Slowly but surely, open source software is making its way to countries that have previously seen very little FOSS adoption, and the good news is that for many of these countries, it's the best technology choice to make.

The open source community risks leaving Asian users and developers behind, thanks to cultural differences and western business's tendency to treat programmers there as code monkeys rather than software designers, a senior Novell staffer has warned.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and the Eclipse Foundation are hosting a summit to reflect the fast growth of the open source movement in Asia. OSSummit Asia will be held Nov. 26-30 at Le Meridian hotel in Hong Kong's Cyberport IT zone.

Firefox, the browser that dared to challenge the supremacy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, has just reached 400m downloads - and deservedly so. It now claims a market share of nearly 20% in the UK and 30% in Germany. Firefox, part of the admirable Mozilla Foundation, is based on open source, created and improved on by volunteers all over the world.

Asia is in the middle of a mass adoption wave of open source technology, and the floodgates of innovation will open following this wave in two to three years, according to open source vendors.

RMS: «...Their stated definition for the term “open source” is somewhat broader than free software, and thus includes my work. But describing the GNU GPL as an “open source license,” as Microsoft did, is more than half misleading. The GNU GPL embodies the firm philosophy of the free software movement; it doesn't come from the open source movement.

One of the main draws--and selling point--of open source technology is its much celebrated developer ecosystem. But, according to an industry expert, this community spirit seems to be lacking in Asia.

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left US developers in the proverbial dust.

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education.