Battleangel

Good times … score one for the free world. Shouldn’t have flown so close to the sun now should you.

The unpopularity of the United States has IT users in foreign countries happy to use open-source software, Red Hat President/CEO Jim Whitehurst said at the InfoWorld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

This way, they do not have to pay “intellectual property taxes” to American companies, he said. Outside the United States, open source is seen from a public policy perspective as a fundamental good, Whitehurst said.

Whitehurst said he has met with government officials in countries like Russia and China. Moving to a model not shackled by U.S. IP laws is extraordinary, he said.