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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."

6 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Holy grammar batman! by letsgolightning · · Score: 5, Funny

    When do we get to meet this mystery European?

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  2. "Some European"? by skoda · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which European? He must be pretty important to get a Slashdot frontpage notice.

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    ShoutingMan.com
  3. backfired by DaMattster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would seem that Microsoft's campaign against the poor, Russian school teacher backfired miserably. Microsoft has now incurred the wrath of the Russian government and has just locked itself out of a market. That's a real smooth way to do business and has just opened the flood gates for open source software. Bill Gates' tacit denial of Gorbachev's appeal shows an utter lack of foresight and has caused an ultimate loss for Microsoft. And all of this occurred because Bill wanted to make an example of a poor, Russian school teacher whom was using Windows, not for commercial gain, but for education. If Microsoft were wise, they would have provided free, genuine copies because this teacher is educating future Microsoft consumers. Instead, they caused alienation, and, as anyone can tell you, alienation is a bad thing. So now, Red Hat has the chance to build loyal users. Go Red Hat!

    1. 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?
  4. We've seen this before by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Clearly MS hasn't learned its lesson yet. While I don't begrudge MS for trying to protect their copyrights against piracy, they do need to learn about subtlety. Does Ernie Ball come to mind? Ernie Ball had more copies than licenses; they didn't keep up with the licensing like they should have, and they admitted it. They were a good MS customer and would have preferred to work with MS on any licenses problems. But raiding their offices with armed federal marshalls? Now, they're a Linux shop. MS lost a good customer and got bad PR. All for 70 something licenses that Ernie Ball would have glady paid for had it had the chance.

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  5. Re:Threatening to use Open Source is Negotiating P by jdcool88 · · Score: 5, Informative

    All of these groups didn't stick with MS: http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html