Taking as a pretext the Euro 2008 soccer (or football, as we say in Europe!) championship which saw Spain win the title, Matt Aslett from The 451 Group studied in detail open source adoption in the 16 countries that had qualified.
Matt looked at several criteria (projects, national policies and major suppliers) and looked at each group of the Euro 2008 to detail the strengths and weaknesses of each of these countries, as far as open source is concerned. He explains for example how Croatia has adopted in 2006 a charter aiming to grow the use of open source technologies in its government agencies, whereas Portugal has had such a principle since 2002. Romania seems to be lagging behind, despite strong public interest, and Germany and France have the most diverse projects and public initiatives.

The two countries that qualified for Matt’s open source final are both very active markets for Talend.
It is worth noting that some countries which did not qualify still deserve some attention - for example the UK, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Denmark…

This study gives us a detailed vision of the adoption of open source in Europe. What comes out of this is that open source solutions are more widely spread than some people like to acknowledge, thanks in part to the help of governments and the involvement of IT staff, not only in government agencies but also in private companies.
Could open source become the driver of the renaissance of a great software industry in Europe - something that everyone is dreaming of, for example every year when the Truffle 100 Europe is published? It might very well be.

Bertrand