Experience has shown a weakening U.S. economy would be good for open source, as a shortage of cash is usually a major catalyst for innovation, particularly around open-source applications, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, said at the annual Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

The presentation below summarizes the findings of the 2008 Future of Open Source survey led by North Bridge Venture Partners in partnership with Acquia, Ingres, SugarCRM, Sun and Ubuntu. The results were presented at the 2008 Infoworld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco as part of a panel discussion led by Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners.

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The modern IT industry in Africa driven by the lack of foreign customers. Big international IT companies are trying to open African markets for their mainly proprietary software and/or their own business agendas. The governments of the African countries have neither the time nor the money to focus on SMEs in the IT field. Similarly, as the regional and national governments in the European countries, they have to concentrate on existing IT cores, such as the state owned telephone companies, subsidiaries of international companies and companies, focused on the e-governmental needs of the states itself. (mehr …)

Forbes wirtes today about the rising salaries of Indian programmers under the title „The Coming Death of Indian Outsourcing“:

However, the reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3. Attrition is scary.

And the resume about this fact for the Forbes editors?

Jobs that are low value-added and easily automatable should and will disappear over the next decade.

The software as a service (SaaS) megatrend in technology also plays against India, they said. But mainly, in the terms of payment – the times plays for Africa.