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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?"
Are we Americans really this stupid on this many levels?
I did enjoy this set of observations, but must disagree with some of the conclusions.
Under "Software Sales Model" he states:
"The direct model doesn't seem to be widely excepted here [Europe]."
and then goes on to speculate
"Perhaps it's because the VARs and SIs in Europe are more heavily invested in Open Source than they are in the US."
I disagree with the speculative part. To support my thinking, another quote:
Under "Open Source Business Models"
"Support and service subscription models clearly dominated the thinking among the Europeans here at OSTT. This contrasts with our thinking in the US that services models are not scalable and that the models should be product based."
For me, those observed perceptions actually lead to the Europeans needing more stringent care about your vendor's model. Basically, if you're going to rely on someone else for support and service, you have to be very cautious about "not getting locked in." If you're buying your product like Lego blocks and supporting it yourself, from the great single-piece-leggo-auction-free-for-all, then you are free to choose the occasional Duplo block, if it solves your problem, and if you find you have too many of them, you can replace them later, because in this case you buyer is taking on more of the role of the solution-archtitecht.
I get to see both methods work. In my work place we buy lots of RedHat support licenses for our commercial endeavors and enjoy it's tremendous stability as a platform. In my home computing life, when I need a software widget, I click freshmeat first, try to find the open source version of something, Paypal the author $10 if it's nicely done, but if none of them suit my needs, then I'll try shareware next, and (if I'm desperate) commercial software last. This model gets the job done, and I don't believe it's any less-healthy to the software world.
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?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I can definitely attest to this. I've tried converting many people to open-source, and the first thing they say is "It's free? I'll take it!".
>> Are the reasons for using open source software different in other parts of the world as well?
In Soviet Russia open source software uses you.
I know, I know.. Mod me down now. Thank you.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Americans have always had more choices and as such were not as dependent on needing an alternative. One thing that shocked me was how much my brother in law pays for the same exact software down under. I can see it in pricing on a lot of things.
America had several advantages, a larger number of people united by one language and culture with open borders for a longer time. The free movement of ideas has no limits when it came to states but country lines are a whole 'nuther thing. Plus, how long has it been since all the checkpoints have been removed?
Same idea, with freedom being offered comes the orgy effect... you can't get enough
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think the third reason is that we just want the software to work. that partly negates FOSS only software or being completely engrossed in FOSS only ideas. Just an opinion from someone who likes Linux a lot but needs functionality to be supreme over free only...
When I go to conferences you can always pick out the Americans from the Europeans. During breaks and what not the Americans are busy checking their blackberrys and working while the Europeans are hanging out, drinking a beer and socializing. Their attitudes generally seem more laid back and hippie like than the Americans. It could be that most of the Europeans I see at these conferences are professors while we (the Americans) have real jobs in addition to publishing papers.
> Is Open Source Different In Europe Than In the US ?
Oui ! Ja ! Si !
Sorry about that.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Free Software, and its ideals, essentially originated in the US. Most of the big projects have too.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Open source is good and well, but you also want the freedom to use your software as you wish and distribute your derivative works. Having access to the source code doesn't automatically grant you that. That's why we want free software.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I live in the U.S. Yes, cost is the argument that most often wins me management support with open source apps, but it also serves as a huge eye-opener for them when they've seen what it can do (visibility, quality, responsiveness of the community, etc).
df -h
I (a Californian) use OSS at home and at work simply because it is better than most of the closed-source offerings. I also prefer open source so that I know what is running the application, or at least know more than a few eyes are looking through it. I feel it is more secure that way.
I'd be happy to pay for OSS if needed. I do pay for my openSUSE versions and Crossover Office.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Would it have anything to do with the fact that the biggest software shops are U.S. based?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
In Europe, OSS is metric
I have some OSS out there, and the ONLY donations I've gotten in 3 years and 22,000+ downloads have been from EU countries. US people (of which I am one) just complain that I don't log into their servers, install the software, customize it, etc. for free for them. They (US users) seem offended when they ask me to customize the software for their company and I quote them a price. And then one [US user] even had the nerve to customize my front end, and then try and charge people for the software package!
It obviously breeds greed and many a business run on an open source solution just to save money on capital investment. Usually its easy to find employees savvy enough to manage your OS installation and you save some real dough when it comes to licensing issues you didn't have to fret over.
In Europe, I suspect that they are more akin to it because of technological innovation more than anything else which is really where we all should be. Having once had to recover a Windows server after a drive corruption problem, there is something to be said for reliability. We always will have the war between Microsoft and the open source camps which always translates to money, greed, and profits; vs. learning, educating and moving ever forward. Microsoft is just a marketing company. They really don't invent anything. I vote for moving forward and learning. Its a whole lot more fun.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
There were a number of students that were interested in using an open-source business model. Yet they even lacked an idea for a project at that point. Nonetheless, they were in the Open Source Software Engineering course hacking away at various sourceforge projects along with everyone else. None of the Americans particularly cared when business model was used as long as it was viable. The Swiss seemed to have some sort of conception that open source was at higher level morally - which I still don't understand. So, yes, I did see an inclanation in Europe toward open-source regardless whether or not such a model would apply to them.
A study from Europe says Europeans get it while people in the US don't?
I loved the bit on dual licensing. I first heard about dual licensing when I started to hear about KDE. QT and MySQL both where dual licensed and one was from Europe and the other from Australia.
Give me a freaking break.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If americans care less it's probably because it's "actually" less important for them. The software business like most high technology is dominated by the US. This means that US companies are closer and more responsive to US customers. However, foreign users have to deal with "ported" software that is not initially targeted to them. This lack of control and consideration causes problems for them.
So obviously they'd like to be at the center of the software they use.
Open source can bring them closer or at the very least allow them to take code that is mostly what they want and tailor it to their precise needs.
However, it will not allow them to move the center from the centers of the high tech industry. Open source, regardless of who supports it will remain largely driven by forces in the most industrialized and highly 'technological' centers in the world. Thus unless something changes in europe or the US... the center will probably still fall on the US at least for now.
Working for an American firm, I find that cost is usually the deciding factor.
This drives me nuts! I'm not much of an open-source fanatic, but I've found that every time we buy an expensive piece of enterprise software, we've been sold huge expectations with little follow through. For example, we recently bought a product and we asked the company whether it worked with Firefox and Safari. They assured us that they had plenty of customers using it with those two browsers. So, we plunk down my yearly salary for the product and a support contract and low-and-behold not only doesn't the site work, it actually displays an error message saying you must use IE6.
Now, this presented problems for me since we have a bunch of Mac users who couldn't use it for lack of IE6. Now those users are set up to use a Windows remote desktop solution for it.
Basically, that proprietary software simply makes my life harder. We look at open-source solutions and we get a good idea of what we'd have to do if we used it which is always more than what a company claims we'll have to do with their system that just handles things automagically for everything! In the end, I have to spend more time on the proprietary system we paid big bucks for.
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"
Would it have anything to do with the fact that the biggest software shops are Bangalore based?
There! Fixed that for you
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Haven't you seen the news? We need all the bucks we can get!
It's actually quite the opposite. We've printed too many.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Having said that, most users only pay lip service to vendor lock-in or whether code is open source because it is the in thing to do these days. At the end of the day, they want the cheapest and most usable solution that best fits their needs.
I think open source has a place in software development in terms of pushing open standards and protocols by providing the plumbing for our connected world but I'm not sure if open source is as useful for desktop applications and games where successful games and apps are the result of market research, usability studies and a lot of professional QA.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I have free, and legal, access to XP, Vista, and of course Linux. I use Linux because it is easier for me to set up, has a better software selection for me and is more powerful. I use open source products in general because of either the quality or trustworthiness.
This was ages ago, before the bubble burst when international web-design companies seemed to make sense. I ended up working for a company that was partnering with an american firm. Never fully understood the reasons for it, and it soon fell apart anyway but part of it all was a videoconference with our US counterparts.
We had our meeting after-work and the US was of course just waking up then, but still, the difference was very start. The US, smoke-free, drinking water. We on alcohol and smoking... pot.
Oh not all of us, but that was still when smoking in the workplace was okay and being Amsterdam where softdrugs are legal, they smoked it. Kinda drove the point home to me that this whole venture was doomed from the start, just because two companies are succesful in their own market doesn't mean they should work together in a global market.
As for general attitudes, the US is generally more business friendly where as europeans tend to put people first. Discuss: Longer work hours lead to more productivity, if you want to earn more you got to work longer hours, the state should not be people's nanny and impose work-hours on the people.
On the whole, if you agree with this statement it would be likely that you are an american citizen.
If on the other hand you agree with: Work should be distrubuted evenly, workhours should allow for enough free time to have a social life outside work and the state should together with employers and unions supervise that work hours are reasonable. Then you are most likely a european.
To contrast, I seen americans working ordinary jobs for no extra pay doing 80 hours a week without question while most people in europe have less then 40 hours work. I am not going even to start the flamewar which economy is more productive (it ain't europe that is having tent-camps erected for people put out of their home, oops)
But the simplest thing might be that buying MS is supporting MS, an American Company run by an American living The American Dream(TM). To a european, buying MS means sending money abroad to make a rich, and not very sympathetic, guy even richer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
i love having access to FOSS source code, i build some cool custom systems starting with just a core OS that does not include X, gtk or qt and hand rolled the rest by hand with my own personal preferences when it comes to dependencies , some Linux users might think of it as a Frankenstein monster but they boot up quickly and have excellent response time launching & running applications (better than any run of the mill distro)...
i like free as in beer just as much as the next geek and especially like free as in freedom! RMS really is on to something so listen to his philosophy on software freedom...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What bothers me the most about all of this is that in this day and age we're still finding communal efforts of this nature being divided by geography. Just goes to show that the function hasn't followed the form.
You may call it bragging rights, I call it a lack of vision.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think that in the US, the mass population that is, NOT the IT crowd, likes Open Source because they are trying to save money. The perfect example of this is Open Office. Let me tell you, my mom, pastor, sister, and my best friend all could care less if they had access to the source code. I would be shocked if a single one of them could program "Hello World". However, they LOVE the thought of not shelling out a couple of Hundred bucks to Microsoft. Not because they hate Microsoft, but because they want to save money. The sister I mentioned earlier also just graduated graphic arts school, and is a Gimp user, not because she has access to the source code or anything like that, but because it is free.
I pieced together a few computers for a church before, and we went Linux with Open Office, once again, because its free.
None of these were because they thought Linux, Open Office, or Gimp were better, in fact, all of these people would have prefered the pay program. People like free. People will do stupid stuff to get stuff for free. You know how many users I had to remove spyware and viruses from because they tried installing free 3D or Living Screensavers, 1000 free smilies at smily central, or animated coursers? In fact, I have tons of friend's myspace pages that I refuse to goto until they clean up their code and get rid of all those evil ActiveX and JavaScript controls.
You ought too see how many people will drive 30-45 miles across town to save 20 cents a gallon on gas. I point and laugh at those people.
Yet, not a single one of these people mind paying $18 for a pizza, $24.95 a month for dialup, or $120 a month for their cable bill.
So of the 6 European Open Source projects I can name of the top of my head, 4 are dual licensed.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The short of it is that the people of the US all have ADHD and very short attention spans.
Speak for yourself. There's a lot of people in the USA that are able to defer gratification and invest their time and money wisely and profitably, for both the short and long term.
This is my sig.
I also run/program/maintain a relatively small open source initiative for 4 years and have had the exact opposite experience. With the exception of one German company and one Mexican company, all of my donations and customizations, and contributions have come from US companies or individuals. The Europeans are constantly the ones with negative comments on the boards, yet when asked to contribute, do nothing. And when I mean contribute, I will take anything - coding contributions, documentation help... anything. Maybe it is the nature or function of most OS software that determines attitude. Since my software is more directly business/accounting related, perhaps US people are more apt to see the value and ideals behind the software. Perhaps Europeans see the value and ideal behind more technical or "academic" related software?
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).
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?
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?
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.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Often the more expensive the piece of software is, the worse the software is. It is a perverse example of applied economics. Expensive software sells in small volumes, so the vendors try to maximize profit per customer. Effectively, this means minimizing effort in software development, resulting in crappy software.
Companies selling large volumes of software, find technical support costs a large cost center. This forces the companies to increase software quality and increase ease of use, even if only to reduce technical support costs. However, to achieve the volumes of sales, these same companies often reduce the unit price of the software. High-volume software vendors are trying to maximize the formula: revenue = unit cost * # of sales. Thus most high-volume titles cost much less than the more expensive low-volume titles, and are also better quality pieces of software.
Open source takes things to an extreme. The software is free, the source is free, so the number of users is large. The number of bug fixes will also be large, if the number of developers scales with the number of users. Of course, the number of developers on an open-source project is a function of both revenue and the number of bugs, and with open source projects, revenue is a key issue. Nevertheless, some open source projects have identified revenue streams, and are good quality projects.
The end result is expensive software is usually crappy, and cheaper software is often better.
I've spent 8 years in Europe and one thing I can tell you is that culturally they
1) have a longer view
2) favor process over results (whereas we Americans favor results over process)
The two things combined, in my experience, go a long way to explaining this and a lot of other differing view points.
I like to think of myself as someone who cares a lot for Open Source.
Then again, I like to think of myself as someone who likes to distance himself from the masses.
This article discomforts me.
Do not trust this signature.
What does OSS have to do with "free, as in speech". OSS is not about avoiding government censorship (is it?) it's free /libre/, free to use and abuse, free to modify, free to alter and adapt, free to better for your needs or those of others ... I don't see how that has anything to do with "free, as in speech"?
I'm guessing that in Europe people like FOSS because it's free-libre and free-gratis, whilst in America the populous doesn't know what "libre" means [oh God I hope I spelt it right!] and so make some weird analogy with free speech that misses the mark entirely. Surely "free, as in speech" would be for warez that can't be sold legally but can be given away due to some loophole?
But I'm open to being wrong.
Seriously though can't we just all agree to use libre and gratis?
[Ya, probably flamebait, but everyone loves a barbecue, right?!]
I agree w/ this observation and it is true not only in open source. Americans generally are more money-savvy than Europeans and less care about class and quality. Clothes, houses, food - all is about money-saving.
I like that because it drives the prices down. I can eat, dress and live cheaper than my colleagues in London or Moscow.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I just readed the summary and have just conclude that Taco is still up to his eyeses in the drinkses.
If I didn't have access to a gratis alternative I would
BUY something instead of using monopolyware. While being
"free" is certainly a bonus, many of us just think that
the market leader is CRAP.
Being "free" also more readily allows for certain side
effects that turn out to be rather convenient or useful.
I own 2 Macs (that run Ubuntu) because they met some rather
odd and stringent requirements and did so at the best cost.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
... as in beer.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
One key point I didn't see in the article is the willingness of US vs European companies to actually adopt open source software. At least in the US, software adoption decisions are typically made by the higher ups who really don't understand or really care about the inner workings of such products. Now I see nothing wrong with this fact alone; the higher ups don't need to know every detail, that's my job. The ones that do take the time the learn everything are usually the micro-managers and that in my mind is far, far worse.
I personally regularly experience the mindset of the business types not trusting software made by 'nobodies' and would much rather pay out the nose for a lower quality product made by a recognized and well supported manufacturer such as Microsoft. Basically, in their minds, if it's free, it must not be very good. To make the matters worse, there is always a Microsoft fan boy out there reinforcing that idea.
Being a big supporter of open source, it kills me a little every time I have to deal with this. I have successfully gotten my company to adopt open source products, but they were for all non-mission critical purposes and generally things they wouldn't have gotten anyway. In this case my argument has been 'well this tool would be great to have, and best of all it's free!' The higher ups usually go along at this point simply because there is nothing to lose..
I do understand why people are hesitant to adopt relatively unknown products; their company's success and thus their jobs are dependent on such decisions so these uncertainties are typically avoided. Whether these uncertainties are well founded is another story all together.
My point is, you can't conclude from this study that American companies are just cheap when it comes to software. They typically pay a lot of money for proprietary software simply because the public perception is open source != quality. Fortunately I do see this mindset changing quite rapidly as the old farts retire and we young techie types take over.
How the heck do these foreigners know so much about us?! It all makes perfect sense. We only support OSS because we save money. Then, we use that saved money to buy mountains of cheeseburgers. After we're done eating (which we never are, right?) we lay around and avoid things like education and the cleaning up the environment. We only use our energy to do cruel things to animals and activities that only benefit ourselves. Plus what ever other stereotypes we have going against us...
I would understand why Europeans are more concerned about vendor lock-in. They don't want to be held by the balls by a foreign company.
Yes, but all what we need for this cheaper live is made in China, or coded in Bangalore.
What about buying less unseless stuff, but buying better quality objects ?
I am not sure about credibility of the results (concerning Americans vs. European standpoint). Let's see. I live in Slovakia (a relatively fresh European Union member). Microsoft and our government signed a deal: http://www.etrend.sk/technologie/telekom-a-internet/microsoft-spristupni-slovenskej-vlade-zdrojove-kody/44633.html in which Microsoft gives our government: "access to the source code of software solution of Microsoft company". By signing the deal "Slovak government is given a chance to tie its own technologies to Microsoft Windows platform and customize it to its own security needs." I am kind of worried if MS Windows regularly selled in Slovakia also contains such "customizations" made by our government---or our natial security agency that left blatant security holes in its own infrastracture and was previously hacked. http://www.zone-h.org/content/view/14755/1/
( and other slahdotters )
make this a survey
I and I think others would love to see the outcome!!
The two biggest culprits of vendor lock-in are Microsoft and Apple (Office and the iPod). Both companies are American.
I admit this is an insignificant sampling of the population, I don't know a single family member in Europe who knows or even cares about open source. On the other hand, in the US, I know many people using open source products, even if they aren't aware it's open source. All they know is it isn't Microsoft and it's free.
An odd thing I've noted is that slideshows and other viral crap I get from Europe is almost always created in Powerpoint.
In my experience, here in the US, our clients specifically choose open source products over alternatives because of price. It might help that we do web development which gives up a wide variety of options to offer our clients. When a client goes for a more mainstream commercial solution it's because they've got the money to spend or are willing to do so, and more importantly they're looking for reliability and support.
It's not that the open source solutions are unreliable and support is available in some cases. But they'd rather deal with a known quantity. I'd say a sizable majority of what we've built uses open source solutions. And I've found this to be not all that different from what I've encountered at other companies.
Sometimes I feel like the adoption of open source has been underestimated in the US because its proponents wont be happy until everyone is using an open source alternative to Windows and Office.
Early adopters didn't have 4USD/gallon gas either. So it only makes sense that early adopters didn't focus on that. And what about people who do it for both reasons? I'm hoping my current car lasts the better part of a decade for me, so I won't be in the car market for a while but when I do I'm hoping for both a cheap car (as in fuel) and low emissions. If I can get one that is about the same amount for fuel as mine is but with low or zero emissions I'll still feel good about it, but a cheap fuel would be an added plus, if possible.
What's wrong with win-win situations in the minds of these people anyway?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The very argument: you know what you SW is doing should be stuffed down the throat of every government office, institute or company:
I suggested that in every router sits a well hidden Trojan Boot Loader, making life for eavesdropping and directed spying child's play!
why invest in ECHELON when you just need to key in the serial No of the router of company XYZ or Ministry of Defense of Balconia and tell your electronic fifth column what to look for!
you think that can be monitored? not if the traffic hides in search-engine traffic!
I think in my work place, with the System Administrators I'm working with, it is largerly true that they could less about having access to the source.
That being said, I have personally found it invaluable to have access to the source; it has only been a handful of times, and probably only a couple where it was absolutely critical for work, but have access to the code was a life saver. One off the top of my head was the rm_ldap module crashing in freeradius. I filed a bugzilla and a kind soul at redhat pointed out how it could be fixed by editing the source and rebuilding the RPM. I did so and it saved a critical part of a project. Granted I did not diagnose the problem because I had access to the source, but I was sure as hell able to fix it within a few hours of posting my bug report. No software release cycle from any company could have made that change, tested it, and released it to world+dog that fast, even if they wanted to...
The ideals are great, and I do like to contribute. But I could get a kick out of making up a program even if I had paid for the platform.
Just because money is a tawdry subject it does not mean that it should not be part of the selection process...
1) For my organization, the costs of specifying a system are huge and the time involved is egregious. With open source, we can usually quickly establish a prototype and then modify it as we go until it is just what we wanted. Learning what we really want as we go.
2) Documentation for many OSS applications is available from a high-street bookstore. That means that anyone that wants to get ahead can read a few books and play with a system, they don't need vendor training.
3) A separate training and development environment is easy to cost justify. Again - if I want to learn about something in my own time, I don't need to go cap in hand to the management to get started.
4) the costs associated with making platforms multi-user and administering them thereafter is moot - everyone can have their own separate copy of the environment
5) Screw your paid-for support. There have only been a few occasions where I've been impressed with support I've paid for and many more occasions when I've found quick and accurate resolutions to problems with an OSS project.
6) Just the effort involved in managing licences is costly.
7) OSS systems I have used have been far more admin friendly than commercial systems - log files one can actually read and understand and, of course, access to the ultimate reference of what it is doing - the source itself.
I'm sure I could think of more. The cost of commercial systems is not just the sticker cost of the software licence - that's just the beginning. OSS is simply more cost effective from factory to landfill.
Nullius in verba
and I don't really care. I might have access to the source code, but fuck me if I'm going to wade through it. I use both open and closed source software, the right tool for the right job.
i'm a canadian and my experience here in north america is that people want the most amount of functionality for the least amount of cost in time. if they were raised and trained to use ms office, then they will stop at nothing to use it. why would they invest time in something (however similar) when the 'original' works for them. money isn't really an issue in this case, it's more about 'impending frustration'.
i for one strongly support the open source projects, and i make a point of using them. i'm thankful that they are working to bring us better and better software for our daily uses.
+1 slahsdot poll about this
This is a massive generalization at best.
And you want me to reply to that??? :-)
a) Vista ok, but depends on who you talk to, what hardware, etc.
b) This is likely an nVidia issue as I've heard there are still problems with them because the driver is not open source. Not really a linux issue as they're trying to get it right.
c) KDE, Gnome, they're all a work in progress. I think thats the nature of Linux in the first place.
d) Six or one half dozen of the other. I think they're both about equal in certain ways.
e) DirectX is not the cats meow. Nor is OpenGL. Things go better if you go with a shared standard. DirectX is very Microsoft-esk, where OpenGL goes everywhere. You do the math. Its up to coders now. Programming paradigms are what your used to. If you did straight C all your life, hooks into dynamic DLL's are just another form of TSR jumps. The GDI an other interfaces were a way of containerizing the hardware underneath you. We were doing that with OOP in C and Pascal a long time back!. Its all relative.
f) Ubuntu is not the cats meow. Redhat I think is still the base standard was was Debian. Ubuntu is built off of Debian and has a lot of tweaks. Its definitely different. Windows uninstall/installer works with; well; Windows! I think the uninstall feature of the RedHat package manager works rather well... but it depends!
g) The network stack in Linux is as stable if not more so than Windows. Again it really depends on what and how your using it. I still do not trust a Windows machine more than I do a properly configured Linux machine in a server capacity--at least not web facing. Backoffice ok, but I have my doubts with Internet facing.
h) Again; six or one half dozen of the other - It's a work in progress and they are distinctively different. Choose what you like better and go help code and test for it.
i) I really have no issue with Vista except that you must buy add-on software to get the functionality you need; aka Nero for example. There's that ISO functionality you were looking for.
I'll grant you that Eclipse is a whore and just consumes everything in it's wake. Could be worse though considering all that Eclipse can do. So again it depends on what and where your going. I have the earlier Visual Studio for Windows and I always thought it was hog compared to Borland's offerings. I learned coding the old world way. Text editor, then do a make and a build. Couldn't be simpler. Sometimes anyway.
I like both Word and OpenOffice. But they're both pigs. Word/Office has integration in many established IT environments that you would be hard pressed to change over to something new such as OpenOffice mid-stream. You work with what you have to. Simple as that. I have personal biases against some of IBM's products based on the fact that I had to work with it, and some of it is just junk and should not have continued. Some of it is good stuff though. It just depends.
On the last line; where do you think the original GUI came from?? Does Xerox Parc have any meaning? Most of Microsoft's products were purchases or acquisitions over the years from independent people or companies. The only thing if memory serves; that Mr Gates has to claim, is he did do BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). But I digress... :-)
Suffice that they both have their weights, and their wings.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Europeans are also better represented as participants in the World Community Grid (computing) project, are more secular, less religious, and more we're-in-this-together socialistic, including better general health systems. I think Europeans might just be more highly evolved (socially) and less barbaric than Americans.
For all the stupid or selfish things we might do as humans, self-loathing is probably the most destructive.
Quack, quack.
...in between surfing porn and preening their myspace pages...
Wrong! Here in Europe we use Facebook.
My UID is prime. Hah!
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.
No, not at all. There's a distinction in the European culture between freedom and costs (as demonstrated by the non ambiguous words in most european languages to describe what in english collides under the single word "free").
Freedom is very important, whatever the costs.
Vendor lock-in is much more important because of the independence that open-source gives us towards the US (= where all the commercial software is developed).
If we were going for the cheap, we would go for whatever costs the less upfront - longterm implication notwithstanding.
If we go for a different solution, maybe cheaper but that still locks us with an oversea partner, we would still be dependant on that partner, not in charge ourselves.
If we potentially go for a situation which costs loads of money but is *our* solution, developed *here*, we would still go for it even if it would cost more, as long as it let us get rid of the Microsoft dominance.
That's also why all this FUD-studies about the TCO for Linux doesn't have such a strong effect in Europe, and that's why you regularly hear articles on /. about this or that german/french/whatever municipality which has decided to go completely open-source.
Well, maybe the cost of migration will be big, but the gain over long term of getting independence and relying on solutions and software that we personally can control is what matters at most.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In America we call that Lazy, Elitists, who do not contribute positive to the overall society
I'm sure you hard-working masses are going to contribute positively to the society once you burn out ~
But don't worry, we European will surely find time among our standard minimum five weeks of paid vacations to come visit you in your hospital.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The US is about 1/3 obese. That level of obesity leads to a lot of rich and a lot of lazy people, and that will certainly change the motive of why a US citizen would get involved in a free product to begin with. I agree to an extent with the generalization, however I personally observe a lot of those in the states who do care about the free software ideals and getting involved in GPL projects. Most of them didn't know a year ago what free software was really about. In US colleges, free software is taught more as an option than as a moral or world-improving decision. But go figure, philosophy books don't have a Linux chapter yet... For years, the US general public has learned to suppress a lot of energy around free things. Between the promotional "free cars", "free cellphones", "free diet pills", "free financing".. perhaps this is a long-term effect of the "free lunch" concept has left on our economy untrustworthy of free things... Leading the US to start believing that "free" means "pay out your eye balls"... Or perhaps the competitive business models of the country have brainwashed us that money equals power and to exploit the weak and take advantage of every financial gain you can. There is a considerable amount of the US only looking to use free software for monetary gain, and not to give back. Hopefully we can change that. -Tres
I do not know about you, but I am doing both: cheap and less.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If you believe the U.S. national test scores, the reason might simply be because people in Europe can read.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
This correlates well with my own observations of the tendencies of open source developers in the two regions: US Open Source projects tend more towards Apache and BSD-type licenses where redistribution doesn't necessarily require you to provide the source code. European Open Source projects trend heavily towards the GPL, which require any one who redistributes the code to also distribute the source. I would expect that open source developers tend to be a large segment of open source users, as well, so this trend would stand up with European vs. US users.
For myself, I reside in the US. My interest in having access to the source depends on how I'm making use of the tool. If it's a fairly generic tool like an FTP or SSH client, I may not be particularly concerned about having access to the source. This is because if there is a bug in a generic tool that impacts my daily work, I'm more likely to switch tools than to attempt to fix the code myself. If I'm using an open source project/product/tool without changes in a production environment, I would probably want access to the source code as a risk mitigation in case a really obscure problem occurs, but I'd be equally interested in access to support consultants and patch updates. If an open source tool was a compelling product that did not have good outside support, then I would be seriously interested in having the source code for the tool. The same would also apply for any open source product for which me or my team was making modifications.
The bottom line for me is not reinventing the wheel. Free as in beer is not going to keep my production system up and running. We'd still need to pay for some kind of support if we didn't have access to the code. And the project managers and bean counters here still need the security blanket of having paid support, vs. having access to the code. Support is a service they can understand, while to them having the code just means additional IT expenses for self maintenance.
Some of this lack of concern about access to the source also may be due to the American knee-jerk reaction against socialism, combined with our overly litigious society. An open source "community" sounds like a way to lose your trade secrets, even though a business could get the benefit of the labors of say 12 developers for the price of two, not to mention the recruiting and technical contacts that they would get if they elected to contribute back to an open project.
We are the 198 proof..
His Europeans were polled at an Open Source conference. His Americans included "senior IT people from the financial services industry in New York".
I think they should make DAMNED sure the FBI has the widest latitude in US HISTORY to sift out and bring charges against all those involved in the fraud the got us to this point. The execs involved should be tracked by biometrics and SSN and deprived every step of the way forward if they try to take on jobs (private or as "advisors" to the government entities that will have to dig us out of this morass) that make more than $100,000 a year involved in financial sector work. If they can come up with a $20,000,000 a year job shitting eggs, then good for them, but NOT another $20M + bonuses job in the financial, insurance, reinsurance, commodities, real (fake) estate or the similar industries. But, once identified as fraudsters, they need to be jailed, and i dare say, their assets taken from them and their families' usage/access. SOME of the execs might even deserve to be hanged by the neck or electrified for bilking the public, destabilizing the global economic engines, and lying and holding back on the true state of the "financial armageddon" we now face.
Sure, borrowers can fib or go NINJA/NINA (No Income, No Job/Assets// No Income/No Assets) route on the paperwork, an end up lying of misrepresenting information and facts, but THAT is what the lenders, underwriters, and other processors are supposed to weed out. So, as for blame weight, assign 25% fault to the poor schmo borrowers who CHASED that "merkun homeownership dream (only to witness it ever increasing in acquisition cost, and elusive unless they lie to get into that home...) But, many of the lenders/processors/verifiers were pressured workers or outright greedy assholes (and NEED to be vilified) who most likely felt:
"Well, if WE don't process these loans, then our competitors WILL. So, that means we lose out on commissions, bonuses, and quarterly reportable income/revenues. So, FUCK IT! Hells Bells! Full speed ahead!"
Now, they want to be bailed out cuz loans and the like supposedly are the oil/lubricant of the US market. They should let wall street crash and re-set itself. *IIII* am in debt, and ***IIII**** do NOT get the chance to have some of that $700 BILLION to "reset" my poor, money-mismanaging ass.
THINK, everyone, what $700 B could do:
- rebuild a number of US cities
- pay for the unemployment (yes, social network support) benefits of those who (not the fucking execs) are SURELY going to be laid of without a golden parachute
- pay for the education costs of those currently in college (how many other countries spending less on military matters actually fully subsidize their education-seeking populations, and are the better for it?)
-pay for costs of those who dropped out of college to work to pay off school loans, only to be screwed by the failed economy, take on lower-income jobs that yield too little income to (without resorting to criminal activity) service those federal school loans
- fund the startup ventures of people such as myself who have low income, no assets, no FFF (friends, fools families to co-sign), and no one we can trust to NOT screw us out of our entrepreneurial ideas. We could be linked up with SBA SCORE advisors, mentored, kept on track, and become the new employers more deserving of the $700B than the bastards and bitches who greedily brought the US and rest of the world to the brink of disaster.
These crooked administration and financial jerks are all too keen to exhort "let the market self-correct" but all to willing see corporate welfare bailouts help THEM and their cronies, but not the public. The "experts" LIED about the extent of the previous bailout costs, and not these assholes in DC want a blank check and no accountability on an initial checking account of $700B. If bush gets what he and his cronies want, then probably $300B of that will go to the execs, a few mortgage companies, and the rest will be so ineffectual as to have us seeing 8 months from now another bailout package of $1.5 TRILLION being asked for.
Find them, charge them, de-asset them, and ban their return to financial markets, then jail them, and execute some of them as examples.
(steps down from soap box)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
yawn. nothing to see here. Just more U.S. bashing.
GNU is a brand of "no strings attached". Currently an app may be "free" but it will still have a million ways of sucking money off you, ranging from being a crippled version of a pay-for app, through displaying ads, suggesting pay-for extensions, gathering your personal info, to installing malware. If I see "Freeware", I'm extremely distrustful. OTOH, when I see GNU, I know I'm getting what I'm looking for, not spam.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It used by 80% of US small businesses, and it only runs correctly on windows. QB is only a bfd in the US.
But that is just an example. My guess is that msft has special deals with many US companies, more so than with EU countries. The US is msft's primary market. A lot of US web-sites will only work correctly with msie.
Msft strong-arms Americans more then Europeans. To the point that, for almost all Americans, it just isn't worth it to use anything else.
...to be able to enjoy the fruits of their own labours.... ...they look down on us...
Now, granted, I agree with American concept that you should be able to spell the word however you like. The US is certainly enough of a melting pot that I have no problem with immigrants, and I don't think it makes you less "american".
So I don't actually have a problem, here, I'm just curious...
That looks a bit British to me.
Maybe you know firsthand why "they" look down on "us"? Maybe you've been on both sides of that looking-down?
Oh, and I agree with you, although I don't think the US has a monopoly on stupidity. If you've looked at civil liberties, it's hard to say who's rushing to turn into a police state faster.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What a surprise!
"Europeans find reason that Europeans are Better than Americans"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I can just use the GIMP to do my photo touch ups and other editing.
I tried GIMP years ago when I had Windows but found it seriously lacking. So I tried out Paint Shop Pro. Now that I have a Mac I'll try CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP. Because colour bit depth is important to me I consider it better than GIMP. Whereas GIMP only has 8 bit colour depths CinePaint has 16. Which brings up something I don't like about the GIMP developers. A programmer submitted code to the project that had 16 bit colour depth, several years ago, but they refused to use it. So he, or she I don't know who is was, forked GIMP. Many years later GIMP still only has 8 bit colour depths while movie studios work with CinePaint.
I used Photoshop a few years ago, and the interface was sleeker than the GIMP
Have you tried GIMPshop? It's interface was designed to be more like Photoshop.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The irony of the Wall Street bail-out is that it has made common cause between leftists and libertarians on economic policy.
It demonstrates something the Lenin once said, reflecting on the French revolution: that the bourgeois become utterly ruthless when their interests are threatened. The middle classes in America are willing to create an unholy alliance of Wall Street and Washington to protect their credit-fueled lifestyles, soaking future generations in order to give the wealthiest more money to lend them. This is much closer to Fascism, with a consumer-debt twist, than any of the maneuvers of the social conservatives of the past 30 years - and it has the support of about 60 percent of the populace.
Honestly, I think Linux is a good thing because it keeps Microsoft on its toes. I mean, if there was no Linux, there would probably really be no more operating system development out of Microsoft at all and they'd just take their money and run with it. But I wouldn't say that Microsoft doesn't invent anything, because in my mind, I think Linux is behind Vista for the desktop at this point and I see that gap getting wider, rather than narrower.
Microsoft doesn't invent anything, all it does is make improvements. And it wouldn't do those if there wasn't competition. Look at Internet Explorer, IE 6 was released on August 27, 2001. It wasn't until Firefox was released and taking market share from MS when MS released IE 7, 5 years later, on October 18, 2006. IE 8 only took a few months afterwards before it entered public beta testing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
One thing we did contribute to the English language was the word "than" which is used in comparisons. Unfortunately some people that never learned to speak the language correctly don't realise that "then" is not a homophone.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
> In Europe, OSS is metric
Except in the UK where it is a mixture of metric and imperial :-)
(OK: I know there are plenty of people in the UK who would rather be part of the USA then Europe !!)
No one I've ever met. People might not want to be in europe but they're certainly not happy with the USA either
By disagreeing with me, you prove my point, americans and europeans see things differently. Thanks :)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
At the same time, being ideological is not connected with any especially noticable level of intelligence or consistence. As one example, if McCain wins by 51% then it will be interpreted as a sign that Americans are bigoted hate-filled unprogressed rednecked caveman-racists. If Obama wins by 51%, it will be seen as a Hallelujah of new hope for a social-democratic United States.
Well I'm European and until very recently I had great sympathy for McCain. Why did I change my view? Religion (ie: his vice-president). There is a big gap between the US and European countries on that issue. If an European prime minister or a President says "God bless #countryname" and dares to place dozens of "divine references" in his speech, it would be weird, scary in a way (a threat for the division between the state and the church). Even the catholic party in my country doesn't dare to say the word "God" when they discuss the abortion issue.
I wasn't aware that a difference existed between countries. For me, my love for open source must be both: free software that can be improved by anyone (when following the rules (license)).
I am not devoid of humor.
That means the first thing that you did stupid, is chose the way you elect :)
Actually for it's time the way president were elected, via the electoral college, was needed. Some states were more rural while other were more urban with large populations. If the president was elected by popular vote then urban centers would control who was elected president. This is no longer true though, today cities could be either Democrat or Republican, or split. I will say though that I think the passing of the Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President, was a mistake. Before it's passage every candidate ran for president. Then in congress the electoral college would vote. If there were more than 2 candidates the candidate with the lowest vote count would be dropped then another vote taken. Eventually when there were only 2 candidates left the final vote would be for who would be president, with the loser becoming vice president. Of course this "robs" political parties of their power so they pushed to have president and vice president run as a team.
Me, I'd rather amend the constitution again. This amendment would repeal the 12th amendment, and would abolish the electoral college. Voters would vote directly for president, with every candidate running for president. Using one of the Condorcet methods of voting the winner would become president and runner up the vp.
For voting itself, paper ballots or e-voting, I propose something like the machines used in India. "Indian EVM compared with Diebold". "The Bombay Ballot".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the real reason that Open Source is different in Europe is that they don't have a SCO.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.