If Jesús Villasante is representative of the European Union mindset, it's remarkable that a socialist country like France has rejected the EU constitution. Villasante is the head of software technologies at the EC's Information Society and Media Directorate General, and as this ZDNet article shows, he is livid that U.S. companies such as IBM, HP and Sun are profiting from open source software. (Tip of the hat to Good Morning Silicon Valley.)

"Companies are using the potential of communities as subcontractors -- the open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals," Villasante said at a recent conference. Yes, it's a terrible thing that somebody might actually make money from open source software. Much better that it develop pure, completely isolated from any compensation model.

Open source is in fact an obligatory good for society, Villasante seems to argue, rather than something that should be crassly commercialized. "Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction."

Working with the private sector apparently is the wrong direction. "IBM says to a customer, 'Do you want proprietary or open software?' Then [if they want open source] they say 'OK, you want IBM open source.' It is [always] IBM or Sun or HP open source."

Villasante proceeded to discuss the lack of a software industry in Europe, but made it clear he opposes the effort in the EU to ensure software patents, making one wonder why any software company would want to be based in Europe. Of course, Villasante doesn't want software companies, he wants open source developers.

From the ZDNet story:

Villasante used his keynote speech earlier in the day to express concerns about the European software industry.

"What I think is that Europe doesn't have a software industry today -- the only one we have today is in America. In the future we may have China or India. We should decide if we will have a European software industry in the future," he said.

Villasante argued that open source is vital to the development of the European software industry, but that its progress has been inhibited by pressure from intellectual-property lobbyists and the traditional software industry, and by the fragmentation of the open source community.

"Open source is a complete mess -- many people do lots of different things. There's total confusion today," Villasante said.

It seems Villasante will only be happy when the open source movement is unified under the Church of Open Source. He's unhappy with the open source market, which ranges from GPL to commercially backed code. No surprise, I guess, that the chaos and vibrancy of a market would be viewed by Villasante as "a complete mess."

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:58 PM | Software

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