FRANKFURT (Reuters) - More than a year after the German city of Munich declared its landmark intention to abandon Microsoft Windows in favor of upstart rival Linux (news - web sites), its councillors are finally ready to go ahead with the plan.



On Wednesday, the council is expected to take a calculated risk and vote through the move, despite concerns about possible software patent infringements in the face of coming European Union (news - web sites) legislation that caused months of delay.

Linux, open code software that is freely shared and modified, was once the preserve of a tecchie counter-culture but in recent years has emerged as a real, head-on competitor to proprietary systems such as Microsoft Windows.

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Old news.

A little perspective, please. Reuters reported this story on Sept 28 about a meeting to take place on Sept 29, and the post here at LQ was dated Oct 1. While that may not be instantaneous, I'd disagree that it's "old news". Many people just don't have time to monitor news outlets continually, and for those who may have been too busy to notice this story in the last couple of days, it might be an interesting piece of news about Linux. -- J.W.

"Old news."

Articles have to be approved before they're posted here. So commenting on the appropriateness of an item here may not be too clever.

We've been hearing about this for awhile. And since it's on most news Web sites a lot, it can be old news since some sites update faster than others.

Look, forget about the age of the news,petty. What is important here is the fact that whoever originally wrote the story put the spin on the story that the Munich council is going to be taking a risk. This appears to be purely malicious scaremongering tactics as the article in the quotation anyway does not mention the considerable 'risk' which the city has been saddled with by their adhesion to the 'default' OS. The fact that many of the stories which get mass circulation are written by journalists who do not maintain an objective veiw is definitely not in the favour of the GNU/Linux OS. The problem with this is that once a journalist starts to become more intune with the reality of the situation they are perceived as a techie themselves and so stop appealing to the audience which they originally had audience with. Ultimately people gage others intelligence on the degree of thinking which a person displays to be the same as their own opinions. Long story short, where are the linux spin doctors who can dumb it down enough to appeal to the masses and get good coverage.