Tech investor Larry Augustin does a good job of parsing the differences between building an open-source business in Europe and building one in the United States, suggesting that Europe is the better place to be to build an open-source business.
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol and an example of an open source-savvy European living in the United States, counters that while the European model of open-source adoption is good for the soul, the crass capitalism of American open source is better for business.
Personally, as an American working for a United Kingdom-based open-source company, I think they're both right. However, when it comes to cash, I much prefer the United States, with its emphasis on paid adoption of open source, to Europe, with its emphasis on (mostly) unpaid adoption of open source.
As I've noted in the past, however, this does not mean that companies should neglect Europe in promoting their open-source products. At Alfresco, up to 50 percent of our sales come from Europe in some quarters (though not most, as I don't like to lose or tie :-).
If, for no other reason than to hedge economic risk, it's important to build a strong European base of commercial open-source adoption, something that Hyperic, JasperSoft, and other open-source vendors have been demonstrating lately.
By the way, both Larry and Fabrizio missed one of the biggest differences between open-source adoption in Europe and the United States: legal wrangling. In the States, intellectual-property indemnification is the biggest issue that a software company (proprietary or open-source) will negotiate with prospects. In Europe? They mostly want to make sure that the code will remain open, but generally speaking, contract negotiations are much, much easier than in the States.
It's the one thing that makes paid adoption of open source a bit of a drag in the States, at least for me, since I negotiate Alfresco's contracts stateside.
Roberto Galoppini has a great write-up on Hyperic, a leading open-source systems management company, and its efforts to crack the European market. After seeing 50 percent of its downloads trend toward Europe, Hyperic has begun hiring technical and sales resources to manage its growth there.
It's no surprise to see Hyperic doing so well. Hyperic has long been one of the most prudent open-source companies, managing (and driving) its growth well. Lately it has been delivering things like CloudStatus to help companies monitor their cloud-based computing resources. (As a testament to how good it is, Hyperic was the first to discover Amazon's recent S3 outage.)
As Hyperic continues to execute against its business model, I expect that it will increasingly reap from the fertile ground of Europe. Sometimes companies get exactly what they deserve.
(Credit:
Matt Asay)
Next week I'm headed to Argentina to work and to ski. (Mark Shuttleworth will be joining me so I'll post pictures once I have them.) In preparation, yesterday morning (6:30 AM, to be precise) I headed over to the Sport Loft to have my Tecnica Dragon boots custom fitted.
Sport Loft does an amazing job with boots. Having gone there, I'll never go anywhere else. It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it. As Jeremy, who spent two hours fitting my boots, and I talked, he said something that resonated with me on a number of different levels, not the least of which being software:
In the US, everything is mass produced. We understand volume businesses. But in Europe, they really focus on a customized product.
He was talking about how most people never get their boots custom-fitted in the US, but that it's quite common in Europe. As open-source software adoption in Europe compared to the US shows, ski boots and software may have a lot in common.
Open source adoption in the US is quite strong, but it is Europe that leads the way, as Forrester recently noted. Europe recognized the economic benefits of open source well before the US did, and Europeans (or those of recent European origin) are responsible for many of the industry's most important open-source projects.
... Read moreMozilla's open-source Firefox browser is more and more popular in Europe, hitting nearly 29 percent market share in March. It's also growing in popularity in New Zealand and Australia, where it reached 31.2 percent, according to web analytics company Xiti.
In North America, however, March saw Firefox drop 1 percent. No one seems to know why.
I suspect it's just a momentary blip, however, as Firefox has seen continued growth in market share over the past few years. There was a time that its growth might have been driven by ideology. Not any more.
No, Firefox increases in popularity now for one very simple reason: It's a better browser. The fact that it can increase at Internet Explorer's expense, despite IE coming pre-installed on 99 percent of computers sold, says something about Microsoft's increasingly tenuous hold on the desktop computer market.
Hyperic has announced a series of customer wins and community traction in Europe. It's good news for Hyperic, an open source systems management company, but not at all surprising for those of us whose companies started on that side of the Pond. Europe has long been an open-source proponent.
It's perhaps a sign of things to come. In most software companies Europe takes a minority share of a vendor's sales. But open source is shaking this up. I keep getting calls from friends at other open-source companies who are just starting to dip their toes into Europe, only to find out that the water is worth diving into right from the start.
Hyperic has "deployments in more than 80 countries, and 37% of community activity coming directly from Europe." Watch it grow, Hyperic team. Why? Because European governments are driving IT spending toward open source (much more so than here in the US). Open source is Europe's opportunity to exert significant influence over IT again.
Matthew Aslett of The 451 Group quotes from Viviane Reding, European commissioner for information and society, on Europe's need to capitalize on its open-source assets:
As online software, or software as a service, replaces traditional packaged software, Europe has advantages that give it a "window of opportunity to develop a leadership position in software." These include a large home base of demand to build on, high levels of qualified talent, and the fact that 70% of open source developers worldwide are of European origin. However, "the window is small and it will soon be closed if we don't act," since 90% of the economic benefits of open source are being won by US companies.
Despite this, as Matthew goes on to say, Europe is a bit conflicted on open source. Its public policy statements tend to be affirmative of open source, but its purchasing policies tend to be neutral. I think it's just a matter of time before the rhetoric gives way to purchasing decisions.
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