Most open source projects I've seen were from Europe or North America and very few (can't even remember any) from other parts like Asia.
Is it just because I can't read other languages, or has the GPL and open source in general not taken off outside of North America and Europe?
Does anyone have examples of open source projects coming from these areas? or if you know, what's the perception of open source among software developers there?
Ruby was originally developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan. Its original interpreter implementation and at least some of the newer re-implementations are available under the GPL.
I think that a lot of web open source projects are having people from all over the world work on them more and more, I don't think its all that accurate that they are just from North America or Europe as, once a project is started, it will attract people from wherever, it doesn't matter where the person or group was that started it initially...
However, I think you are right that a lot of open source projects come from the U.S. but this isn't because they are started by some bored hobbysit programmer, actually a lot come from MIT, the Massachussettes Institute of Technology and other organizations here, including corporations, the internet as an industry has long been grounded in the U.S. as it started here first and it has a mature support of organizations here who contribute a lot of funding to projects, some of which end up open source... surely other places will catch on with time, I think its just had longer here to take root.