It's not often a tech article makes my flesh crawl ...

... but this one managed to make it happen:

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education.

Riiight ...

Today, France is arguably the most fertile ground for open source development in the world. The well-known and respected OW2 Consortium for open source middleware has its roots there. Giant corporations, such as France Télécom, have embraced open source whole-heartedly.

Okaaaayyyy ...

The fruits of this labor reveal a lesson that U.S. developers would do well to take note: Everyone prospers when working together under a single, shared technology vision.

Ewww ... doesn't that just make your skin creep? "Everyone prospers when working together under a single, shared technology vision" ...

Just imagine: everyone prospers when working together under a single, shared technology vision, everyone prospers when working together under a single, shared economic vision, everyone prospers when working under a single, shared political vision ... Straight out of the little red book, that is.

"The French social model was appropriate for innovators and entrepreneurs to start working on alternative solutions [to proprietary software], fostering the creation of new projects in which a good mix of experienced professionals and skilled computer science students work together."

Wow! What a revolutionary idea: experienced professional and skilled students working together! Say boss, how about this brilliant idea? What do you mean, "am I taking the piss"? Oh, we've been doing this since the 60s have we? Sorry.

Freed from the shackles of narrow point products, secretive software components and forced workarounds, French open source developers are encouraged to experiment creatively and liberally.

The irony that a French company, Alcatel-Lucent, has just shut down the American innovation hotbed of Bell Labs is, apparently completely lost on Mr Kaneshige, who, by the sounds of it, is a big Obamamaniac. If that's not an insult to Obamamaniacs.