

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle - spivey
http://fora.tv/2009/11/03/Start-Up_Nation_The_Story_of_Israels_Economic_Miracle

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johnyzee
Really. Considering that Israel is firehosed with money from state and private
sponsors, I have always wondered why one hears so little of successful
technology ventures coming out of there. Personally I have only ever heard of
ICQ (which was not exactly neither cutting edge nor particularly succesful).

~~~
cool-RR
I think that Israeli start-ups are less into front-end web things that get
famous, and more into developing technology that big companies buy and that
you never hear about. But I'm not sure, I hope someone else here knows the
answer.

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cool-RR
I wish someone would make a study about why there are so few Israelis in open-
source projects.

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ido
There are?

I seem to recall seeing Israeli names on news groups every once in a while
(off the top of my head - some of the top developers of plt scheme and php are
Israeli), at least more often than their proportion of the world's population
would suggest.

Remember that Israel has approximately 7 million people (~1/20 of Japan, ~1/40
of the US, ~1/170 of India).

How many Swiss or Bulgarians do you see in the open source world?

~~~
cool-RR
You are right that relatively to Israel's population, the number of open-
source Israelis may be normal.

But I'm not asking this relatively to population size. It's already clear that
Israelis have a disproportional number of technology workers/entrepreneurs.
I'm asking, why so many tech people but not too many open-source-oriented tech
people?

I'm active in Python-related communities, and I can recall only one or two
Israelis except me in there. Also, I was the only Israeli guy in the last
EuroPython, out of a few hundred participants.

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realil
don't believe that. it's history. Israel is becoming extremely religious
state, where most budgets go to the religious families which in 10 years will
be 50%. They make 10-12 kids, like 3rd world populations, don't do nothing
that deals with science and progress, use public transportation where WOMEN
ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SIT NEAR MAN and much more 200 B.C. ideas.

~~~
adelevie
The segregated buses of 200 B.C. were set up by the ROMANS.

