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Russia To Develop a National Operating System
Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."
System operates YOU!
...installed by the FSB or whatever it is the KGB is calling itself these days, honest tovarishch.
Isn't their National Operating System called Communism?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
EU politiacians don't understand (or don't want to) the importance, the strategy and the economics of an EU-wide open-source policy!
Private interests are more important by far!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
In Soviet Russia, National Operating System develops YOU!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
adhere to the GPL and return their changes back to the community?
And we shall call this new O/S... Cossux!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It apparently matters to someone, since China apparently got the price lowered as well. I have to wonder if it was worth all of the international hooplah to reduce the price of the single copy of Windows they bought.
I read the internet for the articles.
If it detects you making unfavorable comments about Putin it send your address off to a mailing center where they send you a free "gift" package of Polonium-laced tea (Earl Gray, of course, to increase the chance of computer geeks drinking it).
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
... who will there be to pirate it?
It matters at least on the surface. The "big deal" is being a member of the WTO. You can't be a player in the WTO if you are branded as a thief. The other kids won't want to play with you!
But, just as Ernie Ball, moving away from Microsoft is a good plan and illustrates perfectly now they are not as necessary as people think. But invariably, people are lured into taking the "easy" path... not changing and settling for a lower price and incentive to stay. "Lower price" is not the only incentive, of course... but officially, lower price is the incentive.
Nasa and the military are cooperating with Microsoft on the next generation of ICBM. With Chair-based warheads.
Seems like reinventing the wheel here.
Why any country would voluntarily base their national security on imported, closed-source, non-free software is beyond my reasoning. If a country wants to control its infrastructure, it must use free software. Same goes for us computers users, too, of course, but the stakes are much higher for a sovereign nation.
So, what to do about a state that takes GPL software, modifies it, redistributes it, maybe even charges for it?
Why would you need to do anything? Those are all allowed under the GPL.
What the article actually says, is that some members of Russian parliament are just _proposing_ to develop a national OS. M$ representatives, on the other hand, say that it is not a national OS which Russia need, but to make use the technologies which are already exist. so, don't get excited just yet - there are many things they talk about in Russia.
Will it be written in C..C..C Plus?
Seriously, not being dependent on foreign companies for critical national technological infrastructure is in the strategic national interests of every nation on earth. If you are a foreign nation, how do you know that the OS you are getting from $OS_Vendor doesn't have 'wiretaps', back-doors, remote kill switches, or other secrets in the software which $OS_Vendor, or the nation to which $OS_Vendor is based out of, can use to cripple you? Another problem is, that $OS_Vendor could simply stop providing you with necessary patches to update known problems and vulnerabilities in the OS.
One possible solution would be, if you are using a closed-source vendor, to require that vendor to provide the government with buildable source code, which could be reviewed by your own Computer Scientists, then built by your government, and distributed throughout the nation. This also allows your developers to provide your nation with patches and support if you are cut off from support from $OS_Vendor. That is not true Open-Source, but that is still, effectively, a "National Operating System". Open Source is one step better though, because you have, potentially, a lot larger base of people that are reviewing the code. That whole Eric Raymond thing to the effect that with sufficiently many eyes, all bugs are shallow.
Just saying that some foreign leader that is not well liked has something in common with another leader is sort of mis-leading, because there will often be many things in common between good leaders and bad leaders - what's important often isn't the similarities, but the differences.
....You can't be a player in the WTO if you are branded as a thief. The other kids won't want to play with you!
I think this statement sums up the WTO fantastically well. It's a club for schoolkids, pretending to be important. They are all thieves, but you don't want ALL of the rest of them calling you a thief. As long as it's only one or two of them, you're ok.
Johnny trades me marbles at a good deal because I have a good supply of bubble gum that he likes. Sure, I trade it to other kids too, but I need the marbles so Johnny and I trade on the side. I think the playground is a great analogy for the WTO.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The article says that this is an idea, raised by some random people and it is only being organized and will be later offered to president Medvedev as a proposition. Calling it a fact, as the summary did, is so yellow press it hurts.
Don't worry, be happy!
"Look this joke is very simple. If it doesn't make sense when you reverse it, you're doing it wrong. If we reverse your joke we get: You operate system."
;)
system operate You: get we joke your reverse we if wrong it doing, you're it reverse you when sense make doesn't it. If simple very is joke this Look.
I still don't get it?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I can totally see why Russia would want to have this happen... at least their own distro for use internally within the Russian government.
A top to bottom review of the Linux kernel from another group of developers with a completely different interests, backgrounds, and motivations than other major contributors to Linux would also be a very good thing for the development of Linux as a whole. I wish Russia the best on getting this accomplished, and I hope that their success is huge.
It isn't like the American government doesn't do this too. The NSA (National Security Agency... aka the USA cyber spys) has their own distro for most of the reasons I've listed above, and has nearly continuous recruitment going on at college campuses for CS graduates. The Red Flag distro (Chinese) is another national distro that has been done for more than just pressuring Microsoft into lowering the price of Windows.
Frankly, I see Microsoft's involvement here as a red herring and something to ignore for this discussion.
No you have to enter all commands by answering riddles, and every user prompt has a corny cartoon look to your login..
Plus when you call IT they always solve the problem and end the call with "I AM INVINCIBLE!" Call you a "SLUG HEAD" and send a thing called a "SPIKE" all the time really strange.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I find the Russian attitude toward copyright to be mostly refreshing. They do want to give incentives for people to make a little money from creative works, but there isn't the perpetual and infinite lifetime to creative works that seems to be prevalent in western Europe and has infected legal circles within the USA.
The way that Russians treat copyrighted material of others is pretty much how they want to have their own content treated. At least they are consistent in this manner. It certainly doesn't compare to the blatant copyright infringements that happen in China.
...command line executes you!
Have gnu, will travel.
Copyright etc. is a form of planned economy:
"Ppl won't create the *correct number of books/movies/etc. unless the government 'incentivizes' the production thereof by enforcing the creators' exclusive rights to copy/modify/etc."
*where "correct" is determined by said government...
I don't understand where you get this idea. Copyright at its most fundamental level is a legal enforcement of proper attribution. Don't claim to be somebody who you are not, and certainly don't assert that you wrote something or made something when you had absolutely nothing to do with it in the first place.
Are there abuses of copyright? Absolutely! Many of the major media distributors (RIAA members, MPAA members, ASCAP members, and members of other similar groups) assert and claim rights they simply don't have, or in a few cases are able to get political mussel to get laws changed in their favor that don't make sense. Just look at DAT (Digital Audio Tape) and see how the recording industry ruined a perfectly find and indeed useful technology through boneheaded legislation.
Protecting the actual artists, composers, writers, producers and filmmakers through copyright for a limited time is for me something very useful, and something that I personally depend upon for my very livelihood. The problem comes when limited time == forever, and the rights of those who have purchased or received a creative work are trampled to death and declared non-existent. Among those include the right to use the work of art as you please, to be able to enjoy and share that work with others, and to review and express your opinion about that work of art.
Copyright law sets limits about what these right might be, and establishes a way to provide incentives that date back to the 18th Century and earlier. Unfortunately, many of those drafting copyright legislation today are not familiar with nor understand the problems that happened in the 18th Century that led to current copyright laws in the first place.
Do you think countries that don't have their own automobile, airplane, computer, food industry are sacrificing some weird notion of security?
Hell yes. For example, America doesn't have any energy production to speak of. As we've seen in grisly detail on the 6:00 news, there's a price to pay. Many African nations don't grow their own food, and instead are dependent on American aid. There's a price to pay. We don't make our own electronics here in America anymore, and instead are dependent on cheap Chinese crap. The real bill on that hasn't arrived yet, but you can bet your dumb anonymous ass that there's gonna be a price.
Please read up on basic economics.
"Basic economics" got us into this damn mess.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Hey... have I spoken to you today? I work in tech support...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Yes, you are the one that set my printer on fire and laughed at me over the phone for at least an hour. All I wanted was an updated pdf reader.
You guys take the BOFH status waaaay too serious.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.