.
Or do you mean taxing disregarding if the patent-thingie does make money for the company which fills it or not? That would be even stupider! Imagine Short Company already having four good patents (at 20% tax); filling a new patent would eat up all their benefits; they could trash one of their previous patents in order to fill a new one... without being sure they will make more money from the new patent than from the older one? I can hear the CFO: since we already have our maximum patent share let's close our R+D department; it's a short step for our company but a big shit for innovation! On the other hand, Ironclad Big Megacorp might just create a "paper" company to hold their new patents; since that paper company would have no benefits (they would license their inventions at 0.0000000001 cents each to the mother corp) their "patent tax" would amount to zero, and they would still manage to fill a bazillion patents a year.
"Software patents are currently illegal under EU law"
No; they are not. You can already find quite a lot of patents describing software or algorithms on the EU.
They are not illegal; they are just probably not enforceable.
The best you could say is that the rather tenuous justification for their having been granted has yet to be tested in a court. The spirit and intent of the current legislation is clearly against software patents - it seems unlikely any would survive such a test. Why else would so many large software concerns be lobbying so hard if they already had what they wanted?
The battle in Europe is yet to be fought. There is no call for defeatism
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Here, many of the state hospitals use at least OpenOffice and in some case Linux on the desktop, and the government has issued statements advocating the use of open-source software. However, to do your tax returns on the internet, you must currently be running Windows with the MS JVM, or MacOS 9. (CrossOver Office will also work). This sort of thing turns up in a number of places.
Me (Blog)
Frankly speaking, from the viewpoint of benefit-for-society, you don't usually WANT the small inventors to have the patents. They don't usually have the resources to bring the good ideas that might be patented to the market in a short-term cost-effective way, where society can benefit from those ideas. But you _do_ want the small inventors to be rewarded for bringing their ideas to society, and my idea of auctioning the patents & letting the submitters receive the payoff will do that.
You wouldn't need such a thing. As part of the auction process, the government would just publish (in whatever ways are most effective) how many slots are open, and the text of all of the submitted patents which are going to be available for bidding. The small inventors can submit their patents during any year where they think they can get into the top N slots, and the big companies can pay for the armies of engineers to pore over the submitted patents & figure out how much those patents might be worth.
As far as your "patent tax" idea is concerned, it seems much more complicated than my "auction patent slots" idea, harder to determine whether you are violating anyone's patent, and the benefit to society (and the patent submitters & owners) is much less clearly defined.