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According to German news site heise online and other reports, the chief information officer of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner, said that the LiMux project would make no further progress for the time being.

Patent expert Greg Aharonian, believes such fears are unfounded. 'There are a fair number of lunatics and morons, especially in Europe, who loudly whine about the threats of software patents against open source. But the key question is: how about actual, I say actual, litigation being filed against open source efforts? In Europe, I can't think of much, if any. And much the same here in the US.'

Legal and accounting experts are currently analysing the exposure of the project, which has been seen as a flagship migration and a knockback for Microsoft, if a controversial new European Directive to legalise software patents in Europe is

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implemented.

Fears were raised last week when Jens Muehlhaus, a member of Germany's Green Party, called on Munich's major and a leading politician to lobby the federal government to analyse the risk of moving to open source software in the light of the impending Directive.

But Aharonian suggests, 'Software patents have had no noticeable affect on open source and SMEs in the United States, and we have ten times as many software patents as Europe, and much more hostile litigation practices. The only thing Mueller is being innovative with are his litigation fantasies.'

Although Europe does not have a co-ordinated policy on software patents, such patents are issued at a national level. Indeed, the German government might well be the first place you'd turn to assess the risk of open source in Europe. About half of all European patents are registered there and 70 per cent of patent litigation run through its courts.

Apparently a basic Linux installation infringes upon around 50 European software patents, but that is far short of the 283 (as yet unvalidated) software patents discovered in a recent audit of the kernel by the Open Source Risk Management group.

And with the rush of product announcements coming out of Linuxworld Expo and Conference this week in San Francisco, you could be forgiven that there are a fair number of US companies willing to take a risk with Linux, with or without software patents.