re in Europe, people's instincts are 'zero sum game': Personally disagree here - but i don't know where you have those facts from so i can't really properly di

re in Europe, people's instincts are 'zero sum game': Personally disagree here - but i don't know where you have those facts from so i can't really properly dispute. re Opensource: A ton of open source actually comes from Europe. In the valley a few large corporates finance developers working on open source (eg facebook, etc) but i wouldn't really consider this charity. It's a hiring and branding pipeline re Failure => Prison for those who are interested: The situation this often happens/happened is called `negligence` When either a) social security of employees is not paid (as in you "risk" their lives) or b) you handle sums that are far beyond your companies size (eg concert promoters have to prepay ticket sales to companies that are N times their own profits) The laws changed here quite a bit but it's still a possibility. Please note that in the same country you can go to personal bankruptcy - meaning agreeing on a total sum of max personal damages (not that this is i wish on anyone but it's a (extreme) downside protection) Re failure overall: It comes down to game dynamics. Europe doesnt favor "fail fast" because it the upside is smaller compared to the US (fragmented market => slower acceleration). So with the same downside risk but lower upside risk averse strategies are dominated historically. This (thx to Internet => global access) changes.