Linux defeats Microsoft in Russian schools
p2pnet news view Open Source | Freedom:- Microsoft, the company owned by famous philanthropist Bill Gates, discovered a Russian schoolteacher was using non-Microsoft software at school.
The teacher, Alexander Ponosov, was later found guilty of causing $10,000 in damages.
“Microsoft did not initiate the criminal prosecution of the headmaster,” said Olga Dergunova, president of Microsoft in Russia and the CIS, stating. “The case was opened by Russian authorities in line with Russian legislation.”
No problem, then.
Meanwhile, what goes around comes around and now, Russian schools that want to use proprietary software must pay for it themselves.
“I’ve often lamented how few schools in the UK use free software, and how difficult it is to break the lock that Microsoft has on the entire educational system,” writes Glyn Moody in Computerworld UK. “The pathetic state here is highlighted by contrast with Russia, which is making amazing strides in rolling out open source to schools.
“It began with a few pilot projects, and apparently these have been so successful that the Russian government has now decided to make it the standard for *all* schools.”
Glyn winds up with a couple of Google translations of a post in CNews, to wit »»»
[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.]
(Thanks, Zacharias)
non-Microsoft software – Ponosov ‘guilty’ in Microsoft case, May 8, 2007
Computerworld UK -*All* Russian Schools to Use Free Software, October 23, 2008
pilot projects – The Russian Experiment, April, 2008
CNews – До конца 2009 г. свободное ПО внедрят во всех российских школах, Ocrober 22, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:57 am
“Microsoft, the company owned by famous philanthropist Bill Gates, discovered a Russian schoolteacher was using non-Microsoft software at school.”
No!
Investigators discovered pirated MS software on new purchased PCs and decided to press charges against Ponosov, the principal of the school. No one touched the firm who supplied the PCs and installed the pirated MS software in the first place.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
At the same time….
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/10/27/the-great-russian-firewall/
“RUSSOFT, a trade association of the largest software companies in Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus, has come forward with a new proposal to separate the Russian internet from the rest of the world. The group’s president, Valentin Makarov, told the CNews internet newspaper that a funnel could readily be created to control the flow of information through Russia’s online borders. ”
Their role models? China, Singapour and Japan.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Original here:
ht tp://w ww.cnew s.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2008/10/24/324624