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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
