What's interesting to look at is the distribution of where open source software is produced. That, IMO, is a reasonable proxy for where hackers are doing interesting things, and it is very definitely not SV centric. Perhaps they would be founding companies if they were in SV, but maybe not. I'm glad that people like Linus and Guido van Rossum stuck to doing what the really know best, which is pure tech. There are definitely some opportunity costs for a hacker who chooses to go into business over sticking to pure tech.
I like open source as much as the next guy, but I don't know that I agree - is open source the cause of concentrations of 'interesting' things, or is it the other way around? Silicon valley wasn't built on open source....
Besides, plenty of hackers do interesting stuff outside outside the open source world (and that's not even considering hardware...).
I think open source has very little to do with being a 'cause' for concentration. What's interesting about it is it shows, to some degree, the natural distribution of high quality hackers throughout the world. And yes, of course people do interesting things outside of OS, I was just suggesting that it's a good proxy to see some areas where innovation is happening that don't have some of the other ingredients of SV.
