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?"
In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft is no more!!!!
Dammit, I'm moving.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
In corporate america, microsoft controls goverment.
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...
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some of the money will surely get to Alt Linux company. As for the rest -- I'd rather give it a try.
On a side note -- how many houses does this McCayne guy have?
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He's not sure. He'll have a staffer get back to you.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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
Re:More proof (Score:5, Funny)
OK, how about the fact that he dances about the stage doing monkey impersonations and shouting "Developers developers developers developers developers"?
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:4, Interesting)
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
You're not from around here, are you?
Incomplete reform? I think you meant "continuing current extreme anticompetitive behavior", and omitted "expected future extreme anticompetetive behavior." The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Or, as a famed technology leader once said:
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée, former CEO, BeOS
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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
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What? They're not taking control of a market, the education department is simply just no longer buying software for itself. It's a cost cutting measure, not nationalisation.
They're not stopping anyone else from buying software, and I imagine private schools will continue to use microsoft software.
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:4, Funny)
Compared to who? Estonia?
Don't get me wrong, the U.S. is clearly a mixed economy (a term for some reason out of favour). But it seems to be a lot more right leaning than the rest of the first world.
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
Ponosov's Case (Score:5, Informative)
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?
I love fill-in-the-blank puzzles! (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!!!
Karma's a NOUN!
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I love Mad Libs! My turn, my turn!
Karma's a HIGHLY FLAMMABLE MATERIAL.
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Hmm. Last I checked, Karma's a microphone company [karmaaudio.com]. It's also a Korg keyboard technology [karma-lab.com]. And finally, Karma's a beach [karmakonsept.com] (or at least a beach residence).
But seriously, Microsoft is getting what it deserves in this regard. That said, I have a feeling that this is, at least in part, a power play to drive down the cost of MS products in Russia. Just a gut feeling.
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MS never appeared, and never intended to press charges. They even said they believed the headmaster didn't intentially violate their copyright. How's that karma biting them?
If anything, it's Russia that prosecuted the wrong guy that should be to blame.
Re:Ponosov's Case (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this is a rather stupid idea, and yes, cases like this are very rare.
Re:aren't we talking about russia? (Score:5, Funny)
I know. It's so difficult to find a linux distribution these days. Ever since linux distros had to go underground I have to search the far dark corners of the internet to find a working download. If I want a copy locally, I have to go to the seedy part of town and down some dark alleyway whispering to the dealer who will get me my linux fix. Oh! If only linux were freely available from universities, computer geeks, and the internet!
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I have an old AMD K5 laptop, currently running Windows 98. Will Linux run on that? Which dark alley should I explore to locate it?
Re:aren't we talking about russia? (Score:4, Funny)
Are you taking ample precautions to avoid the grue?
Yes, Linux is more expensive then Top100 pro (Score:4, Informative)
Re:aren't we talking about russia? (Score:4, Funny)
If only linux were freely available from universities, computer geeks, and the internet!
When I wanted to install RedHat 4.something, I went to see if they had it in my university's library. Joy! They did! Unfortunately, the librarian refused to let me check it out because I "might install it on my own computer, which would be illegal." When I finally demonstrated that it would be OK, they still refused to let me leave the library with it, although I was welcome to bring a stack of floppies to copy the CD onto (as this was before CD burners became common).
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That ranks right up there with librarians that wouldn't demagnetize the anti-theft strip in your library books if they had a CD in the back cover because it might erase it (would it have even damaged floppies?).
I always had to remember to drop those books off at the drive through so that I wouldn't set off the alarms walking into the building.
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As Russian government wanted to go to the WTO badly, they have taken vast steps towards eliminating computer piracy. So a pirate version of Windows is still relatively easy to get, but so are Linux distros. The people's inertia will still hold windows share high though. It is a great move to offer free software in schools to overcome this inertia.
Are you kidding? (Score:2)
Seriously? On these Pro-Torrent threads, you have everyone and their dog claiming. "Oh I just torrent Linux distro's and yada yada yada"
You would think the internets would be flooded with Linux distro's.
Is it "free" or is it "open source"? (Score:5, Informative)
The confusion between these two types of software is not trivial.
According to TFA, it is being mandated that "free" software be used, and open source isn't even mentioned (in the translated article, I don't speak russian, sorry).
"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."
"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."
Nothing in there about "open source" submitter, so which is it?
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That was my thought as well (Score:2, Interesting)
I got basically the same idea that you did from reading the article, but then I asked myself, if it's "free" software they're after, what's to stop MS from just giving Windows to them for free on some kind of "educational deal".
Seems like exactly the kind of thing MS would do.
Re:That was my thought as well (Score:5, Interesting)
... if it's "free" software they're after, what's to stop MS from just giving Windows to them for free on some kind of "educational deal".
Ah, but you and others are getting an entirely wrong idea due to a simple (and probably intentional) mistranslation. The Russian government's order and the original article were not written in English, they were in Russian. As someone else point out in another message, the Russian text describes the software as "svobodniy", not "bezplatniy". Both of these words translate to English as "free", but their meanings are totally different, and neither can be naturally expressed in English with a single word. The morpheme "svobod-" means free as in liberty or freedom. The root "bezplat-" is two morphemes, "bez-" meaning without, and "plat-" meaning cost or price.
They aren't ordering schools to use software that they don't have to pay for. They're ordering the schools to use software that's unencumbered by legal restrictions and, for example, can be taken apart and studied by students that are interesting in software or by school employees looking for backdoors and other security holes. It so happens that much "svobodniy" software is available at no cost and without legal restrictions, but that wasn't the adjectivee that was used, and wasn't the intent of the government's order.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous claim that the Russian language has no word for freedom, the translators in this case missed the fact that English has no word for "svobodniy". Rather, English has a word "free" that means both "svobodniy" and "bezplatniy", two unrelated concepts that English speakers typically confuse. One can, of course, express these concepts in English, using short multi-word phrases. But in this case, the translators chose not to do this, and instead went with the one-word translation that is misinterpreted by most English readers.
This is, of course, an old trick of propagandists. If you're familiar with the technique, you're probably amused to see it in use, and to see so many people falling for it so publicly.
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Both of these words translate to English as "free", but their meanings are totally different, and neither can be naturally expressed in English with a single word. The morpheme "svobod-" means free as in liberty or freedom. The root "bezplat-" is two morphemes, "bez-" meaning without, and "plat-" meaning cost or price.
Let me translate to slashdotese for you, since you didn't do such a good job.
svobod: free as in libre.
bezplat: free as in beer.
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:Is it "free" or is it "open source"? (Score:5, Informative)
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Wouldn't that be "free as in shoes" then?
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Free as in beer would have been "bezplatnovo" - literally "payless".
I'll remember that next time I need new shoes [payless.com].
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Not really. "Svobodnyj" has two meaning in Russian - free as in speech, and loose. Open is "otkrytyj". :)
(damn Slashdot imperialistic engine which doesn't support Cyrillic
The minister clearly said about free software, not open source or cost-reducing. So the summary is a bit misleading on that point.
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It is free as in speech, according to the article. Open source isn't mentioned.
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Wise They Are (Score:5, Interesting)
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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, Interesting)
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I don't doubt you, but could you please provide an illustrative example?
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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Those are not all the same people (Score:2)
I think the founding fathers of the US would scoff at the idea that Americans are the just the same as those who fought off the British, let alone comparing Russians from before Communism to todays.
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.
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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
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: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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Software costs money to make, it basically after a certain amount of time (depending on it's complexity) free software that mimics your software will show up
you mean Linux is going to mimic Vista? That really will mean Linux is not ready for the desktop!
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Really? We pay for our database software, quite a lot of people would argue there are free alternatives, might not be just as good, but they are free!
Well you can keep your free alternatives until they are as good.
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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
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Thats why Linux is kicking Microsofts ass right now amirite?
What we need is an ad campaign in which Seinfeld meets Torvalds. That should do it.
Obigatory (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, the gov't pwns Microsoft;)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Imagine Putin tea-bagging Gates.
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actually, in Soviet Russia, the military pwns the NSA.
(from an article in yesterdays /. [computerworld.com.au] about RedHat CEO: "Earlier in the year I was in Russia and RHEL is the most secure operating system certified by the Russian military, therefore there are applications for the Russian military and government that can only run on RHEL. The ironic thing about that is the reason it is so secure is because SE Linux, the core security technology for Linux, was written by the NSA in the US." )
First the military, then the educa
Slash prices? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't bet on that. It's far cheaper for Microsoft to just give very, very big campaign contributions to Russian legislators.
Re:Slash prices? (Score:5, Funny)
Pffft. In Soviet (and Non-Soviet) Russia, Microsoft waits in a very long line to bribe the officials.
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Pffft. In Soviet (and Non-Soviet) Russia, Microsoft waits in a very long line to bribe the officials.
I bet Microsoft has even tried to patent the process.
Re:Slash prices? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's far cheaper for Microsoft to just give very, very big campaign contributions to Russian legislators.
Yeah, and that's pretty much their tactic in the US now, too, since they became one of the biggest "campaign contributors" back in the 2000 elections.
Anyway, slashing prices is difficult in a country where most "customers" get Windows for free. To beat that, MS would have to start paying people to use their software. Of course, for government agencies, it can be a bit more difficult to get away with using pirated software. Your records may be accessible to the politicians who are on the take, and they have ways of punishing people who don't buy from their campaign contributors.
But there may well be a bigger reason: Maybe the Russian government's IT folks are finally getting across the idea that there are serious problems with trusting any binary-only software that comes from a big American corporation. Consider the story discussed here a while back, about the fact that Vista (and apparently XP, too) will sometimes ignore config settings having to do with updates, and automatically update things even when you have explicitly told it not to. This is a giant "backdoor", as the security folks call it. Not only can the software you buy have all sorts of extra code in it that they didn't tell you about ("special for the Russian market"); Windows may at any time replace parts of your system with a new version that has even more "special" code tailored just for you. That's gotta be making a lot of people a bit nervous.
This nervousness is probably encouraged by the widespread interpretation of the 1982 Siberian pipeline explosion [builderau.com.au], as the result of sabotage by American software. That's an Australian site, but you can find lots of descriptions of this event online, and most of them give the same explanation. This story is a good illustration for why you don't want to run unanalyzable binaries in the controls for critical infrastructure. And maybe you don't want to run binary-only software anywhere. ("Think of the children" comes to mind here. ;-)
Note that "free" software is usually also open source. That means you can hire your own hackers to study the code, and remove any backdoors they find. And you can do clean compiles, to ensure that the binaries you're running actually correspond to the code. This should be sufficient to convince anyone with a grain of sense. We don't know whether access to the source code would have prevented the above explosion, but we can safely say that lack of the source code does pretty much prevent finding and fixing such problems.
Read: No Money (Score:2)
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'... all excess is being put into a separate fund/account.'
Yeah; Putin's, I bet.
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I wouldn't fret too much about the Russian economy. They're sitting squarely on top of the largest supply of natural gas on planet Earth. I think they'll make it through okay.
Don't underestimate the dark side (Score:2)
Microsoft already pays people to use their search engine... I'm betting MS starts paying Russian schools to use their software!
In Putin's Russia... (Score:2)
Microsoft OSs have a kill switch (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, Microsoft OSs have a "kill switch" implicitly built into Windows Update. If you use Windows Update, Microsoft has total control of your computers. That's not acceptable given Russia's renewed determination not to be under the control of the United States.
Even with Windows Update turned off, there are all those little things, like "codec downloads" and "DRM downloads" which can insinuate new Microsoft software onto a computer. That's unacceptable to a sovereign nation.
Re:Microsoft OSs have a kill switch (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Even with Windows Update turned off, MS can still force in an update.
That what happened in Aug 2007
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Not only that, but you can't even block it with your hosts [uni-stuttgart.de] file.
Illegal product dumping? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the betting Microsoft starts slashing its prices in Russia?
It's hard to compete with free. In light of M$ slashing their prices in China to compete with pirated-retail versions of their software, would they be desperate enough in a bid to hold onto market share to practically give away software in order to compete with FOSS?
Moreover, they claim piracy of their products around the world costs them "billions of dollars". I assume that's calculated on the basis of US-retail prices translated into foreign exchange rates, and they seem to have a hard-and-fast notion of exactly what each copy of their software is worth in terms of intellectual property, profit margin, cost of materials, and so forth when they make such statements. I wonder, since they're so sure of what their product is worth, if they could be accused of illegally dumping their products in foreign markets. They'd obviously be selling them for less than they know/believe they're worth in able to compete.
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.]
It might be to Microsoft's advantage (Score:5, Funny)
If Microsoft simply let Russia go free (sounds weird right?) then perhaps there will be fewer Russian hackers writing Windows malware. That would be something of a long-shot I suppose.
USA becoming a technology backwater? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think this isn't possible, consider how much farther ahead cell phones are in Europe, or broadband to the home in Asia.
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Free as in freedom (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a native russian speaker, and "ÑÐобоÐноРÐYÐz" means a "free OS" as in freedom.
So they probably went with ALTLinux or whatever version of linux they got there that's popular.
(also, the russian text in preview is broken for whatever reason)
MS Should RAISE the price (Score:5, Funny)
I have an uncle who lives in Russia, where he bought a computer preloaded with XP. After some time he realized it wasn't a legit copy, and went back to the place he bought it from to inquire about getting an "upgraded" version. The manager had this to say to him: "There is exactly ONE legal copy of Windows in Russia, what makes you think that YOU should have it?"
Hence, MS should just raise the price of that one copy.
In Soviet Russia (Score:2)
Its all free, right?
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?
Russia / Free ? (Score:2)
Doesn't Russia just pirate all the software anyways ?
Whew! good thing the world economy is tanking... (Score:3, Funny)
Once the world economy tanks and Russia is forced to abandon free software in favor of 'for profit' OS's, then we can breathe a sigh of relief that those who came up with the OS are getting their rightful compensation for IP rights!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you have the democracy there -- vote for the government that supports free software. It is that simple :)
If a country like Russia is "converted" to free software, it will be a great news for the whole movement -- there are be many Russian programmers who will contribute greatly to the movement if the switch is made.
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"You know what people will say now if you use F/OSS: "What, are you communist or something?"."
Weren't they saying that already?
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Oh, they will. But only for themselves. Shared source, they call it, I believe. As for Linux -- it does get better every year, but given the vast amount of inertia in people's minds and shady monopolistic tactics of Microsoft, Linux has to be ten times better to achieve ten times less. There is still much work to do.
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I'd like to disagree with you, but I can't. I'd also like to agree with you but I can't. Initially, hardware driver support under Linux was difficult and it did take a very long time to get where it is today. But now Linux hardware support is superior to Windows V****. I have grown accustomed, lately, for excellent support for hardware devices of all sorts from USB webcams to USB serial ports, video cards, sound cards and even a great many "Windows only" printers are printing nicely through CUPS. These
Began years ago (Score:4, Informative)
Brazil, India, China, Philippines, Extremadura...
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Actually, if Microsoft wants to remain viable it has to remain well ahead of this trend. After all, once someone has paid the one-time price to migrate away from Windows migration costs work against Microsoft and not for Microsoft.
What's more, with a large centrally mandated switch of this kind the network effects that generally favor Windows disappear.