To be clear, I hardly think Europeans in general are any more naturally inclined to prefer open source software than we Americans. Still, the fact remains that most of the world’s leading proprietary software solutions are the products of U.S.-based companies, such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE). Meanwhile, many of the major success stories of the open source world have European or internationalist roots: Think, for example, of Linux founder Linus Torvalds, a native of Finland, or Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, which now has a presence throughout the world but was founded by a the South African Mark Shuttleworth (who now, incidentally, resides on the semi-autonomous Isle of Man) and maintains its flagship offices in London.