> I have no idea how much of an issue it might be - but I am under the > impression that a significant percentage of IT revenues comes from US > markets, and from US owned companies worldwide (that likely favor the > use of common solutions worldwide). If Linux based solutions cannot > be sold here without some levies/taxes/fees/etc. - then it would be > more than just 'noise'. Wouldn't it?
As far as I'm aware, the subsidiaries of US companies that operate abroad are bound by the laws of the land in which they operate - not US law. A long time ago I got irritated by the uplift IBM uses on its software in Europe - up to 44% for DB2, for instance. CICS was egregious - it cost 28% more in the UK than in the USA, and it was written here! So I suggested that a future solution - subject to security and bandwidth, both of which we now have - would be to site European data centres in Arizona. We now see telephone calls regularly routed to call centres in India. So it doesn't matter where a data centre is situated, and I think in many cases we just don't know. -- Phil Payne http://www.isham-research.com +44 7785 302 803
