Why No Famous Open Source Projects From Britain/Ireland?

[Robert]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

Perl was founded, largely developed, and led by Larry Wall, who I
think is American(mainly in California?).

You got:
Linux -> Linus Torvalds -> formerly Finland, now California
Python -> Guido van Rossum -> formerly the Netherlands, now California

InnoDB -> a group in Finland, bought by Oracle, (coming to California
soon?)
MySQL -> Sweden
Qt -> Norway
Mandriva -> France (Paris , I believe)
OCaml -> somewhere in France

SUSE -> Germany (still there I believe, although now owned by Novell)
Knoppix -> Klaus Knopper -> Germany

Europe does seem to be good at exporting open source programmers. Oh
hey, come on you europeans, you gotta have a sense of humor! You got
the best weather in the world, lovely place. Would go back there if I
had the money.

 

[gf]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

You're missing the forest for the trees... The UK and Ireland have
been heavily involved in the OSS movement, but in a support role.
They're designing and developing awesome ales, stouts and porters that
keep those OSS ideas flowing.

 

[Marc Espie]

OCaml -> somewhere in France

Paris area, actually. OCaml is originally the work of Xavier Leroy and
Damien Doligez, which began while they were students at ENS, based on former
caml, which was neither efficient nor a success.

Both later moved to INRIA Rocquencourt, near Paris (located near Versailles)
to continue that project.

There has been some notable development in japan as well, by Jacques
Garrigues, a former student from the same school.

 

[Ian Wilson]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

An interesting point.

Linux -> Linus Torvalds -> formerly Finland, now California

Linux is more than Linus Torvalds. Alan Cox is a significant contributer
and lives in the UK. I guess there may be many others less well known.
If you only look at founders you might get a distorted view of the
numbers of people contributing from various geographic areas.

Wasn't VNC developed in the UK?

 

[Sisyphus]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

From Ireland we have the miracl library ( http://www.shamus.ie/ ) - a
rather good cryptographic library that has missed out on the attention that
it deserves - perhaps because it's not Unix-centric. (There's still no perl
interface to it.)

Is ImageMagick a product of the UK ? I thought it was ... but it's hard to
tell, now.

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Octo]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

Exim, developed mainly by Phillip Hazel at Cambridge University, but
still open source.

 

[Randal L. Schwartz]

Robert> Linux -> Linus Torvalds -> formerly Finland, now California

s/California/Oregon/, as of two years ago.

 

[Alex]

Europe does seem to be good at exporting open source programmers. Oh
hey, come on you europeans, you gotta have a sense of humor! You got
the best weather in the world, lovely place. Would go back there if I
had the money.

Quite off topic, but anyway... In what sense do Europeans have the best
weather in the world? Sure, we have a wide range of weather from the
freezing winters of Scandinavia to the scorching summers of the
Mediterranean, but doesn't eg. North America offer quite a wide range as
well?

 

[Peter J. Holzer]

Robert ([email protected]) wrote on MMMMCMLXIX September MCMXCIII in
<URL:-- Hey.
-- How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
-- were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
-- Ireland? I find that odd.


Well, there's that web thingy you hear a lot about lately that was
started by a fellow from Oxford.

But at the time he was in Geneva, so that adds Switzerland to the map.

hp

 

[Justin C]

But at the time he was in Geneva, so that adds Switzerland to the map.

I missed the origin of this thread, but I claim Alan Cox for the UK.

Though I can't think of (or don't know of) any projects originating here
(Jeez, how much of a geek do you think I am?), I know that AC makes up
for almost anything the rest of the world can lay claim too.

I hereby advocate AC's birthday to be an Open Source holiday. May $deity
bless all who sale in her.

 

[Rui Maciel]

Hey.
How come there are no famous and widely-used open source products that
were founded and (more or less) developed from the United Kingdom or
Ireland? I find that odd.

The open source development model is largely based on the free exchange of
information through the internet. As a result, there is absolutely no need
for any open source project to be attached to a single country. As an
example, the development of the Linux kernel itself was started in Finland
but contributions arrived from every corner of the globe and now Linus
Thorvald himself lives and works in the US of A.

But to give a more precise answer to your question, wxWidgets (formerly
known as wxWindows) is a open source project which was started out at the
University of Edinburgh.


Rui Maciel

 

[Jim Ford]

The open source development model is largely based on the free exchange of
information through the internet. As a result, there is absolutely no need
for any open source project to be attached to a single country. As an
example, the development of the Linux kernel itself was started in Finland
but contributions arrived from every corner of the globe and now Linus
Thorvald himself lives and works in the US of A.

But to give a more precise answer to your question, wxWidgets (formerly
known as wxWindows) is a open source project which was started out at the
University of Edinburgh.


Rui Maciel

 

[Jim Ford]

Erm, how about Alan Cox:

'Alan Cox is one of the most influential IT innovators in the world. A
graduate of the University of Wales...'

http://www.itwales.com/999721.htm

Jim Ford