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Russia Mandates Free Software For Public Schools
Glyn Moody writes "After running some successful pilots, the Russian government has decided to make open source the standard for all schools. If a school doesn't want to use the free software supplied by the government, it has to buy commercial licenses using its own funds. What's the betting Microsoft starts slashing its prices in Russia?"
Microsoft is no more!!!!
Dammit, I'm moving.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The confusion between these two types of software is not trivial.
According to TFA, it is being mandated that "free" software be used, and open source isn't even mentioned (in the translated article, I don't speak russian, sorry).
"By the end of 2009, all school computers will be installed package of free software (PSPO). This is how transfers Prime-TASS, today announced Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Shchyogolev at the plenary session Information Society and the modern technologies of information in the international exhibition InfoCom-2008."
"The Minister also noted that by 2010 it is expected that the number of computers in schools will reach a million. According to Schegoleva, after three years of school will be able to make a choice: pay royalties to use software products, buying them at their own expense, or go to the domestic free software."
Nothing in there about "open source" submitter, so which is it?
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I'm probably one of the few slashdotters who has lived in Russia. I will say that I met a ton of very smart people who are breaking from their national heritage in being hard-working. A university degree from Russia now and has always equated with a Masters in the US. They are just smart in not buying into the crap that Microsoft sells. There are so many entire technology stacks--just as in the Java world, not in .NET--that can be had without ever spending a thin dime on software. Face it--nobody is ever going to pay when there are free alternatives. And though as a software developer this eats into my bread and butter, I know they are right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponosov's_Case
I know. It's so difficult to find a linux distribution these days. Ever since linux distros had to go underground I have to search the far dark corners of the internet to find a working download. If I want a copy locally, I have to go to the seedy part of town and down some dark alleyway whispering to the dealer who will get me my linux fix. Oh! If only linux were freely available from universities, computer geeks, and the internet!
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Remember, Microsoft OSs have a "kill switch" implicitly built into Windows Update. If you use Windows Update, Microsoft has total control of your computers. That's not acceptable given Russia's renewed determination not to be under the control of the United States.
Even with Windows Update turned off, there are all those little things, like "codec downloads" and "DRM downloads" which can insinuate new Microsoft software onto a computer. That's unacceptable to a sovereign nation.
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Going back to Soviet Union? By slashing a monopoly and directing the money towards their own developers and encouraging competition as opposed to paying a foreign corporation which is already known to sue people in Russia?
Help me here...
I'm confused, can Glyn Moody read Russian, or is the article based on the Google translation?
From this, no one is being forced to use anything, they are given free software, and individual schools must foot the bill of commercial software. I'm sure this will help spur free software adoption, but isn't the real story about the Govt not buying school software anymore? A story like this in the states would imply the schools are now rejigging their IT budgets, not necessarily adopting free software wholesale. A story about govt funding to schools being cut probably wouldn't be taken in such positive light either.
Just my two cents.
[Via Google Translate: By the end of 2009, all school computers will be installed package of free software (PSPO). This is how transfers Prime-TASS, today announced Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Shchyogolev at the plenary session Information Society and the modern technologies of information in the international exhibition InfoCom-2008.]
[Via Google Translate: The Minister also noted that by 2010 it is expected that the number of computers in schools will reach a million. According to Schegoleva, after three years of school will be able to make a choice: pay royalties to use software products, buying them at their own expense, or go to the domestic free software.]
If Microsoft simply let Russia go free (sounds weird right?) then perhaps there will be fewer Russian hackers writing Windows malware. That would be something of a long-shot I suppose.
Pffft. In Soviet (and Non-Soviet) Russia, Microsoft waits in a very long line to bribe the officials.
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Actions like this speak volumes about the future of the United States in the global economy. As a whole we are locked into the Microsoft monopoly more tightly than any other nation. As the rest of the world embraces free and open source software at a faster pace than we do, they are essentially leapfrogging us in technological advancement. If more USA users don't wise up to this soon, we risk becoming a technological backwater. It could take years to catch up, if ever.
If you think this isn't possible, consider how much farther ahead cell phones are in Europe, or broadband to the home in Asia.
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Good news to be sure, but how do you know that the money will go towards developers or even back to the people and not towards some government official's Mercedes or vacation home?
I have an uncle who lives in Russia, where he bought a computer preloaded with XP. After some time he realized it wasn't a legit copy, and went back to the place he bought it from to inquire about getting an "upgraded" version. The manager had this to say to him: "There is exactly ONE legal copy of Windows in Russia, what makes you think that YOU should have it?"
Hence, MS should just raise the price of that one copy.
Before I can answer, please first tell me what you mean by that.
Yeah, that could only happen in Russia. Our elected officials would never do such a thing.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's far cheaper for Microsoft to just give very, very big campaign contributions to Russian legislators.
Yeah, and that's pretty much their tactic in the US now, too, since they became one of the biggest "campaign contributors" back in the 2000 elections.
Anyway, slashing prices is difficult in a country where most "customers" get Windows for free. To beat that, MS would have to start paying people to use their software. Of course, for government agencies, it can be a bit more difficult to get away with using pirated software. Your records may be accessible to the politicians who are on the take, and they have ways of punishing people who don't buy from their campaign contributors.
But there may well be a bigger reason: Maybe the Russian government's IT folks are finally getting across the idea that there are serious problems with trusting any binary-only software that comes from a big American corporation. Consider the story discussed here a while back, about the fact that Vista (and apparently XP, too) will sometimes ignore config settings having to do with updates, and automatically update things even when you have explicitly told it not to. This is a giant "backdoor", as the security folks call it. Not only can the software you buy have all sorts of extra code in it that they didn't tell you about ("special for the Russian market"); Windows may at any time replace parts of your system with a new version that has even more "special" code tailored just for you. That's gotta be making a lot of people a bit nervous.
This nervousness is probably encouraged by the widespread interpretation of the 1982 Siberian pipeline explosion, as the result of sabotage by American software. That's an Australian site, but you can find lots of descriptions of this event online, and most of them give the same explanation. This story is a good illustration for why you don't want to run unanalyzable binaries in the controls for critical infrastructure. And maybe you don't want to run binary-only software anywhere. ("Think of the children" comes to mind here. ;-)
Note that "free" software is usually also open source. That means you can hire your own hackers to study the code, and remove any backdoors they find. And you can do clean compiles, to ensure that the binaries you're running actually correspond to the code. This should be sufficient to convince anyone with a grain of sense. We don't know whether access to the source code would have prevented the above explosion, but we can safely say that lack of the source code does pretty much prevent finding and fixing such problems.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!!!
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Brazil, India, China, Philippines, Extremadura...
Aside from stereotyping russians, you guys are showing a lot of cultural bias, that you probably don't realise. Stop calling people lazy, and go read The Importance of Living. Or just spend time living in a hunter-gatherer tribe for a while. You might find yourselves returning to your lives and calling the people around you workaholics... or just plain insane.
"To truly understand another culture, you must first understand your own."
Microsoft is staffed by people that do, among other things, throw chairs at people, describe open source as "cancer", and want to "$#%^&*@ kill Google". I'd say the poster isn't exaggerating that much.
Are you taking ample precautions to avoid the grue?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
You Americans have a habit of screaming "Communism" at anything vaguely related towards state aid/state control without really knowing what Communism is.
Yep, it should be hard to believe for lot of ppl here, but for a lot of places (excluding only multimillion cities) in ex Soviet countries, this is the case. There is no broadband unlimited internet tariffs. 1 Mb of download, can cost up to 0.10$. Downloading will take couple of days .iso of a CD, and more then a week for DVD image.
And a CD/DVD with Vista/Full Adobe Creative Suite/Full MS Office pro/3D Max/whatever will cost about 4-5$ at any CD/DVD shop, which can be found on every single step.
Now tell me, which options whould you prefer?
Downloading an iso of CD for 50-60$ during a week, + another 20-30$ for additional packages, drivers, codecs, whatever..
Or buying let's say 2 DVD's for 10$ in 10 minutes, one with "All windows + office" (Several versions of windows + several versions of office, + antiviruses, system utilites, daily soft), and second "All computer graphics" with (All Adobe applciations for graphics, video, web-design, +3d max, maya, corel draw, image viewers, video players, etc..). So which one? :)
That is the main reason why it's so hard to push open source in here.
P.S. It's hard to find a fresh Linux distro in CD shops, and even if you can find not 2 years old, the price is the same.
... if it's "free" software they're after, what's to stop MS from just giving Windows to them for free on some kind of "educational deal".
Ah, but you and others are getting an entirely wrong idea due to a simple (and probably intentional) mistranslation. The Russian government's order and the original article were not written in English, they were in Russian. As someone else point out in another message, the Russian text describes the software as "svobodniy", not "bezplatniy". Both of these words translate to English as "free", but their meanings are totally different, and neither can be naturally expressed in English with a single word. The morpheme "svobod-" means free as in liberty or freedom. The root "bezplat-" is two morphemes, "bez-" meaning without, and "plat-" meaning cost or price.
They aren't ordering schools to use software that they don't have to pay for. They're ordering the schools to use software that's unencumbered by legal restrictions and, for example, can be taken apart and studied by students that are interesting in software or by school employees looking for backdoors and other security holes. It so happens that much "svobodniy" software is available at no cost and without legal restrictions, but that wasn't the adjectivee that was used, and wasn't the intent of the government's order.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous claim that the Russian language has no word for freedom, the translators in this case missed the fact that English has no word for "svobodniy". Rather, English has a word "free" that means both "svobodniy" and "bezplatniy", two unrelated concepts that English speakers typically confuse. One can, of course, express these concepts in English, using short multi-word phrases. But in this case, the translators chose not to do this, and instead went with the one-word translation that is misinterpreted by most English readers.
This is, of course, an old trick of propagandists. If you're familiar with the technique, you're probably amused to see it in use, and to see so many people falling for it so publicly.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If only linux were freely available from universities, computer geeks, and the internet!
When I wanted to install RedHat 4.something, I went to see if they had it in my university's library. Joy! They did! Unfortunately, the librarian refused to let me check it out because I "might install it on my own computer, which would be illegal." When I finally demonstrated that it would be OK, they still refused to let me leave the library with it, although I was welcome to bring a stack of floppies to copy the CD onto (as this was before CD burners became common).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Microsoft is staffed by people that do, among other things, throw chairs at people, describe open source as "cancer", and want to "$#%^&*@ kill Google".
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
"Qualis rex, talis grex."
The symptoms of systematic dysfunction were well known to the Romans. Leadership is a very legitimate issue.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
However, even these "cancerous" open source licenses are considerably better for the end user than virtually all proprietary licenses.
Compare:
You can use this software any way you want, and distribute it however you like so long as you distribute the source code in the same way you received it.
if you To:
You can use this software in a limited number of ways on a limited number of systems, you cannot redistribute it at all and don't get to look at the source code.
If you think licenses like the GPL are restrictive, then you must really hate proprietary software even more.
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OK, how about the fact that he dances about the stage doing monkey impersonations and shouting "Developers developers developers developers developers"?
There is a major problem with calling it a cancer, and that is in context. You can't call open source a cancer and proprietary software healthy cells. This is due to proprietary software's inability to grow and intermingle. Maybe if you call proprietary software a tumor, GPL could be just a more aggressive cancer that turns everything into wonderful goodness, while BSD is a healthy cell.
While the virus idea works better, the whole premise is just silly, pejorative, and flawed. Highlighting Balmer's stupidity in saying it works just fine in showing Microsoft has a screwball for a CEO.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
Compared to who? Estonia?
Don't get me wrong, the U.S. is clearly a mixed economy (a term for some reason out of favour). But it seems to be a lot more right leaning than the rest of the first world.
Please, attack Microsoft on legitimate issues (e.g. prior extreme anticompetitive behavior, and incomplete reform), not pointless ad hominem attacks.
You're not from around here, are you?
Incomplete reform? I think you meant "continuing current extreme anticompetitive behavior", and omitted "expected future extreme anticompetetive behavior." The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Or, as a famed technology leader once said:
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée, former CEO, BeOS
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