Viva La Difference
December 5th, 2007
“The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur”; depending upon your perspective the author of this quote is either incredibly clever, or incredibly naive, but either way I think he’d be very much in awe of the French Revolution that’s underway today. The government in France has woken up to the fact that to retain their position as a force majeure that they need to reinvent themselves and to that end they are funding entrepreneurs and innovative endeavors. Obviously open source provides the opportunity to innovate at a pace never before seen in the IT industry, and the sense of excitement in the French open source community is palpable.
I spent a few days in Paris last week and met with many of the young software and services companies that in the coming years will become a force to be reckoned with. These companies are afforded the support and encouragement from a wide cross-spectrum of industry verticals. They are increasing their strength by banding together to collaborate and solve more complex challenges. Ingres France is an exciting young startup with an incredibly strong, talented and motivated team, with a plan to be at the heart of open source projects in France. I’m going to do whatever I can to assist them and I’m very excited about attending the Solutions Linux Conference in the January and to meeting again with some of the folks I met last week. This time around I’m going to be discussing the features and services that Ingres provides that truly differentiate us from the other open source database players.
Viva La France!
