Open Source Blog

As can be seen here (via Glyn Moody, by the way) Steven used Google Trends to search for Linux and found that the city where the largest percentage of people are searching for the operating system is Munich in Germany.

Next comes Hamburg, Warsaw, Berlin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Milan, Rome, Sao Paulo, and Paris, indicating that perhaps Matt Asay was right to say that "open source is not a Silicon Valley phenomenon". (For more on this see here, here, and here.)

Indeed, searching for the same term by region shows that the US is lagging behind Europe when it comes to interest in Linux, with the top ten reading Russia, India, Czech Republic, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Italy, Germany, and Poland.

But what happens when you search for "open source" rather than Linux? The US is still nowhere to be seen in terms of regions, with the top ten reading South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, and Italy

Set it to cities and you have a different story all together, however. San Francisco tops the list, followed by Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Sydney, Milan, Atlanta, Munich, Rome, and London.

What does all this mean? I have no idea.