Is Open Source Different In Europe Than In the US? 399
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?"
EU Attitudes In General Are Different (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Primary vs Secondary (Score:1, Interesting)
Unless you're contributing back to the software pool, or donating money to projects, you are clearly "save money" orientated.
Yes, cost, but that's not the whole picture (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Yep, it's true (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For shame (Score:4, Interesting)
Ask a stupid question, get a lot of stupid answers.
The short of it is that the people of the US all have ADHD and very short attention spans. We work for short term gains and care nothing about anything more than a year out. Since the 80's, we have become a society of instant gratification junkies and have come to expect it from everything we interact with. And we habitually do things without knowing why we do them or even understanding what we are doing.
Re:For shame (Score:5, Interesting)
So true (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:For shame (Score:5, Interesting)
In all honesty being that I work for a Global company, Europe has I think a much higher quality of life. They are not rushed, they take their time and smell the roses. They have more free time as well and vacations. I am a geek as well and as a geek when I take vacation I typically end up looking into a new technology or exploring something I do not have the time for while working. However I get interruptions while I am on vacation from work as well.
Therefore, they take the time to look through the source code. Here in the US, we do not have the time, so basically we just buy something that gets done what we need to get done open source or not. Even if had the source code we wouldn't look at it. There are applications we have purchased in the company that we also purchase the source code for, however when we have problems we do not look at the source we call support, because we need an answer and we need it now.
Re:EU Attitudes In General Are Different (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Get real (Score:1, Interesting)
Open source history [wikipedia.org]
It is short on details, but open source is older than the 80s.
I don't buy it on dual licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
So of the 6 European Open Source projects I can name of the top of my head, 4 are dual licensed.
Say what? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Primary vs Secondary (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh. There go my mod points, but I had to speak.
What I really care about open source is that you are practically guaranteed that the bugs will be fixed. You just have to report them (except in rare cases where the actual project is obsolete or it simply sucks).
With "freeware" or proprietary software, you are doomed to accept what the vendor tells you. Oh look, there's a bug! Want to report it? Good luck with that! Specially if it's a product already discontinued by the vendor (i.e. Microsoft Visual Foxpro), where they'll only care about security bugs.
Another good example of an abandoned project was Proxomitron. Remember that one? It was freeware. But guess what, the author had a car accident and died. He never released the source so his project just died.
And what to say, dammit, what to say about the f***ing piece of crap called Internet Explorer!?!?!?!? Is it free as in beer? Yes! Can it be fixed and improved by the community? HELL NO!
I may not contribute back to the sofware pool (yet) and I haven't donated money to projects, but does that make me a greedy bastard? No (the reason why I can't donate money to Open Source is because I don't have a credit card, and no, I don't live in the US so everyoen who blames it on me can simply STFU). I just happen to be in the group of people who care about having software that won't disappear when the author dies or when it's discontinued, leaving me with LOTS AND LOTS OF HEADACHES every time the company I work at requires me to use an OBSOLETE AND DEFECTIVE PIECE OF SH**!
Re:Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. (Score:1, Interesting)
I used to use Oracle and experienced a major reproducible bug (crash) that Oracle were unable to reproduce. If we'd had access to the source code, I could have put a debugger on the executable and at least tracked down where it was happening. I was unable to help Oracle find their problem, and they were unwilling to help us help them. This in spite of us paying 5 figure annual support costs. Give me the code every time.
Re:Not just open source, _freedom_! (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not just freedom related to software. Americans generally don't like freedom. They have Patriot Act, DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, BSA, software patents, wire taps without court's order etc.
Re:I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, trying to respond to this in a way that doesn't sound like I'm trying to start a flame war, so...
There are thousands of open source projects out there. I personally use quite a few of them. I don't like to be thought of as a "moocher", because I don't support the project with donations. I do buy CD sets (OpenBSD, twice a year, Slackware, each release), t-shirts and the like, and make donations here and there as I can.
It becomes a logistical challenge to go out and make donations to support each piece of open source software you use. Perhaps if there was one (honest) group that accepted donations, then passed them out to open source groups that were registered with them, I would be more inclined to give regular donations. As it is, I respect your work, and the time and effort you (speaking to all open source developers here) put into creating and maintaining this software, and will make donations as I can. One thing I've found that tends to catch my eye is a well placed PayPal button that says "Make a donation to help support this software". I've been known to do the "impulse buy" thing and click the button and make a $5 or $10 (US) donation. Perhaps you might want to put one of those in, to make donating a little easier?
When I use a particular piece of open source software, and like it, I tend to "evangelize" it to my friends and acquaintances. I have even been known to submit bug reports from time to time. Perhaps this contribution is almost as good as a monetary one?
Re:Primary vs Secondary (Score:1, Interesting)
Ding ding, winnar.
Licensing has become such a phenomenal pain in the ass these days. Even if you can afford the software, the built in kill switches *cough*VMWARE*cough*MICROSOFT*cough* that suddenly kill your infrastructure by surprise on a work day (yes, I've seen it impact multiple companies), the inconvenience of just getting the licenses (eOpen is the devil), and just the hassle of things like punching in serials to install software... all of these things suck and decrease my productivity.
At first, I wanted open source because of price, then I started to see that it takes directions and chances proprietary vendors refuse to take, and now I see the licensing aspect as the big huge win.
Re:EU Attitudes In General Are Different (Score:3, Interesting)
You are right. I have a friend who was born in Korea. She start working at Seoul and the move to NY. She was very happy, as the work pace was quite slower in America.
She now had moved to Europe one year ago. She has been shocked again. The European pace is even slower that the American one.
The strange thing is that Europeans seen to achieve the same results in a much more relaxed ambient.
Korea has the longest working hours of any nation on Earth according to wiki info I read within the last month.
In my anecdotal experience, Americans and Koreans get as much done if they work 8 hours a day as they do in a 12 hour day.
how did they know! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:For shame (Score:4, Interesting)
While your post "sounds" reasonable it makes no sense.
No european company cares where the money is going to (to another european service or product provider or to an US one).
Only (if at all) the governments might think about issues like that. Most big european companies are multi national anyway.
There is still 100 times more money going to Microsoft, Oracle, IBM than to any OS software (or that is saved by OS software).
I think one big reason behind OS in Europe is: 90% of commercial inhouse software development is done in Java and Python, and not in C#. While OS software like iBatis exists for .NET and also for Java there is still 100 times more high quality Java software (see apache.org) than there is anything for .NET.
With tools like Eclipse and the numerous plugins you simply start working. For no cost, for no vendor lock in. Everything that is used to drive your data (hibernate, iBatis) everything dealing with XML, everything regarding internet (HTTP, Mail, FTP) is available as OSS.
Everything regarding MDMA or MDSD (Andromeda / Open Architecture Ware) is OOS ...
The next prime factor is: human resources. You always find some one who has a deep experience in a specific OSS product / tool.
Looking at my ivy repository: I see roughly 120 OSS java libraries used. About 5 from other vendors in my industry, and about 5 from commercial vendors like Oracle.
Why should I pay for a commercial PDF formatting library when an OSS version with a more thought out and easier to learn API exists?
The software we write simply would not have any chance to be written in a reasonable amount of time if we would not use OSS libraries. Where is the closed source alternative to ivy or if you prefer the other one, maven? Where is it for ant? Jython? Grovvy? And well, strictly speaking Java was not OSS when we started using it, but without Swing our software would be written in Qt likely ...
angel'o'sphere
Re:For shame (Score:3, Interesting)
Primary reason for adopting Open Source: -(Europe) Avoid vendor lock-in. -(US) Cost.
In fairness, could it be an issue of what people choose to talk about as much as how they make the decision? If I start telling my boss that we should use an open source solution to avoid vendor lock-in, he'll ask me why he should care about vendor lock-in. He'll want a practical reason, and since it's a business, that practical reason should probably have something to do with making money or losing money.
Now if I explain to my boss that vendor lock-in is bad because it'll mean that some outside company can hold our data hostage, potentially leading to data loss and/or increased spending, then he'll realize that vendor lock-in is a financial liability.
So if that's why we're using open-source solutions, did we do it to avoid vendor lock-in, or did we do it to save money? I could give either answer and be telling the truth, but I'm more likely to give whatever answer I think will be respected.
Re:For shame (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Their employees are in Washington state, where your business is supposed to pay income tax because there's no payroll tax. But they put their financial offices in (IIRC) Colorado, so their profits are filed in a state with a payroll tax on the (no) employees, but no income tax.
This way Microsoft dodges paying any more than a bare minimum of taxes, while still enjoying the taxpayer-bought benefits of Washington state.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. It's the American way!
Re:EU Attitudes In General Are Different (Score:1, Interesting)
North Americans live to work, while Europeans work to live.
Germans say the latter about people from the Mediterranean, with a mixture of pride and envy. It's a myth either way. If there's anything to it, it has more to do with objective living conditions: how much you are forced to work for a living, if the state you live in has some sort of a general social security system, and if you can afford to take some time off without falling out of everything.
Re:Get real (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The price of freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:For shame (Score:5, Interesting)
As to the 'elitist' charge. The US economy is great for the financial elite, but miserly with respect to anyone with a median salary or lower. In a lab in Europe, the lab assistants got food subsidies at the excellent cafeteria. The lab ran a nice Mercedes bus that picked them up from each of the nearby villages - a nice perk given the cost of gas. So, who is favoring the elite - France or the US?
You sure it's just EU vs US? (Score:3, Interesting)
His Europeans were polled at an Open Source conference. His Americans included "senior IT people from the financial services industry in New York".
Re:For shame Since you brough up $700B, well (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:For shame (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:For shame (Score:4, Interesting)
Another things about America, which you bring up: we use the word "middle class" to describe almost everyone. "Hard-working people, struggling to get by" are "middle class". What kind of makes me sick is the way it's implied that the lower class (i.e., those poorer than you) aren't worthy of defense.
Heck, we don't even have any idea of what the word "class" means in this country. Somehow, having employment and living on the wage you received went from being the definition the word "proletarian" to being called "middle class".
Re:For shame (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Not all of us American supported war, nor do we all support bailing out Wall Street.
but not a dime for affordale socialised medicine...
Two of the biggest health insurance programs are US government run, Medicaid [wikipedia.org] and Medicare [wikipedia.org]. Some states and local governments also have their own socialized health programs.
Falcon