Saturday, September 27, 2008

FOSS; Europe gets it ...

Larry Augustin's Weblog: Commercial Open Source in Europe Verses the US is a nice side by side comparison of the perception of Free and Open Source Software in Europe and US.

Of the two, it seems like Europe's view of FOSS is both sincere, practical and can provide businesses sustainable long term ROI. The US view is mostly driven by cost and the Open nature doesn't play a significant role in the buying decision.

From the article's conclusions;
"I believe the European Open Source software community has moved beyond
that. The European community sees those benefits, but in addition
recognizes that the Open Source nature of the code is the driving
factor behind those benefits. As a result they have embraced Open
Source to a degree the US market has not;"