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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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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?!]
...and some people have a problem with understanding what a generalization is... which, once again, appears to point to another common U.S. American failing -- the notion that it is all about "me" somehow.
The 80's was probably one of the most damaging eras for the U.S. where culture and society are concerned. "Looking out for number one" is a ridiculously selfish notion that has resulted in making "everyone else" a competitor or even an enemy of sorts.
There are indeed a lot of people who do not neatly fall into the category I describe. But, the masses are what I speak... the masses to which that marketers very successfully appeal.
... as in beer.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
That argument can, as I'll demonstrate, be carried on ad infinitum and in absurdum:
GCC was written by Stallman, the C front end of which was derived from Bell Labs' C, which was based on B, which in term was a product of a Cambridge (England) Student called Martin Richards (no relation to Keith, I assume) in the sixties. His work was surely severely influenced by Alan Turing's work, who had been influenced by Einstein during the formation of his mathematical theories, who in turn probably owed a debt of gratitude to the likes of Pascal, Huygens, Newton and Leibniz.
All those were from the empirical / objectivist school of thinking which was arguably based on Platonic logic. Plato formulated his ideas long before Intellectual Property Laws/Rights ever existed. Therefore you could argue that Stallman would have been nowhere without Hellenistic culture which was open source in the sense that the notion of proprietary information didn't exist in the same form it does today. Plato, Pascal, Huygens, Leibniz, Newton, Einstein, Turing and Richards were all European, by the way.
Having said that, the first Copyright law known in the Western world originated in 1710 in England, so you could argue that the notions of Free (as in beer) information and Closed (as in copyrighted / proprietary) information both originated in Europe, along with the ideals you hold dear. All this because the US simply hasn't been around long enough to originate anything save McDonalds, Starbucks and the aforementioned over-sized motorized vehicles that don't corner too well and consume too much fossil fuel for their own good. :-)
My original question still stands: Can you prove by numbers and source that most large Open Source Projects originated in the US?
Europeans caring more about the source code is not such a silly notion if you take into account the laws surrounding Openness of Government in countries such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark et al. After all, it was the openness of government that prompted the German state to go for open document standards and Linux in general. If I may speak for my fellow Europeans here, I can say that we don't care so much about the Source code in and of itself, but we do care about information that concerns citizens and governments not being tied into (foreign) corporations' good will and cash register.
The only silly part of that statement was the European bit in the sense that there is no typical "European" yet. The Spaniard might have very, very different views from the Dutchman, Swede, Greek, Serb, Bulgarian or Englishman.
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 ]
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"