Little encouragement, no funding: why open source founders are leaving EU

I try to explain to my U.S. colleagues that the fundamental difference is in the approach to funding. In the States there is a ‘gambling’ approach to funding: I fund 100 initiatives 1 coin and I expect one if them will give me back 10000 coins in a number of years and all the others are a loss. In Italy - were I have had direct experience - the approach is more of a short term investement: I give you 1 coin and expect 1.05 in two years.

Unlike the $, printing € is not free. Reserve currency privileges.<p>And they are locating their business in Delaware. I wonder why. Wouldn&#x27;t have anything to do with taxes, surely.

Its the never-ending story of lack of capital on the European start up eco system. There was progress on that field but it takes so much time...

OSS is a mess in EU. In Germany, signing a FTE contract also entails implicitly that, if I produce something over the weekends, my employer has legal power to claim it as their IP. If I probably contribute something to some open-source project, my employer can also claim royalty of that too. While there are not much precedents of these happening, the legal rights remain. Also, non-compete is implicit too. Also, general brilliant people loved to hold onto their motes and not contribute back, a strange tendency I noticed on corps from senior engineer peers.<p>That being said, not everything is dark and there are plenty of open source work going in EU.