Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft in Peru, Living Room

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nanoprobes-everywhere dept.

Two pieces of Microsoft news today. tfofurn writes "According to this AP quickie and this Reuters story, both on Yahoo, Microsoft is donating 'about $550,000 in money, software and consulting services to the Peruvian government for educational and "e-government" initiatives' to Peru. The AP story mentions the conflict of this with Edgar Villanueva's proposal to have the government use only open source software. Villanueva (/. interview), you may recall, wrote a famous letter to MS Peru a few months ago." And many people have submitted stories about Windows XP Media Center, coming this winter to a living room near you.

2 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Will everybody do the same? by jmv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems like MS is sending the message: "If you want to have 'free' MS software, say you're going Linux". Wonder how many organizations/countries without any intent to switch to Linux (will) have "Linux programs" just for negotiating with MS?

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
    1. Re:Will everybody do the same? by Jason+Earl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      During Christmas time it is a fairly common practice (or it used to be when I lived in Peru) for the police to simply pull over motorists and demand money. Bribes are very commonplace in Peru any time of the year, but during Christmas the police stop even pretending to be upholding the law. They have got guns and you don't, and their children need Christmas presents and Paneton.

      Lima is a city of something like 7 million people and this "donation" is supposed to help something like 20,000 students (a pittance). My guess is that it ends up helping far fewer students than that, and all of the help will likely go to the rich private schools that the politicos send their children too.

      Unfortunately it is impossible to do business in Peru without bribery. I am just surprised that Bill Gates himself is delivering the money. When I first heard that Peru was looking at Free Software legislation I was very skeptical. There are lots of good people in Peru, and I don't doubt that Dr. Villanueva is an honest man and a patriot, but honest Peruvian officials are few and far between.