evanprodromou

Bringing people to Montreal in the summer is a pretty easy recruitment strategy.

Why not? Don't you think local government has a stake in building the startup ecosystem in the city?

I think there's some serious opportunity for some jurisdiction to pwn Open Source startups with significant tax incentives for Open Source development.

What about tax incentives on salaries for developers who release code under an OSI license? Incentives for "soft" Open Source work like community management? Infrastructure like an accelerator space, business development aid?

Building a market helps, too. Vancouver has made it city policy to put Open Source software on an equal footing with proprietary software.

http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-o...

Other governments have chosen to use OSS exclusively.

If there's not yet an established Open Source startup hub (and I think there's not), there's an opportunity for cities around the world to claim that mantle. And that's going to take the contributions of all stakeholders.

I think it's interesting that people here on HN are focusing on the pros and cons of Montreal as a city rather than the article's main point: that startup ecosystems outside of SF and (possibly) NY need to specialize to thrive. Maybe it's Open Source, maybe it's... I dunno... defense contracts, but in order to get that critical network effect, you have to be the best in something.

I can't name an Open Source startup in Waterloo. Is there one?

I don't agree. I think that the bilingualism is a strength. After all, the strongest Open Source markets in the world today are international. If Montreal can represent a bridge between North America and Europe, there's an opportunity for synergy there.

So, wouldn't it be awesome if this were the main question people were deciding right now?

Not me. When trying to get mass usage of an Open Source Web tool, I'd go with PHP every time. It's what's available on commodity Web hosting, and there's a big community of part-time Web programmers who know and use PHP. Compare: MediaWiki, Drupal, WordPress. Python is more glamourous and fun, but it's harder to build momentum for a massive FLOSS project written in Python.

Hi. I'm the lead developer for Laconica.

You're incorrect on one important point: you can license the content of your own server however you want. We use the CC Attribution license by default, since it so closely matches how most people share microblogging data (e.g., you can copy and reuse it as long as you credit the author).

Jaiku will soon support OpenMicroBlogging -- we're working with the JaikuEngine team to make that happen.

Also, why do you say that the support of XMPP in Laconica is "partial"? And what don't you like about the UI? Do you use IE6 or something? It doesn't look very good in IE6.

Good luck on your microblogging service and let me know if you have any more questions.

Cool! Glad to see this hit HN

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