Open Terminal in Current Directory

I am going through my init.el and found this function

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun site/open-xterm ()
  "Start an Xterm process."
  (interactive)
  (let ((term (cond ((executable-find "gnome-terminal")
                     "gnome-terminal")
                    ((executable-find "xterm")
                     "xterm")
                    ((error "Couldn't find a terminal emulator")))))
    (start-process "*xterm*" nil term)))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Does anyone have a more portable solution, where I don't have to list
all possible kinds of terminal emulators?