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May 30, 2005
Europe is missing an opportunity
This mornings keynote by Jesus Villasante (his full title is: Software technologies Head of Unit, Information Society and Media Directorate General, European Commission) from the EU struck a nerve that's been tingling ever since I was over at the OSBC conference earlier this year. In his keynote Mr. Villasante stressed the fact that Europe is moving far too slowly in the Open Source area when compared to the US, Asia or Latin America.
Copied from his slides (on the conference CD):
USA Industry is defining and implementing OSS strategy
ASIA & LA private and public sectors program on OSS
And in his opinion the problems in Europe are:
Why arent we progressing further?
Strong pressure from IPR lobbies and traditional industry.
Weak political sensitivity, visibility and commitment on OSS.
Fragmentation of the OSS community (researchers, policy makers, users).
While it seems to me that these points are certainly true and indeed, Europe is in danger of missing far more than "just" an opportunity, Mr. Villasante was vague on actually how he thinks the EU commission (for example) hopes to change that and "activate Europe" (a title from his slides).
Posted by Matthew at May 30, 2005 08:24 PM