Slashdot Mirror
Is Open Source Different In Europe Than In the US?
An anonymous reader writes "The first Europe Open Source Think Tank just concluded and Larry Augustin posted some interesting observations on open source in Europe versus the US. Essentially, he says that users in Europe care more about the open source nature of a product than do US users. US users are just trying to save a buck while European users actually care about access to the source code. Do Slashdot readers observe the same thing? Are the reasons for using open source software different in other parts of the world as well?"
Primary reason for adopting Open Source:
-(Europe) Avoid vendor lock-in.
-(US) Cost.
Key driver of commercial Open source business creation:
-(Europe) Creation of a local software industry.
-(US) Venture capital/entrepreneur-driven to create big business and make money for investors.
Dual licensing business models.:
-(Europe) Not true open source. Proprietary business models using Open Source for PR and marketing.
-(US) Widely accepted as the most common Open Source business mode
Software sales model.:
-(Europe) Channel oriented: VARs and SIs.
-(US) Direct.
Open Source business models.:
-(Europe) Service and support subscription focused; 100% open source software.
-(US) Don't want to be in services business. The focus is on products, typically proprietary add-ons or an Enterprise Edition paired with an Open Source product edition.
Expectations around "Open Source" products:
-(Europe) All code is available under Open Source. There is often a community governance of community participation model.
-(US) Same, but not necessarily all products are available under an Open Source license. Commercially licensed versions of the products are commonly available. Projects are managed by a commercial vendor.
...and the best reason for using open source anywhere: Not having to worry about those pesky BSA raids!
Also from TFA:
This isn't a scientific survey, but reflects opinions I heard consistently from multiple people over the two days of the conference:
I have a salt shaker if you'd like a grain with that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Are you sure about that? Can you substantiate that claim with some numbers and quote a source?
In the 80's you saw a lot of creative programming come out of the Eastern Block, from what then still were Soviet satellite states. They had to squeeze all the functionality they could get out of bad/cheap/old hardware and therefore made software on a shoestring budget that really did interesting things. To this day you have very decent software development shops in unlikely places like Slovenia, Bulgaria and whatnot.
Then there are the "celebs". Linus Torvalds, as you might recall, is Finnish, "DVD" Jon Johansen is Norwegian and Matthias Ettrich of KDE Fame is German. I know a fair amount of Germans that did/do open source stuff, and Suse is originally German. Furthermore, Israel boasts a very high quality R&D community in both commercial and Open Software while Computer gaming was invented by a British professor with an overgrown oscilloscope and time to kill.
All in all I have to be a little bit skeptical about that post of yours. After all, Americans surely didn't invent cars and motorcycles, and to this day they can't build 'm properly either. I very much doubt they invented the Linux kernel. :-D
What the hell is OpenSQL? Is it a fork of MySQL or PostgreSQL? And surely by "real SQL" you don't mean MS's pitiful SQL Server?
Not to mention that changing from one vendor's SQL Server to another is almost always painful, unless one takes a lot of steps throughout the lifetime of the database to maintain vendor-independence in your SQL statements (and even then you've got management and development tools to worry about). Every SQL book I own would be 1/4 the size if it weren't for the differences between MS SQL, Oracle SQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. However, which one is best for your use is largely dependent on individual factors, and it's very rare that someone can discount any of those 4 outright from the start of a project, unless money and source code are primary concerns.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Around these parts, "open source" usually means what the Open Source Initiative says. In particular, it does when we're discussing software distribution and licensing. While this meaning of "open source" isn't the only possible one, and the OSI couldn't trademark it, it's clearly the meaning in TFA.
If a license forbids use in certain circumstances, commercial or otherwise, it isn't an open source license according to the OSI. (It isn't a free license according to the Free Software Foundation either.)
So, if it's OSI-approved open source, go ahead and use it freely. There may be restrictions if you modify it, or redistribute it, or reuse the source code for other things, but not for simple use.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The GPL allows for the sale of derivative works, or even unmodified copies. As long as an offer of source code is included, there's nothing improper about that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Medicare - gotta be over 65! Medicaid - heaven help me if I earn over USD 15,907 and live in NY State with wife and three kids - too much income! SCHIP - be careful, you might earn too much (greater than ca. 3.5 x the poverty level) and then your access would be severely cut. They all look good on paper. Sorry, I guess I meant that communist ideology of universal healthcare, but whatever you call it, there seems to be, anecdotally at least, a lot of people without easy access to care. At least that's what Michael Moore told us ;-P