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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.
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.
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.
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?
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 :