Mandriva's Open Letter To Steve Ballmer

An anonymous reader writes "An entry on the Mandriva Blog, written by Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon, says that the Nigerian government, after ordering thousands of Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux installed, has suddenly decided that they will instead install Windows. They will pay for the pre-loaded Mandriva Linux on the low-cost computing devices intended for children in the developing world, but immmediately replace the OS. The blog doesn't quite use the 'B' word but does suggest that this was not a decision that the Nigerian government made on its own."

Comments

Why I will not run Mandriva

[Ed Avis]

The comments on the blog posting provide the clearest possible proof that the Mandriva user community doesn't really have two brain cells to rub together. A shame, because back in the day Linux-Mandrake was a good distribution and its userbase wasn't entirely composed of ranting cluebies. Choice picks:

Stupid for Nigeria, now that South Africa uses Ubunta; they'll surely get hacked.

This letter needs to be followed up. I urge the readers to send this to your local attorney-general or comparable legal authority.

Wait until they discover Windoze still runs on top of DOS and uses Winsock DLL for communications. ROTFLMAO

What was the purpose of the OLPC project again ???

[Mad Leper]

Was the point of OLPC to provide low cost computers to needy children or to promote Mandriva/OSS ??

If the Nigerian Government says "thanks for the computers, but we'd like to make our own choice as to what software to run on them" then how is that bad ? The kids still get their laptops and all the supposed benefits they were to deliver. Is Mandriva suggesting that the entire point of the OLPC project was to force children to use their software to the exclusion of all else ?

Here's a neat trick, take the "open letter to Steve Ballmer" and swap any references to Mandriva to Microsoft and vice versa. Now we have a nasty letter from M$ complaining that Nigeria is dumping the Windows OS on their new laptops for Linux. If you find this a perfectly acceptable situation, then admit to yourself that your support for the OLPC project was not to "help the children" but to promote your own beliefs.

Re:Pretty bold.

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

It was marked insightful because it is...at least compared to what you're saying. I'm saying that the country probably has windows machines and software and may, in fact, think it is more useful to have their kids learn to use that software.