My neighbourhood is small, a farming and bedroom community near Winnipeg. Net Applications has stats!

The rapid fluctuations indicate a rather small sample size but there is definitely a trend towards increasing MacOS and GNU/Linux share of visitors. There are gaps in the data for GNU/Linux where NetApplications counted nothing even though I was here… Not only do the data jump around month to month, but there is a trend upwards that’s serious.

The trend is so strong I wonder what the source could be. Are there that many geeks around here? It could be. The number of wireless access points our notebooks can see has doubled in the past year. Are the neighbouring schools switching? I haven’t heard anything. Are the kids installing GNU/Linux on their PCs? That would be cool.

It appears the Czechs are serious about GNU/Linux:

Prague is hot.

The whole country is doing quite well:

That’s consistent with reports that the Czech government uses FLOSS extensively:

• Suse server provides documents to citizens
• The tiny municipality of Grygov used FLOSS for nearly everything from supplying the whole community with Internet access, information about schools and municipal services and office software.
• In 2003, the city of Ostrava-Jih switched everything to GNU/Linux and were doing well until 2009 when they switched to that other OS. The problem? City counsellors insisted on using proprietary software. The employees were liking FLOSS… Oops! Time to fire those counsellors.
• Czech Post replaced the OS on 4000 servers and 12000 client machines with GNU/Linux and was able to re-use its hardware for a huge savings and improved performance.“The APOST system performs much faster now, with nearly 100 percent uptime, enabling employees to provide better service to postal customers.”

Clearly, GNU/Linux works for them. It’s just silly that some commentators here cling to the idea that nothing can be done without that other OS. There is clear evidence to the contrary.

“the Court holds that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression. Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection.”

That’s what a European court ruled in a case similar to Oracle v Google.

“SAS Institute brought an action before the High Court in the UK, accusing WPL of having copied the SAS System manuals and components, thus infringing its copyright and the terms of the Learning Edition licence. In that context, the High Court has put questions to the Court of Justice regarding the scope of the legal protection conferred by EU law on computer programs and, in particular, whether that protection extends to programming functionality and language.”

Of course that is not binding on the court in Oracle v Google but the same principles of law apply. The API of Java is functional, as Google said. Unfortunately, the jury has been given other questions to consider so the judge may or may not have to make this ruling…

GROKLAW.

That other OS share of active sites is down to 12%. That says a lot about the cost, scalability and reliability of that other OS…

May 2012 Web Server Survey | Netcraft.

According to Canalys, tablets were 19% of PC shipments in Q1 and 40% in USA. That means M$’s share of newly-connected devices is way down. HP and Apple are practically tied for units shipped and Apple does not ship M$’s OS…

Wikimedia reports activity of the installed base as February = 76.22% and March = 75.79%, down 0.57% in one month. This means many have multiple devices but that could change. Many are content-consumers and smart-thingies are fine for that. The old-fashioned PC manufacturers are hoping “8″ will give them a boost but we didn’t see that with Phoney “7″ so I doubt we will see that for “8″. Consumers can avoid buying PCs with “8″ just as they are avoiding buying PCs with “7″. At some point the retailers will give more shelf-space to */Linux and there will be nowhere for M$ to go but down. There is no shortage of apps for consumers on smart- thingies.

see also Digitimes – HP regains top spot in client PC market, says Canalys