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Iran: Even If Windows Is Free, Linux Is Preferred
gpwiki.org writes "Iran, a country which does not abide by international copyright law, is reportedly moving toward Linux. 'All the software in Iran is copied. There is no copyright law, so everybody uses Microsoft software freely,' said the secretary of Iran's High Informatics Council. 'But we cannot continue like this much longer.' The article suggests that a desire to enter the WTO, and Windows security issues are prime motivating factors. 'Microsoft is a national security concern.'"
Yep, here too.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I-ran away from Windows to Linux too.
Sorry, I have been waiting to make an "Iran" pun for a while. Carry on.
It's just as I have been saying all along... smart people wouldn't use Windows, even if it were free...
Joining the WTO would require Iran to abide by internationally agreed upon IP regulations (Bourne Convention) and the impact of suddenly enforcing copyright law against its citizens would be very heavy.
Even limiting enforcement to the government computer systems would result in significant layouts of cash to Microsoft (and other software makers). Iran is simply not in a position to make that kind of investment.
Likewise, it is difficult to see how Microsoft could do business with the rogue nation. It is under trade sanctions by the U.S. meaning that no American company can do business there without governmental approval. Microsoft itself may not want to involve itself in the possible arming of an "enemy of the state".
But in the end, it is laughable that the Iranian government would choose Linux over anything else. Though open source, Linux is primarily developed in the U.S. by American programmers working for American companies. Even Linus, Norwegian by heritage, now lives in comfortable quarters in Silicon Valley. Just because the code base is open does not mean that it is invulnerable to back doors. The official does seem to mention this, but the rah-rah tone of the article drowns this out. The Linux codebase, composed of hundreds of different, separate modules, is virtually incomprehensible in the whole and a full audit of the source code is essentially impossible as the code itself continues to change and 'improve'.
China had the right idea: develop your own operating system. While this may lead to a problem of lack of software, it can also be considered an economic boon as the market itself will be created by the demands of the government.
Why? Well, what keeps so many people on MS software? It's that they have old programs that they have to use. They have to access old data. They have to interface with their office that uses MS software. People are "tied down" so it's harder to move. But very few people over there are tied down the way many people here are.
Second is security. People know Linux is relativly secure. People know about all the viruses, spyware, security holes, and other stuff on Windows. If you had no predisposition (like previous expiriance with Windows or software that needed Windows), then which would you choose?
And of course, there is the political. As the article mentions, some people run Linux because it's not MS, which comes from the US. Some people run it out of anti-US sentiment. And they are probably some that run Linux because not because of anti-US sentiment (in the death to all Amercians sense) but because of non-US sentiment (doesn't come from the US, might be a Iranian distro which would keep money/jobs there). Same reason some EU countries are looking a SuSe or other distros, or China is trying to make their own OS (or was it Linux distrobution).
This (and especially Iraq) will be interesting to watch, to see how new users with no/few predispositions (how many people in the US think ALL computers just run Windows, and there is nothing else?) will buy and use computers. Will they go for the standard (MS, Adobe, Macromedia, whoever), or go for underdogs that they like better or have better features (OSS, smaller companies, etc.).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
this is NOT going to help linux' image at all...
(ps, i know we supposedly like iran comparatively)
Am I the only one that read that headline and wondered why Slashdot started an Iran section?
This reminds me of back in the DOS and pre-DOS days, and even Win 3.x, when most software I saw around was copied. I can remember bringing bits and pieces of software home from the office to use on my computer, such as it was at the time.
/dev/zero > /dev/hda without rebooting? =)
It's interesting to see how this plays out. On the one hand, we have the tried-and-tested Windows, which, from their point of view, is easier, but costs a lot of money...or Linux, which has no legal threats [ignoring, for the moment, the SCO lawsuits, certain video codecs, and other matters of similar irrelevance], but something of a porting cost, given that you'll have to train the former M$ pirates to run Linux.
Also, it's important to note that an improperly configured Linux system is even more vulnerable than an improperly configured Windows system...after all, how many Windows systems will let you run cat
It's only an insult if it's not true.
The GPL is predicated on copyright law.
To put Iran firmly in the Axis of Evil.
http://unrealtournament.com/
UT2K4 and UT2K3. Linux install packaged.
Enemy Territory. released for both at the same time.
These are so popular, it makes me wonder is you've even looked. Please keep such uneducated, uninformed remarks to a minimum. You'd hate for someone to call it FUD.
Again with the gamers. You know, computing is not all about gaming. It's about other things like: networking, development, word processing, databases, and system administration. Linux holds its own in those departments.
So, ironically, when Linux has more proprietary software available for it, more people will be likely to try it.
I agreed up to this point. It's the fact that Firefox is no proprietary, and that people use it crossplatform more now that there will be comfort later. Same thing on a much smaller scale with things like OpenOffice.org. Proprietary software in Linux will not create ANY form of comfort, especially in the area's the rest of your post focuses on, which is comfort through past experience.
Uh no, that's 3.
Doom3 Linux client is expected shortly too. Quake 3 linux client came out shortly after the windows version.
Yes there are certainly less mainstream games on Linux, but some of the biggest name ones to come out.
The High Informatics Coucil (HIC) is an organisation which has been talking for a couple of years now, about this Open Source thing, this Linux thing, and ect, but really they haven't done anything. They even don't have a clue what they are talking about.
I am an Iranian and I used to work for a company which was the first to start doing some Linux activities in Iran. We started by designing a keyboard layout for Persian, and when GTK 2.0 and Qt 3.0 were released and had enough Unicode support to enable us to write Persian using them, we started the FarsiKDE project http://www.farsikde.org and with the release of KDE 3.1, our small handicapped and fully underresourced team was able to add Farsi as an official language to KDE. Next step, we launched a community-driven website http://www.linuxiran.org to help build momentum around Linux in Iran. And then, we started building our own Debian-Based distribution called Shabdix, and it even had a couple fo limited releases. (all this was done in true Open Source fashion, free in both senses).
During all this time, the HIC did nothing to support us, althought they were fully aware of our program. The HIC is just so full of bearucracy, that it can't even decide what it wants to do, and which direction it wants to go. All they have done, with their massive resources and budget, is just publish a couple of already-available fonts as beta, and then also publish some meaningless Request For Comments to implement things that were implemented years ago (like UTF-8 support in toolkits such as Qt and GTK). They can't even decide on a standard keyboard layouy. The Persian Keyboard layout in Windows is a mess, it doesn't have comma, Persian numbers,... and the one in XFree86 is much better, but they can't even agree to use that keyboard layout. All these years, they have made many public announcements about deploying Linux systems in Iran, about how Linux is the future and blah blah, but they have yet to do a single meaningful action. And they failed to support the only group which was actually doing something and producing some actual code.
But Of course, they need to have the PR going, cause they need to get an increase in their budget next year, and well, PR is the best way to impress lawmakers to give them the budget. And Saying 'We won't even use Windows even if it was free' is certainly going to make headlines, and keep the PR machine going. While I personaly have been to HIC, and know that even they use pirated copies of Widnows all over the place, internaly.
Such a shame, so many resources is being wasted by this entity, for no use.
--
I am all for the exchange of ideas and a fostering of ties between communities. I would believe that the community of hackers would not shun the idea like our government counterparts have shunned other such opportunities.
I for one would browse their LUG's online community site often and with interest.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
> There is still IMHO no games in linux.
If that mattered very much, we'd all be using Amiga or DOS, not Windows.
Windows was a *horrible* platform for games, and game developers avoided it
for _years_ (in some cases releasing games for DOS and requiring Windows 95
users to reboot in command-prompt mode), but eventually they had to embrace
Win32 because it was so widespread, and they needed to sell the games to
people who didn't know how to use DOS.
Amiga, in contrast, was *great* for games; game developers *loved* it. But
they gave it up when it became clear that it was going to stay a small market.
Games don't drive OS adoption. They follow it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I walk along the avenue,
never thought I'd meet an OS like youuuuu
meet an OS like youuuuu.............
with free software and free gui
the kind that lets me live so freee
like speech and beer it's freee......
and Iran, Iran so far away,
and Iran, Iran so far away,
linux couldn't get away.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Which means if you only distribute your closed variant of a GPL'd project from a jurisdiction with no copyright then you are home free? Impractical, yes, today. But if the world ever does reach a point where electronic distribution of commercial software is the norm this might become more attractive to some, hardware drivers only available from *.co.ir?
Unix is a creation of the west, AT&T, and was "opened up" by UC Berkeley.
Yeah, and the Internet was developed mostly with funds from the US Defense Department. Funny how people everywhere are ignoring that and adopting it despite its evil origins. Actually, the story is a bit similar to unix, since the actual development was done in a lot of universities and companies. The military took the code and cloned it, but left the public version behind, and it's that version that became the public Internet.
Apologies to Muslims, I don't know the term for your dietary rules.
The term is "halal" (with a few variant transliterations). The rules are nearly identical to the Jewish kosher laws, with a few differences from centuries of different religious interpretation. There are a number of food suppliers in the US that are certified under both the kosher and halal laws. Only the most rabid fundamentalists (Muslim or Jewish) would be offended by your confusing them.
And, of course, even if you don't believe in these laws, you still might buy the food because of its high quality. I even know a number of Muslims that buy Hebrew National hot dogs, because they like them and trust the maker to not contaminate them.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
i think america's army is also linux.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.