Section 11.1. Brief Summary of an Already Long History


11.1. Brief Summary of an Already Long History

Before showing the current landscape of libre software in Europe, it seems necessary to provide some historical background. From issues like the European involvement and impetus in projects such as Linux (the kernel) or the KDE project, which influenced greatly the shape of the currently available libre software, to very specific use cases in European companies, which are mainly a consequence of the global importance of the phenomenon, there is a whole rainbow of milestones which will contribute to the understanding of the present situation.

The evolution of libre software in Europe during the early days was parallel (as it was in other parts of the world) to the penetration of the Internet (and before it, the Usenet). Therefore, it is not strange that areas which had an early and deep exposure to these Netssuch as the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdomalso had the first cases of involvement in global libre software activities. However, it is important to also consider some linguistic issues. For instance, those countries where the English language (which is clearly the lingua franca in the global libre software community) has more penetration (either as the mother tongue or the second language) commonly had an earlier involvement in libre software. With the passage of time, maybe since the mid-1990s, specific dynamics started to show strength in other regions, with more or less of a relationship to the global evolution. Most European countries (Germany, France, and Spain are clear examples) have grown their own communities and libre software fabric in partial isolation, to the point that many initiatives that are very well known in one country are almost unknown in the others and outside Europe, despite their valuable contributions. In many cases, the flux of information among Europeans of different areas is still carried through global (or, for that matter, American) events and initiatives. Just as a case example, we still find out about relevant news in other European countries through the American web news service, Slashdot, despite being reasonably well linked to the libre software communities in several European countries.

Considering this situation, the contributions of Europe to the history of libre software are extensive. We can consider, for example, events such as the birth of many applications and projects (consider Linux, the kernel, by Linus Torvalds, Finnish; Python, by Guido van Rossum, Dutch; MySQL, by Michael [Monty] Widenius, Swedish; PHP, by Rasmus Lerdorf, Danish; KDE, by Matthias Ettrich, German; and many more); or the foundation and development of some of the first companies with a business model based on developing or distributing libre software (such as MySQL AB, Trolltech, or SuSE); some of the first studies and initiatives denoting attention by public administrations to the libre software phenomenon (such as those by the European Commission); and some of the first research projects considering libre software as a matter of study (such as those performed by the FLOSS project).

Most of those contributions will be mentioned and presented in some detail within this chapter. Instead of following a timeline approach, we have preferred to group matters according to the different topics involved, each one in its own section: developers, community, companies, public administrations, legal initiatives, licenses, education, and research. Of course, this implies a certain degree of artificial delimiter, since many issues in fact belong to more than one of those sections. But we hope that what is lost with respect to that precision is gained in readability and comprehension of the situation as a whole.



Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution
ISBN: 0596008023
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 217

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