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Some European Moves Towards Linux

Posted by kdawson on from the straws-in-the-wind dept.

Readers VE3OGG and FFFFHALTFFFF write in with three pieces of a global picture that is emerging of governments and corporations moving away from Microsoft and towards open source. First, France: the French automaker Peugot Citroen has announced that over the next several years they will be integrating up to 20,000 Novell SUSE desktops as well as 2,500 SUSE servers into their facilities. (Let's hope that, in Novell, Peugeot Citroen hasn't bought a lemon.) Next, Sweden: the Swedish Armed Forces has made a decision to migrate its Windows NT servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Finally, Russia. VE3OGG writes: "It would seem that after the recent Russian piracy debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing pirated copies of Windows for his school, the Ministry of Education in Russia has decided that the school boards will no longer be purchasing any commercial software."

2 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Threatening to use Open Source is Negotiating Ploy by evw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although it sounds very grand when whole countries or states or cities make a lot of noise about switching to open source software, if you follow them to the conclusion it always seems to work out the same: they end up sticking with Microsoft. I suspect that Microsoft comes in a makes them a sweet deal (maybe they'll open the source code a little, maybe they'll drop the price) and in the end they stick with Microsoft. As more and more groups do this, I think it's just part of the negotiation.

    "We've already established what you are, ma'am. Now we're just haggling over the price."

  2. Re:backfired by Hercules+Peanut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would seem that Microsoft's campaign against the poor, Russian school teacher backfired miserably. Allow me to make a slight alteration, please.

    It would seem that the RIAA's campaign against the poor, American grandmother backfired miserably. or
    It would seem that Apple's campaign against the poor, blogger backfired miserably. or

    It would seem that MPAA's campaign against the poor, (fill in the blank) backfired miserably. What are we teaching in our MBA programs these days? Really, I'm serious? When did treating your customers, fans, educators, innocent by-standers like the enemy somehow become mainstream thought among U.S. executives?