Cultural Bent Hangs Over Oracle’s Battle for Sun - NYTimes.com

An interesting twist

Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the trans-Atlantic “megawar” over open-source software was not surprising.

“It makes sense that the Europeans come to the defense of open-source companies because the big proprietary companies are nearly all American,” he said. (The exception is SAP, the large German maker of business management software.)

European governments have long viewed open-source software as a potential tool of economic development and independence.

Cultural Bent Hangs Over Oracle’s Battle for Sun - NYTimes.com