WorldWatch Week in Review
June 20th, 2003 by Willy Smith in
This week in WorldWatch, we've seen more government entities making the decision to embrace Linux and Free Software, mainly in Europe but also in South Africa. This is a growing trend, for the most part based on purely economic considerations. However, there also is increasing awareness that national security issues should be taken into consideration, most recently in France and the Basque Region in Spain.
Also, the SCO v. IBM suit escalated, with SCO filing an amended petition tripling the amount of the suit and accusing IBM of (among other things) illegally distributing multiprocessor technology to "Axis of Evil" countries.
Microsoft obviously is getting more worried about this threat to its business; in Brazil this week it even made a false press release. This was right after the Brazilian government had made the official announcement of its changeover to Linux and Free Software.
We also featured a paper from Harvard University arguing that trusted computing, in fact, may enable software and music piracy.
It was another significant week, as more people became aware of their options and Linux and Free Software continue to spread around the world.
Willy Smith is Editor in Chief of WorldWatch and lives in Costa Rica.
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Re: WorldWatch Week in Review
On June 23rd, 2003 Anonymous says:
By country the United States is the biggest contributor to the Open Source concept. Regardless of perceptions, the US is quite healthy on the liberty front (assuming OS and liberty have something to do with each other->going against the percived grain).
There's less coverage in the popular media because there's less money going to the major outlets from OS (right now anyways).
Re: WorldWatch Week in Review
On June 23rd, 2003 Anonymous says:
And as we ALL know... here in the U$, money is king, even though we're not supposed to have a monarchy.
Software Patents in Europe
On June 20th, 2003 Anonymous says:
See for details: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2003/debian-events-eu-200306/msg00259.html
Re: WorldWatch Week in Review
On June 20th, 2003 Anonymous says:
Glad you folks are doing this. Great info. It is starting to look like the United States will be the last country to take Linux seriously. Thanks.
--Marc