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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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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
You are not paying attention then. :)
Google, Yahoo, IBM, Novell, Orbitz, The US Army, Tivo, Linksys, Apple, Intel and soon Palm are all using Linux/OSS developing OSS or selling OSS products or selling products that run on OSS.
There are a LOT of big US companies that are working on or with OSS.
Are there any big companies in the EU developing or using OSS software? It may be that I have just not heard of any. BT? Airbus? Phillips? Thompson? If so I would love to hear about them.
Now the EU does have two important Open Source companies even if they are not large. Troll Tech and while I am still not too pleased with how "open" they are they are important. the second is Mandrake/what ever strange name they are now.
Does Suse still count as an EU company
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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