Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source

prostoalex writes "It's a big victory for Richard Stallman in North America, as Cuba decided to adopt open source software on the national level. Both Cuba and Venezuela are currently working on switching the entire government infrastructure to GNU/Linux operating system and applications, the Associated Press reports from Havana: 'Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft's proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.' The AP article doesn't mention the distro used for government workers, but says that the students are working on a Gentoo-based distro."

Comments

An Old Canard . . .

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

Irony in TFA:

And the start of the open-source sessions was delayed as organizers fiddled with the computer running their projector. The conference room screen had been displaying the words "Windows XP."

There's this old canard about GNU-latry and a certain proletarian dictatorship that I'd rather not repeat. I will say this, though: the eagerness with which the Cuban communists adopted the rhetoric of “proprietary software” is comical.

I wonder how RMS is going to spin this victory to his States-side detractors?

A gentoo based distro?

[HateBreeder]

That basically means, that a full re-install takes about what? a week?

Corrected Headline:

[Anonymous Coward]

Commie Convinces Other Commies to Go With Commie Software

D U H!!!!

Well, this should totally kill their economy. One bad idea for another. But, I bet you the medical equipment hooked up to ol' Fidel is still run by Closed Sourced Commericial God Bless America Money Making Software.

Re:Communists and Stallman

[MaXMC]

George W. Bush is (supposedly) an idiot, does that have something to do with his political ideas?

Well no, he has none of his own.

Concentration of power!

[HornWumpus]

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That's why communism CAN'T work with large groups or where members can't opt out. It works just fine for religious orders, some small communes etc. But they need to operate in a larger more free environment.

The same reason all variations of socialism can't work.

Granting that large corporations concentrate power as well. But as long as they have competition the problem is largely self correcting.