Russia Mandates Free Software For Public Schools 271
Glyn Moody writes "After running some successful pilots, the Russian government has decided to make open source the standard for all schools. If a school doesn't want to use the free software supplied by the government, it has to buy commercial licenses using its own funds. What's the betting Microsoft starts slashing its prices in Russia?"
aren't we talking about russia? (Score:2, Insightful)
i think it would be more of hassle trying get a linux distro, than a free available-everywhere pirate of a windows os
Re:Wise They Are (Score:2, Insightful)
A university degree from Russia now and has always equated with a Masters in the US.
Is that so?
Re:Wise They Are (Score:5, Insightful)
breaking from their national heritage in being hard-working
They created an empire with more surface area than any empire since Ghengis Khan, created the periodic table, defeated Napolean and Hitler, sent the first man into space, and challenged the US for global supremacy for fifty years. I think hard work _is_ their national heritage. The lazy Russian stereotype may have been accurate in the dying days of the Soviet Union, but it is by no means the norm for Russia.
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Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Going back to Soviet Union? By slashing a monopoly and directing the money towards their own developers and encouraging competition as opposed to paying a foreign corporation which is already known to sue people in Russia?
Help me here...
Russian translation? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm confused, can Glyn Moody read Russian, or is the article based on the Google translation?
From this, no one is being forced to use anything, they are given free software, and individual schools must foot the bill of commercial software. I'm sure this will help spur free software adoption, but isn't the real story about the Govt not buying school software anymore? A story like this in the states would imply the schools are now rejigging their IT budgets, not necessarily adopting free software wholesale. A story about govt funding to schools being cut probably wouldn't be taken in such positive light either.
Just my two cents.
[Via Google Translate: By the end of 2009, all school computers will be installed package of free software (PSPO). This is how transfers Prime-TASS, today announced Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Shchyogolev at the plenary session Information Society and the modern technologies of information in the international exhibition InfoCom-2008.]
[Via Google Translate: The Minister also noted that by 2010 it is expected that the number of computers in schools will reach a million. According to Schegoleva, after three years of school will be able to make a choice: pay royalties to use software products, buying them at their own expense, or go to the domestic free software.]
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Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wise They Are (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly and there are more companies then just Microsoft. Most of them are actually willing to support their application and fix bugs for you. Also a lot of the Non-Free software the company can afford to pay for patent rights and license other software to actually make it work correctly. There have been times in Open Source just because it was Open Source and wasn't willing to pay some money they had to take features out. Because of the Patent or License. You can complain about the problems with Licenses and Patents but they are here and will probably stay for a while longer... In the mean time if you not interestest in the Politics/Religion of Open Source you will just shill out the cash and buy software that does what you need it to do.
Re:Ponosov's Case (Score:5, Insightful)
Good story. An innocent headmaster buys PCs that are preinstalled, but did not realize the PC seller has used illegal copies. The headmaster gets in trouble with the law for piracy.
Eventually the headmaster gets cleared, but he immediately organizes to push for Free software.... the result being that now Russian Schools no longer want Microsoft products. Only free products.
Karma's a _____, ain't it Microsoft?
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
What the story SHOULD have been... (Score:2, Insightful)
""After running some successful pilots..."
THIS is the big one. Not whether a contract was signed or not.
What Linux needs are success stories showing that it is viable as a large-scale enterprise operating system. No commercial organisation wants to be first into a new, unknown environment. Why can't we see the results of these pilots, and have them widely publicised?
I beg to differ (Score:2, Insightful)
"But sooner or later an accountant in Redmond is going to step up and say that they can't keep doing it."
This is not in line wioth reality, as MS has been essentially "giving windows away" (in the form of unpoliced piracy) for years, and the consensus is that it has actually helped them rather than hurting them.
What makes you think this will be any different?
Re:Wise They Are (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they work very hard and have a lot of smart people, but they seem to have some major gullibility issues when it comes to politics.
Cultural bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from stereotyping russians, you guys are showing a lot of cultural bias, that you probably don't realise. Stop calling people lazy, and go read The Importance of Living. Or just spend time living in a hunter-gatherer tribe for a while. You might find yourselves returning to your lives and calling the people around you workaholics... or just plain insane.
"To truly understand another culture, you must first understand your own."
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wise They Are (Score:1, Insightful)
That's true of any large group of people.
Re:Wise They Are (Score:3, Insightful)
More like a different experience than the west.
When Russia has been great and proud, it has been under
totalitarian rule (both under czars and portions of the
soviet era), and to many Putin seems to be restoring it.
Experience with democracy has been fleeting and disappointing,
There is no centuries old tradition of civil liberties and
people's power, only varying standards of living and international
influence, so they still look to a string leader like all
countries used to up until a couple of centuries ago.
Add to that americas soaring debt and fascist china being
the fastest growing economy anyone has ever seen, and it's
easy to get the masses behind a "powerful russia" campaign.
Of course the reasons for this experience are far more complex
and not actually particularly tied to the specific systems
used in the 'great and powerful' periods, and I certainly do
believe a mature democracy would serve them a lot better
in the long run. But try to explain that to the man and woman
on the street who has experienced some trials and broken promises
since the breakdown of communism that equal nothing America
has seen since the civil war.
And as for hard work: the soviet system didn't exactly
nurture private enterprise, true. But acedemic tradition in in
Russia has been top notch and extremely disciplined not just
before but during the entire soviet era. The common worker
too simply _had_ to work hard, even if there wasn't so much
worldy reward to be gained from working _efficiently_.
But if you already know how to work hard, that can be fixed,
especially with the generation change they've since received.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
You Americans have a habit of screaming "Communism" at anything vaguely related towards state aid/state control without really knowing what Communism is.
Re:More proof (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cultural bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from stereotyping russians, you guys are showing a lot of cultural bias, that you probably don't realise. Stop calling people lazy, and go read The Importance of Living.
I have spent a significant amount of time in Ukraine (rough comparison - Ukraine is to Russia as Canada is to the USA) and I have also known Russians in various places. I would not describe them as lazy. However, they do have a sense of entitlement that you cannot believe unless you have been there. Couple this with a seriously decreased sense of morality (thank you USSR!) and you do have a culture that sees nothing wrong at all with stealing, lying, killing, etc. to make money. I'm not saying all Russians are like this, but more are than we should really be comfortable with. Generally they are well educated and often well motivated, but they are not motivated in a way that's really beneficial to them or us in the long term. Ultimately they probably won't be able to solve the problems that they'll face in the near future (declining population, increasing rates of AIDS, poor health care, rampant alcoholism, etc.) because they are so self-centered. But they aren't lazy.
Re:More proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
Quite legitimate (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft is staffed by people that do, among other things, throw chairs at people, describe open source as "cancer", and want to "$#%^&*@ kill Google".
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
"Qualis rex, talis grex."
The symptoms of systematic dysfunction were well known to the Romans. Leadership is a very legitimate issue.
Re:More proof (Score:4, Insightful)
However, even these "cancerous" open source licenses are considerably better for the end user than virtually all proprietary licenses.
Compare:
You can use this software any way you want, and distribute it however you like so long as you distribute the source code in the same way you received it.
if you To:
You can use this software in a limited number of ways on a limited number of systems, you cannot redistribute it at all and don't get to look at the source code.
If you think licenses like the GPL are restrictive, then you must really hate proprietary software even more.
Re:More proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Many open source licenses do behave rather similarly to a cancer (though admittedly, the characterization contains grossly unfair pejorative connotations). I'd think virus would be a more appropriate characterization, (with two notable exceptions, cancers aren't transmissible in any significant way),
That would be a tolerable analogy for licences generally, as exactly the same applies to every proprietary licence. I'd be happier if people comparing, say, the GPL to a "virus" were also comparing, say, every other licence that has ever been written.
You want to alter or redistribute Microsoft's software? Well, you can't unless you agree to some licence terms (assuming that Microsoft offers any). So your release is infected by someone else's licensing terms, so the "virus" has been spread. Only in this case it's likely to be a nasty virus.
Re:More proof (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a major problem with calling it a cancer, and that is in context. You can't call open source a cancer and proprietary software healthy cells. This is due to proprietary software's inability to grow and intermingle. Maybe if you call proprietary software a tumor, GPL could be just a more aggressive cancer that turns everything into wonderful goodness, while BSD is a healthy cell.
While the virus idea works better, the whole premise is just silly, pejorative, and flawed. Highlighting Balmer's stupidity in saying it works just fine in showing Microsoft has a screwball for a CEO.
Re:More proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets be quite clear, proprietary code is the cancer, it eats up all code and ideas, patents and copyrights them preventing any one else from using them at all. It strives to achieve a monopoly and kill off all opposition regardless of the damage done. Not only that it stifles competition in coding quality, resulting in coding infections running rampant across networks, a weakening of the fitness for purpose of the code. See, a digital cancer.
Now open source represent actual healthy competition and evolution of the most secure, reliable and usable code. It allows a healthy diverse technological digital ecosystem to grow and flourish. It promotes 'open' and 'equal' access to all code resources, healthy and vital companies thrive in that environment. Of course they only thing that suffers is those cancerous old proprietary companies who find they are no longer able to implement monopolistic practices to starve out the vital elements of a healthy industry. Just like any tumorous growth, once effective treatment begins, in the case Free Open Source Software, first growth stops and, then the influence of the proprietary cancer shrinks and it either reverts to become a healthy part of the industry or it dies off and disappears all together.
See Free Open Source Software - equates to healthy technological development and closed source proprietary software is without doubt the cancer.