The Valley Really, Really Wants Open Source Location to
Matter
“I’m not sure what it is, but Silicon Valley so desperately
wants to be the center of everything, that sometimes it has to
resort to myths to keep itself there. Where? Exactly. That’s the
question. It’s a question I didn’t think could be all that
controversial when I said it at OSBC London, but now that it has
been slashdotted, I guess it’s officially a Big Deal. For 3.5
seconds.“Dana had a good response to my post about Europe remaining the
center of open source. Now a few others have jumped on the
bandwagon, and their critiques aren’t quite as salient…”
The Open Source Location Question Redux: The Valley
Ecosystem
“Matt’s post The Valley really, really wants open source
location to matter seemed to touch a nerve (it also triggered a
bizarre amount of comment spam, sorry for delays in posting.) That
post was originally based on the notion he was pushing at OSBC in
regards to European OSS companies moving to the Valley. After a
fair amount of thought, I decided that I disagree. I think that
with the exception of higher rents and wages there are slim-to-zero
negatives to being in the valley. And the truth of the matter is
that you have to have resources pretty much everywhere on the
planet anyway. I do agree that a number of great projects are
coming out of Europe (Xen, Mule, Spring) but I think that European
investors haven’t grasped the business of open source yet. But
maybe that’s the whole point…”