ACM TechNews

Open Source: What You Should Learn From the French

IDG News Service (08/28/08) Kaneshige, Tom

About a decade ago, European countries took a strong lead in the open source movement, particularly France, and left U.S. developers far behind. France has used high-profile projects and policies to support the use of open source in all levels of technology in government and education. France is now continuing its support of open source through an economic commission, established by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that recommends using tax benefits to stimulate even more open source development. The success of open source in France could serve as an example to U.S. developers that everyone can prosper when working under a single, shared technology vision. In France, all computer students learn open source, while in the United States most universities use traditional tools. Consequently, open source talent is prevalent in France, and development is faster, while sustaining high-quality software products. France's most important open source benefit may be the ability to unite various open source projects to create a single, unified platform. Miguel Valdes, co-founder of the Bonita Project, which developed an open source workflow system, believes that French open source developers have a better understanding than U.S. developers about reusing code and integrating it with other systems.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/28/
35NF-open-source-france-lessons_1.html

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