Lindows Allowed to Use Company Name in Holland

Supp0rtLinux writes "It appears that Lindows/Linspire has finally made some headway against Microsoft in the Netherlands. According this article, the Judge ruled that Linspire's continued, but minimal use of 'Lindows' for legal and trademark purposes doesn't violate Microsoft's trademark. With the US court date on this issue coming up soon, one can only wonder if Microsoft will have effectively cut off its nose to spite its face. And following immediately on the heels of today's Netherlands news, the latest Michael's Minutes from Linspire pegs all the blame for virus problems on Microsoft and basically says that Linux (well, Lindows anyway) is the cure."

Comments

difference between Europe and US

[myom]

There are some differences between USA and Europe that will give some varying and odd court decisions. Big business has a strong hold of the US courts. The only way they can lose is if anyone even stronger is the counterpart, or if a state or country invests heavily in the suit to gain even larger monetary gains from winning in the court. In Europe, this is rarely the case, but on the other hand many European legislators and courts are weak, have little resources and time. In Sweden, for example, the Social Democarat party tends to legislate and vote in the EU parlament often following the US court results and organisation bullying (MPAA, RIAA) Some countries invest time and resources to actually learn what the cases are about, and court cases involving Microsoft etc, can in fact be lost by the larger companies, liek in this case.

Re:Linux is magically more secure

[JaF893]

What you have said isn't really true. One of the major strengths of Linux is the lack of a monoculture. Most distributions come with 3 or 4 web browsers, e-mail programs, and media players etc. It would take a very good hacker to find a generic security hole in every program.

The only other option would be to try and exploit a security hole in the Kernel. Given that not everybody runs the same Kernel this would also prove difficult.

Re:Linux is magically more secure

[lazy_arabica]

If Joe Average ran GNU/linux.. we'd see just as many worms, just as many viruses, just as many spam boxes..

If you only knew how many times I heard that argument... Go learn what a security model is, and how design-time decisions can make an OS much more secure than another one.

Re:Big fish in a small pond

[I confirm I'm not a]

Do you guys really think for one second that if Linux were the dominant operating system, and thus had the attention of hackers worldwide, that it would remain as secure as it seems to be now?
I'll bet it would turn up at least as full of holes as Windows is now. Microsoft OSes are under asault in a trial by fire the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

Really, this hoary old chestnut has been done-to-death. No. I don' think for one second that if Linux yada yada yada. For numerous reasons outlined already in this thread. Because Linux has a competent security model. Because Windows is homogenous - many/most users use identical apps (think Outlook Express, IE), on Linux there's too much choice for a worm, etc, to successfully propogate using one target. Because Linux doesn't default to running as root, and provides an easy mechanism for dropping-into root when you need to (disclaimer: maybe Windows has this - I've never found it, and I've been running Windows a lot longer than I've been running Linux).

Please, people, rather than using arguments like "I'll bet...", try just googling for facts. Or give up trolling.