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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.
Can somebody explain that to me? The corruption causes... piracy? And then people decide to make their server run MS 2003 Server because they can get a free copy, instead of downloading Debian or Fedora and doing that?
Or Microsoft recruits lackeys in the government, puts them on the dole, and makes sure all the important IT decisions go Microsoft?
I'm genuinely curious. Do you know first hand about how corruption works in the former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet republics, or are you just speculating?
It seems to be that at least Scandinavia is probably the most vibrant set of nations involved with Open Source. Besides the fact that Linus is a Finn (not really Scandinavia, I know, please turn the flamethrower off) the Danes, Swedes, Norweigians are all heavily into Linux. Anti-Microsoft sentiment runs pretty high, at least with the Europeans I chat with.
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.
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'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.
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 most laissez-faire US President will adopt illegal trade tarriffs if he thinks there's votes in it.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
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
As social upwards mobility goes, you'll have better chance of this in Europe than in USA, according to Rags to Rags, Riches to Riches : The American Dream is More Livable in the Old World :