Why open source is good for German software businesses

I’m on the expert advisory committee of one of the German parties for the current “Internet Enquette”, a commission tasked by the German parliament with suggesting future directions for Germany’s stance toward the Internet and everything digital. At a meeting this evening, a lobbyist confided in me: “Open source is bad for German software vendors!” I gasped. He couldn’t be further from the truth. If this was mechanical engineering or electrical engineering, he’d be right. ME? EE? Germany is top. Software? Not so. Beyond a few selected highlights, Germany is an also-ran internationally. When it comes to software product businesses, German companies would benefit significantly if the dice would be rolled again. Anything that upsets the current order can only be an improvement over the current state of affairs. Open source does just that. More power to open source business models!

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2012-01-16

4. Society-at-large, 4.2 Open Source (Society)

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Links 16/1/2012: Red Hat RHEV 3.0, LibreOffice 3.4.5 | Techrights

2012-01-17

[…] Why Open Source is Good for German Software Businesses At a meeting this evening, a lobbyist confided in me: “Open source is bad for German software vendors!” I gasped. He couldn’t be further from the truth. If this was mechanical engineering or electrical engineering, he’d be right. ME? EE? Germany is top. Software? Not so. […]

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Stefane Fermigier

2012-01-17

“Open source is bad for German software vendors!” should probably be written: “Open source is bad for *proprietary* German software vendors!”. It would become truer, but not entirely, since so many proprietary software vendors are now thriving with products developed with OSS components.
—
Stefane Fermigier, tech entrepreneur
http://fermigier.com/ – http://twitter.com/sfermigier – http://www.linkedin.com/in/sfermigier
“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin
“There’s no such thing as can’t. You always have a choice.” – Ken Gor

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Carlo Daffara

2012-01-17

“Open source is bad for German software vendors!” – what a limited mind behind such a comment. Companies using OSS are doing better both in efficiency and economic fundamentals that companies that use no OSS at all, and code quality and features are both better than the proprietary benchmark.
The idea that OSS could help the EU software industry was a pet peeve of me-it was one of the messages of the EU working group on libre software, with the results presented in 1999. I think that not much has changed in terms of attitude in the last 13 years.

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