Matt Asay’s recent comment that “open source is not a Silicon Valley phenomenon” has sparked a debate about the importance of location, and got me thinking about where open source software comes from. Meanwhile I stumbled upon the mylocalguru tool and before I knew it had created a Web 2.0 style mash up showing the location of some of the leading open source vendors.

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The result, available here, plots the location of the vendors on a map of the world and shows a reasonable spread across Europe, Asia Pac and North America.

You can also drill down on the various geographical areas for a more detailed view. Europe is here, Asia Pac here, and North America here.

The latter map shows how important the East coast of America has been in terms of the growth of open source in the US, but does not allow for the density of vendors in Silicon Valley. As can be seen by focusing closer on California, (enterprise) open source is now very much a Silicon Valley phenomenon.

What this map does not take into account, of course, is where the individual developers are based – it is a representation of enterprise open source providers, as opposed to open source developers – and it would be interesting to see how different that map would look (if it were possible to create one).

I’ll admit that the map itself doesn’t really tell us much – but it’s a work in progress and hey, it’s a Web 2.0 mash up, it’s meant to be vague, self-fulfilling and of questionable real-world value. If you are interested in how it was done, the background data is here.

As to the question of whether it matters where an open source provider is based, I’m reminded of this quote from the excellent Australian film, The Castle, about a family living in a house at the end of a runway:

“As the real estate agent said… location location location, and we’re right next door to the airport. It will be very convenient if we have to fly one day.”

http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2006/07/where_in_the_wo.html