Initiative “Open Source Region Stuttgart”

I’m at GUADEC right now. During the speaker reception last night and this mornings opening notes, it’s obvious to me that the Stuttgart region really, really wants to be the epicenter of open source. They are pouring in resources to help court open source business and the community. I would say they are doing an excellent job.

I learned quite a bit about the region over the past few days. IBM and HP both have their German headquarters here in the region. Red Hat has a test center. KDE was founded at a University in this region. They are attracting groups like GNOME, KDE, Apache and Wine to do their conferences here. They are really going the extra mile for the open source community.

They have recently launched an open source center which I can only assume is likened to an inncubator in hearing how it was described. The center is geared towards open source startups and currently has 13 firms hosted there. They provide services for these companies to help get them off of the ground. The current hosted firms are doing things like embedded, multimedia and mobile applications.

I love what the Stuttgart region is doing. It’s much like what we’re seeing in Oregon and there are some great opportunities for collaboration across our two spaces. Things just keep getting better and better.