I couldn't resist from commenting on this, comments inline as usual. //
On Thursday 01 February 2007 11:19:03 Roger wrote: > Ian bell wrote: > >>The Europeans are clearly one of the leaders in the Open Source > >>movement, though I believe that is also indicative of the more > >>collaborative nature of businesses and business partnerships in > >>Europe. > > > > I tend to agree. From what I have seen of US corporate culture, it is > > very different from that in Europe. > > I would say that much more commercial development is done in the USA > than Europe. The European software industry is, by and large, limited to > 'local' software such as accounts, web page content and whatever. I > think this is a management issue most of all. Whilst technical staff > seem to have no problem in pan european cooperation, small and middle > sized companies tend to be very fuzzy at a commercial level when it > comes to spanning boundries. Interestingly, US companies are generally > far better at operating in a pan European manner than the European > companies themselves. > There are a number of major differences to bear in mind when comparing European companies with the American counterparts within the field of electronics. First and maybe most important are the traditional "engine" of the development in electronics - the DoD market and all the Beltway companies. The amount of monetary resources siphoning through the electronic world in the US has been rather substantial since Pres Kennedy decided to "go to the moon". Combine this with the cold war technology push and you have a nice "central engine" in the field of electronics and micro engineering. SME's started to benefit from sublettings of orders as well as the increased influx of second hand measuring gear like electronic instruments in volumes that where unheard of here in Europe. Combine this with a difference in taxation regulations. In Europe, a normal company cannot write off investments in electronic tools and instruments in the same speed as projects "fly by". It's also a mental block against "self contained" projects where all the needed staff and equipment are more or less made redundant after the project is finished. Now then, the marketplace as such and the players within that market: The US market enjoys ( enjoyed? ) a reasonably homogen English speaking customer and employee base. This makes it easier to market a product as all material is written in one language and you have one set of H&S regulations and other technical regulations when designing/selling your products. The European market are by tradition more fragmented even if it's a larger market than the US market! Just count the population! Another advantage to the US is the mixed population in the territory. Here in Europe we have the Mediterranean area with the two major groups, Latin and Slavic populations and the North European groups with the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon population. There is a definitive problem to cooperate as you describe, especially between the Celttic/Anglo-Saxon company philosophy and the Latin company structure with more state owned infrastructure and larger companies. > In my neck of the woods (which is near KiCAD's 'home') I know of **no** > software houses which are creating commercial software for the general > market. This means there are many capable programmers who spend thier > days doing simple and unrewarding jobs such as report generation, and > hence in thier spare time they like to get thier teeth into real projects. > Look at the prices in European and cry.. As the companies are unable to write off the software bought for a specific project against the gains from that project, few Euro companies afforded to buy the right tools. After many years now, the Euro engineers seems to be fostered towards a different purchasing approach when it comes to buying software. The bean counters and the lawyers are not strong enough in Europe and the "Time to market" demand is not taken into account when acquiring tools. > Promising startups in Europe, both OS and commercial frequently fail to > spread out over Europe until they get 'Americanised'. Examples: > Mainland Euro startups need to be "Anglified" before they take off - correct... > Star Office was a German Office suite, and despite being developed just > a stones throw from the industrial areas of northen Italy, it was > virtually unknown here. The Star Office developers took the product to > the US where Sun turned it into Open Office, and it has become well > known in Italy. > > Linus Torvalds moved to the USA in order to further his career in Linux > development. Linus had no chance to create any volume of anything in Finland, again - look at the population numbers and besides, Linus is a member of the Swedish speaking minority in Finland so the other option would had been a relocation to Sweden - still, only 9mill people there... > > Likewise the german SuSE Linux distribution became much more widely > known in Europe after Novell's takeover. Njae, this is not entirely correct! SuSE as other Euro Linix distros was sold as a "complete" distro with many CD's. The US market allowed for flat rate telephone/internet connections very early. In Euroland, the Telcos charged per minute and you could subsequently not download the files you needed if you choosed a single CD distro based on Internet repositories. SuSE made their money on these distros distrinbuted in nice CD/DVD boxes with manuals. By being acquired by Novell, SuSE cold afford supporting the openSuSE project instead of surviving only on Box sales and Service agreements. And you ask why SuSE took off after Novell's acquisition? This is partly the answer. > > By contrast, look at companies that stay Europen. Target and EasyPC are > extremely valid products when compared with Eagle. Yet Eagle is far > better known on a global scale and they have a distributor in Italy, > which the European companies do not have. In the Italian electronics > industry everybody knows of Orcad, Eagle, Protel, PadsPC etc. yet the > two leading commercial commercial European competitors, not mention > KiCAD, are virtually unknown. > > > If Europeans, as persons, are good at collaborating, European companies > are not. There are many attempts to change this at an EU level, for > example there are incentive programs for projects which involve > comapnies in more than 1 EU member state. And yet the culture does not > change. Correct, You have to large cultural differences between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon companies! Remember that England and France have spent most of their time between the 1400 to 1800 by fighting each other! You just cannot expect to nations with imperial ambitions to shred all hostilities and differences by the whim of politicians!? Also, France made a decision many years ago to more or less ban the State owned French companies to use English, even in collaboration with the UK... > Take the 3 EDA packages mentioned previously, Target, EasyPC and > KiCAD. Target valiously attempt to maintain thier own libraries > updatable via Internet, and yet it is clearly a strain to keep pace. > EasyPC have taken the approach of offering a commercial extended library > package as an "extra" in order to recuperate the costs. If they had any > common sense they would get thier heads together and maintain a common > library package in order to better compete with the American majors such > as Cadence. In this ng there has been much talk about the library > limitations and quality of the KiCAD libraries. I have doubts that an > ad-hoc user contributed library could ever reach the quality of well > maintained commercial libraries. Users posting symbols they create to a > central site is one thing, but carefully maintaining lists of thousands > of components is a boring and time consuming task that only an idiot > would want to do in thier free time. So, EasyPC and Target can go one > bit further, not only do they colaborate on a central library, but they > incorporate KiCAD into the game, offering commercialy maintaned library > packages for use with all the products. It is the type of collaboration > that European companies must learn if they are to grow. > > But why stop at software. We are all in the electronics industry, right, > and here there is little difference. My top supplier is Digikey. They > ship from a central wharehouse in USA and I can usually get nearly > everything I need from stock and delivered in 2 or 3 days. Surely a > European supplier should be able to go at least one day better? > > RS have an Italian base, including a wharehose in Milan. But the > wharehouse in Milan does not stock everthing, so more often than not the > goods are shipped in part from Milan and in another shipment from Corby. > Interestingly the UK package often arrives sooner than the Milan > package, any which way the goods are shipped as two seperate courier > deliveries. I imagine the situation is similar with the other local > bases in Europe. But RS have nothing like the range of electronics items > that Digikey have, and the prices are sky high. Would it be stupid to > suggest that they redesign on the basis of single European hub? It would > save them money (reduce prices) reduce courier costs, and allow them to > stock a larger inventory. Doooh! You cannot compare the Italian postal system with any other nation's post, except Bangladesh or Pakistan! Any comparisons are an insult to the compared nations! I remember being told that sending anything important in Italy by the Italian postal service was tantamount to a "sacking offence". We ALWAYS had to use DHL, FEDEX or UPS. > > Farnell by contrast ship from the UK, but not all thier compnents are > local, they have a partnership with Newark components in the US. But if > your order includes US items then you get extended delivery times and > major shipping costs.....you are better off just ordering all from a US > major such as Digikey! Farnell have messed up their sales in Europe by having different behaviour in different countries. In the UK, I buy from Farnell without problems as a private person or domestic customer. Farnell Sweden only trades with companies as the only send invoices... I must remind you that it isn't that many years ago when you could not pay for petrol on the German gas stations - with plastic money ( credit cards )! Plastic money is still treated as suspect in some nations and you are not allowed to buy online as it's only a real signature that counts, not passwords and electronic signatures! Again, a result from different legal systems! > > Conrad are a big german distributor who have teamed up with Target so > that target libraries even have Conrad part number and prices in thier > attributes field. Great if you want to limit your design to Conrad > components, but thier selection is quite limited and again sometimes > pricey. > > But by now you have got the picture. Unless these companies start > thinking on a true European scale with centralised operations and > partnerships between themselves for stocking ranges of electronic > components then they will find themselves struggling to compete with US > distributors despite the (theoretical) extra day and costs in delivery > times. > Forget the Euro thing, it only works regionally. It's just impossible to forge the French with the English. It wont happen! When it comes down to the nitty gritty, Spain, Italy and France are still the Latin protectionist nations they always been. > And finally some self criticism. I am English but based in NW Italy. > Here the electronics industry is very much in the doldrums, and I have > to scratch around for work. I invariably scratch around in Italy, but > have no excuse for this. I have worked with companies as far away as > Bologna, Veneto and Rome. There is a thiving electronics industry in > Munich, which is nearer to me than Rome. There is a splintering of > electronics activity in the area to the east of Lyons (Grenoble is 2 > hours drive from here). Not to mention switzerland (Geneva 3 hours) > which whilst not being in the Eurozone does have trade agreements. Many > people cite language as a barrier, well althougth I speak fluent > Italian, if I need to prepare a formal offer or specification I > invariably get it re-written by an Italian as formal Italian is very > sophisticated. By contrast inter-european business, at least in western > europe, is invariably done in English, where I am at an advantage. There > is not even a beurocracy excuse. Dealing with other EU coutries I do not > need any customs paperwork or anything, just a normal delivery note and > invoice as I would need in Italy. Yet I don't do it. I cannot imagine a > small company in Boston having a block about working for a comapny in, > say, Austin or Seattle, but the geographical differences are far > greater. On a geographical scale it is like the Boston based company > looking for work in the Maine and ignoring e.g. New York or Chicago. > > So there we have it. We Europeans are victims of our own introvert and > introspective narrow minded outlook, and it seems only American > companies can unite us. Perhaps it is because American companies are > full of people from different European roots. Let's face it, if you go > into Cadence I bet you can find plenty of people from Italian, German, > Scotish, English, Spanish ......etc etc origins. You will never find > such a mix in a European company! Again, it's the mix that does it as I explained earlier in the text. Anyway, stop whinging and live with it... :) //Dan -- Dan Andersson, M0DFI [EMAIL PROTECTED]
