"this" side of the atlantic VS "the other" side of the atlantic.

[Chymera]

disregarding the fact that linus torwalds was finnish and that both apple and microsoft are us-based, in the present time, considering how widespread linux is and how people think about it, which of the 2 continents do you consider a more fertile soil for "growing" linux?


my personal opinion is that public acceptance of linux is greater in the us, whilst governments are a lot linux- friendlier over here.... but i cant back any of that up with any arguments... except that a while ago some german bundeslands had the initiative to give up windows and use suse on all of the government computers.... even though it was later abandoned :(

[ynnhoj]

i'm inclined to think that linux will [continue to?] do better in europe. but it's difficult to gauge something like this.

[Steveway]

If you people would follow the technews, then you would propably new that many European countrys and companys are switching to Linux.
Acceptance of Linux is much higher in Europe than in the US, I even think that the European leaders hate Microsoft, they force them to bring out Versions of Windows without IE and without the Media Player, Microsoft had to pay several millions because they didn't open some specs etc etc ...

[juxtaposed]

Europe is probably much more accepting of Linux.

[Chymera]

pretty unanimous... i too think that european governments would try the best they can to emancipate themselves from a foreign monopole .... whilst the us government may want to sustain companies like ms.... but that has nothing to do with public opinion...

I mean we wouldnt want linux to become "embraced" just because certain companies push it down the throat of their employees... or would we?

[BoyOfDestiny]

Since a lot of the work is done all over the globe... What holds the U.S. back are things like the DMCA and the broken patent system. Makes me sad, especially some of the naughty attempts to have that in the EU (lobbyists from guess where?)

Throw those out no more complaints of mp3's not playing and encrypted DVDs not playing. The software required to do so is GPL'd... but risky to distribute state side.

[cybrid]

Since I'm Spanish I can tell that (at least here) there's still a lot of windows users. At the enterprise level there seems to be a switch, but of course it's because of the €€€ those companies do not spend in expensive private software solutions, not because of the freedom.

[Chymera]

Since a lot of the work is done all over the globe... What holds the U.S. back are things like the DMCA and the broken patent system. Makes me sad, especially some of the naughty attempts to have that in the EU (lobbyists from guess where?)

Throw those out no more complaints of mp3's not playing and encrypted DVDs not playing. The software required to do so is GPL'd... but risky to distribute state side.
whats the "broken patent" system?
And why would that be risky?

[BoyOfDestiny]

whats the "broken patent" system?
And why would that be risky?

Specifically software patents. It is risky since many obvious things that cover pretty much anything in software might be used to sue.

This article sums it up well

http://perens.com/Articles/PatentFarming.html

There are many good resources, and I likely can't do them justice with my post here

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20050402193202442#patentlyabsurd

Free Software and patents, wikipedia has a good entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_software


Hopefully that covers it.

Luckily, (the groklaw page lists them) a couple of cases resulted in these "obvious" patents being weakened. However, those with big pockets can still sue and bully. Or a company that produces nothing go after several
companies just to get some cash.

Here is a recent one (if you google I assure you will find MANY)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070829-ip-firm-accuses-google-9-other-companies-of-patent-infringement.html

[Quillz]

I think Linux will do fine by anyone who chooses to adopt it seriously. It doesn't matter what continent this occurs on.

[Chymera]

Specifically software patents. It is risky since many obvious things that cover pretty much anything in software might be used to sue.

This article sums it up well

http://perens.com/Articles/PatentFarming.html

There are many good resources, and I likely can't do them justice with my post here

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20050402193202442#patentlyabsurd

Free Software and patents, wikipedia has a good entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_software


Hopefully that covers it.

Luckily, (the groklaw page lists them) a couple of cases resulted in these "obvious" patents being weakened. However, those with big pockets can still sue and bully. Or a company that produces nothing go after several
companies just to get some cash.

Here is a recent one (if you google I assure you will find MANY)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070829-ip-firm-accuses-google-9-other-companies-of-patent-infringement.html

och.... i really dont want anything like that anywhere near me.... sounds like someone wanted to pave the way for creating a software monopole of some sort.... and got pretty damn close to doing it :)