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?"

Comments

For shame

[illuminum]

Are we Americans really this stupid on this many levels?

Re:For shame

[Dragonslicer]

Also, in the US, companies are more interested in reliability

You misspelled "liability".

Re:For shame

[Anonymous Coward]

A loss of money to the continent? Who the hell thinks of Europe as a single financial entity. Where the money is going is the last thing that anyone ever thinks about.

Re:For shame

[somersault]

Your first paragraph makes no sense. If it were true, then things would be the other way round - Europe would be worried a lot more about the cost of software than vendor lock in. As it is, if this article is correct it means that Americans don't care about feeding money into their economy, they only want stuff to be free and don't care as much if there is vendor lock-in. While Europeans are happy to pay money to American companies as long as it means they have a choice.

It's also pretty funny that you somehow think American software is magically superior to any equivalent software coded in Europe, unless that software is open source? Games perhaps aren't "serious software" but they tend to require more serious coding skills than developing other commercial client-side software, and there are plenty of talented European and Asian development houses. I don't know a lot of commercial office software, but how about SAGE?

Sure, most big software houses have their headquarters in the US, and Europe is the home of Linux and a lot of good open source apps. But look back again at your quote, and you could see that is because the US cares about money, and Europe cares about encouraging innovation and giving people good products. It is not necessarily because Europeans somehow can't code good code unless they are doing it for free.

Re:For shame

[sickboy1969c]

In America we call that Lazy, Elitists, who do not contribute positive to the overall society. (there is more to the world then just source code)

Your hardworking, salt of the earth capitalists have really contributed a lot of positive things to your society. Hmmm, USD 10 billion a day in Iraq or USD 700 billion to bail out Wall St etc but not a dime for affordale socialised medicine... give me lazy elitism any day!

Re:For shame

[m.ducharme]

Sorry, but it's not elitist for the middle class to be paid fair value for their work, and to be able to enjoy the fruits of their own labours.
This idea that your primary function in society is to make other people richer (because this is what you're doing when you work harder for the same pay) is distinctly North American. Europeans don't look down on us because they think we're inherently inferior, they look down on us because we go around with "sucker" written on our heads, and let a small, elite minority take advantage of us.

Primary vs Secondary

[Archangel Michael]

I use Open Source for two reasons ....

I like Open Source ideals (free, as in speech)
I like Open Source results (free as in beer)

I also live in the US, so please categorize me correctly in the "save money" column, until I move to Europe, when you should categorize me in the other column.

This isn't an XOR problem, so who cares which is "more important", especially when the result for using Open Source is the same either way?

Re:Primary vs Secondary

[Otter]

For me, the biggest benefit is avoiding license hassles. Saving money and "yuo have teh sorce code so fix it yuorself" are both great also, but take a back seat to being able to just stick an install CD into another machine without having to worry about licensing.

If it's mission critical...

[torsner]

I collegue of mine with an excellent track record as IT and R&D manager in the European Call Center industry once said (and I agree):

- "if the application is mission critical, then we need the source"

Holy FUD Batman!

[Facetious]

I make it a point to ignore Anonymous Cowards, but holy crap! That is one of the most blatantly false pieces of FUD I've seen in some time. To wit:

you DO get vendor lock-in with FOSS, because you can't use anything EXCEPT FOSS.

That's an oldie but a goodie and completely untrue. It hails back to some really ancient anti-GPL FUD (think Bill Gates and "viral" licensing).

in the US, companies are more interested in reliability- hence why they will BUY commercial software when there are "free" alternatives.

It couldn't have anything to do with the power of marketing over the simple minds of PHBs? Or the FUDspinners like you? Or ignorance of FOSS alternatives?

ask any company about the nightmare of going from OpenSQL to a real SQL database. Not only is it insanely difficult, but the FOSS alternative is vastly inferior.

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?

But hey, if you'd rather have source code than a product which works well, more power to ya. Most people just don't consider work time to be play time, that's all I'm sayin'.

You assume FOSS doesn't work well. It works great, thank you very much. Most people consider putting well built, peer reviewed software in place a huge time and money saver, but if you prefer to wait on hold for tech support for your favorite piece of payware, more power to ya'.

I know, I know. Don't feed the trolls.