This brings me to the fourth reason why European software is well placed to gain from the on-line services revolution: not only are key developments of open source, such as Linux, of European origin, fully 70 % of open source developers worldwide are Europeans!

These advantages are ones that give Europe its window of opportunity to develop a leadership position in software. But this window is small and it will soon be closed if we don’t act. I can illustrate this already. Even if 70% of open source developers are European, 90% of the economic benefits are being won by US companies. My view is: If we have the brains, we should also get the gains!

The problem is those kind of numbers is that they seems to be calculated in function of software vendors, which represents only 15% of the whole software industry. The other large part of the industry is pure services. And this does not seems to be taken in account. Does Mrs Commissioner Reding have the wrong numbers? Or she does not know the european software industry?