Does It Matter Where Open Source is Based? 100
munchola writes "CBR has created a map of current open source software providers that contradicts the recent assertion of Alfresco's Matt Asay that "open source is not a Silicon Valley phenomenon". That statement has prompted a debate about the importance of location, involving Asay, Robert Scoble, and Dana Blankenhorn. A closer look shows that open source is very much a Silicon Valley phenomenon."
What an accurate map.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Equally interesting is that he somehow has forgotten where Linux started up, where iRC originated and so many other open source projects have come up. SuSE is no where on the map and the other countless German open source contributions.
All in all, this is about as much news (or accurate) as most of the stuff on the Inquirer.
It's over the Internet. (Score:2, Interesting)
Depends on the kind of open source (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, Silicon Valley does have a much higher concentration of computer people than just about anywhere else in the world. So if there is a relatively constant percentage of developers who contribute to open source projects, naturally you'll find the most open source contributors wherever you find the most developers in general.
One enormous flaw... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you count open-source software companies (I have seen ActiveState and CodeWeavers, for instance), sure, it seems most of it is gathered in the USA and in Europe.
But take a look at, for instance, the map of the OpenBSD developers [openbsd.org] (at the bottom of the link): there are individuals working on OpenBSD all over the place.
Another case that I know well is Slackware: there are developers helping Patrick Volkerding all over the world, with strong clusters in Italy, Brazil, the UK and other countries. Mandriva is a French/Brazilian companies, with strong sales in the USA, and so on and so forth. And there are so many other projects out there that are definitely not US-centric.
So, again: count companies and Open Source seems to be based in Silicon Valley. Take a look at individual developers and the picture becomes a lot more international.
Re:it matters and its not the valley (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who has worked in the valley for nearly 20 years, I have to wonder what evidence you have to support that idea. It certainly runs counter to my experience here. At more than one of my jobs I have been not only allowed, but encouraged by my management to open-source software I've written on company time. (Not everything I've written, of course, but stuff that is not part of the company's core business.)
Do you have some numbers to back that claim up?
Re:Does it matter where open source is based? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd be ok if companies in Redmond open sourced some of their software. If they did, I might consider using their software on occassion.
But it's still my choice.
Re:duh (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed; this is the main thing I noticed about the article.
I'm part of several open-source efforts. One is a music package first developed by a math prof in Germany. When he announced to the mailing list that he was getting too busy, at least three of us started forks of his code and implemented radically different new features (needed by different groups of musicians). All of us (including the original author) have put our source code online for anyone who wants it. This means that we aren't "vendors"; i.e., we aren't selling it. So we aren't included in this articles data. None of us developers are in Silicon Valley.
In a different direction, I'm one of at least a thousand C developers who has a personal collection of C debugging tools. I wrote some, downloaded some, and radically rewrote a few other tools. I keep it all online. I see occasional downloads (by non-search-bots
Talking about open-source "vendors" pretty much labels the writer as clueless. Either that, or someone trying to prove something and hoping we won't notice the verbal sleight of hand.
are you kidding?? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you haven't been to atlanta in a long time....
Re:Get slashdotted! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Right here (Score:4, Interesting)
Things you'll notice is that there's still a good cluster in Silicon Valley, but there's also a good cluster in Boston, and the seemingly huge list of European locations isn't quite so huge, there's just more cities with less people. Most interestingly, there's very few Russian participants, despite there being plenty of talented software developers. Finally, the largest Debian developer area is probably Tokyo.
Re:Makes no sense to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Makes no sense to me (Score:2, Interesting)
In the private sector growing companies from out side of the US will get them selves a Silicon Valley address. This an important strategy for continued growth especially for the lucrative US market. From a marketing point of view Americans prefer to buy from someone they see as American and for the rest of the world a Silicon Valley address is seen as pedigree.
I can't speak for any existing Open Source project, but t seems to me, if you have developers from around the globe a Silicon Valley address would be the best of an otherwise arbitrary choice of location if you want market acceptance.