The Next Silicon Valley?

Portland's Linux geeks are digging in for a battle against Seattle's Microsoft.

1 minute read

February 5, 2004, 1:00 PM PST

By David Gest


"An unlikely army of hacker hippies, geek visionaries, idealistic teachers and corporate giants is making Portland ground zero of a digital revolution." The GNU/Linux computer operating system is starting to worry Microsoft to the north, and could mean big things for Portland. "Portland's open-source rep is already attracting jobs. PolyServe, a company selling software that runs on Linux, moved its 60-person headquarters from California to Beaverton in early 2003 because key programmers it worked with were already here...'Portland has an extremely high talent level,' says [one business owner]. 'The cost of doing business is low compared to Silicon Valley or Seattle. So you have the advantage of a great pool to hire from, and in the West Coast time zone, you're close to the other tech meccas.'"

Thanks to David Gest

Wednesday, January 28, 2004 in Willamette Week

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

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