Egyptian Government To Adopt Free Software On Larger Scale 57
ezabi writes "After announcing a 43 million USD license agreement with Microsoft, the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a protest before the cabinet. Later, representatives from the community had a meeting with the minister of communications and information technology. Such a meeting led to the ministry issuing a press release (in Arabic) stating its commitment to gradually move to open source (Google Translate to English) as a strategic option for future projects. It's worth mentioning that all governmental websites used in the elections and constitution referendum were all based on open source solutions."
Yeah... Ok... that's fine and all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Free software for people who are not free... Yeah. That's fucking hilarious.
How about adopting some free speech, equal rights? Maybe some basic human rights? Or how about just a little decency...
Thats some fine trolling there egypt.
Not the "freedom" thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing the Muslim Brotherhood wants is "Freedom".
The one thing that brought the Egyptian government to the free software is that Egypt is facing imminent bankruptcy.
Egyptian pounds have lost 50% of its value since the uprising, and it's poised to lose even more, thanks to the clueless Muslim Brotherhood on running anything effectively.
Right now, as we speak, Egyptians are busy changing their Egyptian pounds into foreign currencies because they know that the Egyptian pounds gonna be devalued even more !!
America really doesn't like it, when... (Score:0, Insightful)
... it's not THEIR evil dictator enslaving the population.
Nobody of your opinion makers gives a single shit about the dictator and enslavement part. All that counts is if the US (= US companies) can make a profit off of it.
And since you have only the illusion of free will and "unbiased" reality, that's your opinion too.
If the evil dictators were the American Brotherhood (Haliburton, Monsanto, Blackwater, Eli Lilly, etc), they would tell you it's a "beautiful democracy" and you would believe that shit, no questions asked.
Yes we do have democracy in Egypt (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the calls for free and open software fascinating. For years the news about deals involving Millions of dollars from Mircosoft and other softwere giants with the Egyptian government were common in Egypt, where 40% of the population live on less than $2/day. But that is no surprise, I guess MS knows its way well around corrupted governments.
Now when the Muslim Brothers respond in their first months of governing to calls of turning to FOSS, they get flamed That's just beyond me.
Just because our democracy brought in power someone you dislike, does not mean it is not a democracy. Most of you know nothing about the Muslim Brothers more than their name -which is enough for some to form an opinion about them- or the biased western media coverage about them. Given, or democracy is not perfect, but we are only in its kindergarten, and may be you should ask yourselves first, how a lot of your tax-money found their way to Mubarak's bank accounts for the last 30 years.
Re:Yes we do have democracy in Egypt (Score:5, Insightful)
The Muslim Brotherhood are getting attacked because they are taking precisely the step necessary to ensure Egypt has one and only one free and fair election. Yes this move to free software is a good thing and indicates they aren't prepared to be tied to Western corporate control, but at the same time the new constitution and the resulting permanent sectarian divide it will set up is not good for Egypt. People in the West are criticising it because we have made similar mistakes in our past, and paid for them with dictatorships.