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Some European Moves Towards Linux

Posted by kdawson on Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:14 AM
from the straws-in-the-wind dept.
Linux Business
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."
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[+] Your Rights Online: Gorbachev Asks Gates to Intervene in Piracy Case 331 comments
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has asked Bill Gates to intervene in a software piracy case against the headmaster of a middle school. If convicted, Alexander Ponosov could face detention in a Siberian prison camp for his crime.
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  • Holy grammar batman! (Score:5, Funny)

    by letsgolightning (1004592) on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:16AM (#17935022)
    When do we get to meet this mystery European?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by pluther (647209)
      "European" is an adjective. Try reading the headline now.
      • How about "Some moves towards linux by Europe" or "Europe makes some moves towards linux." These capture the essence of the original without being confusing. However, they are still kind of dumb. The concept is that more people or agencies in europe have been using Linux. "Moves towards" isn't the best way of poutting this. "More Agencies in Europe Adopt Linux" or "Linux Usage Rising in Europe" would have been much better.

        "Some Lazy Editor Moves Towards Cheetos." Why do I suspect that these guys really just want to sit on their asses all day playing video games while the money pours in and they do as little as possible? I know the submitter probably wrote the headline, but that's what editors are for: editing.

        I feel like the editors resent everything they actually have to do, like they are some kind of royalty and we are the peasants whose duty it is to support them. Hmm, I wonder if slashdot editors get Primae Noctis rights?

    • Re:Holy grammar batman! (Score:5, Funny)

      by springbox (853816) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:04PM (#17935652)
      Yeah, I know! My friend was talking to me and said "hey, did you read Slashdot recently? Some European is using Linux! Surely this individual will turn the tide on Microsoft's market saturation!"


      Now that "some European" is using Linux maybe "some other European" will make the switch as well!

    • Yeah, I had forgotten that it was possible to use "moves" as a noun.

  • "Some European"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by skoda (211470) on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:29AM (#17935192) Homepage
    Which European? He must be pretty important to get a Slashdot frontpage notice.

  • A good move (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxci (3530) * on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:33AM (#17935254)
    Let's just hope the Russians don't decide to accept a deal from Microsoft for cheap software, ultimately if they do that they're just setting themselves up for future problems down the line. When funds are tight it is very useful to be able to have software where it's legal and encouraged to copy it. The amount of piracy that goes on with Microsoft products just shows how much that people consider Windows the only option, once they have other choices then more people are going to go for free and legal over free and illegal.

    Back when I was a student Linux was a great way to free and easily get all the tools needed to learn Perl and C. The documentation on the internet provided most you'd need but I still bought a few O'Reilly books for reference, I learned a lot more using Linux in the 90's and using Linux gave me the skills to get a better paid job when I left university, people coming out with only Windows skills do not get the same salaries.

    Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it. Versions of Microsoft applications change the UI between versions so even if they do end up working at a Microsoft shop they'll adapt better to the changing UI's between versions. Also a better all round education will open up alternatives to businesses, if the staff are better trained then switching to alternatives will be easier, it can save the economy a fortune in the future.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by beerdini (1051422)

      Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it.

      I used to work at a school where I fought furiously for Linux only to have the IT manager say it is the job of the school to prepare students for the real world, and Word(Microsoft) not Linux is what the real world uses. Also there was no way anything was going to use Linux.

      In the mean time she was trying to cut costs, so got a new Linux server, and ran out to buy a MacBook because it was pretty. With leadership like that can anyone figure out why I left?

    • Re:A good move (Score:4, Interesting)

      by danpsmith (922127) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:03PM (#17935640)

      Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it. Versions of Microsoft applications change the UI between versions so even if they do end up working at a Microsoft shop they'll adapt better to the changing UI's between versions. Also a better all round education will open up alternatives to businesses, if the staff are better trained then switching to alternatives will be easier, it can save the economy a fortune in the future.

      I honestly think this is a very good point. The fact of the matter is that the way we instruct computers now is fundamentally flawed. Instead of teaching conceptually how to perform operations with a computer, teachers often instruct students to double-click there and click there, hit F3 and whatever. Computer education should be about education of concept. The ability to adapt from one interface to another is the important ability, not the ability to go through a set of instructions. I had often been worried that if I didn't run Windows I would fall behind in the interface and not be of much use in tech support. The opposite is really true. The more you learn different ways to use different interfaces the more commonality you ultimately see, the better you understand the concepts and the better able you are to diagnose and solve problems of any nature, on any OS.

      It's probably harder to teach concepts than it is to teach point here and click that, but I believe it's essential for computer education. Kids nowadays are already getting interface education free of charge, as most cell phones have different interfaces from one another and portable devices tend to differ in interface as well. The fact that not everyone owns one type of portable and one type of cell phone or camera gives them a chance to explore doing the same tasks with different "menu options" meaning the same thing. The older folks who aren't used to using interfaces are quickly finding themselves behind the ball.

      Fortunately, I'm young enough to keep up. If you have a general idea how certain devices *should* work and options they *should* have, you can often diagnose problems with the more sophisticated printing equipment, applications, just about any OS or portable device. People need to learn the concepts of how things work instead of just finding a windows keyboard shortcut to launch the control panel.

    • What are you talking about? Of course Russia almost entirely uses Windows, and nothing is going to change in the short-term.

      Teaching variations on a program or an operating system is a waste of time for most people. The skills will easily transfer. It's not like you master using Word, but then go back to square one when you load up another word processor.

  • backfired (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaMattster (977781) on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:35AM (#17935282)
    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!

    • Re:backfired (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hercules Peanut (540188) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:15PM (#17935800)

      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?
    • Yes, shoot first ask questions later, is a good way to start a business in one of the biggest emerging markets, especially in a country, stuffed with very proud people who do not have too many problems except one, they do not like to be mocked with from the outside, especially not in a very arrogant way!

  • We've seen this before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UnknowingFool (672806) on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:36AM (#17935298)
    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.
    • This wasn't some case that Microsoft could decline to prosecute. In fact, Microsoft declined to assist with the prosecution in this case.

      Given the extent of rampant copyright violation that goes unpunished in Russia, I'm more likely to believe this case was the result of someone trying to make a political point, either against copyrights or because of a personal grudge, rather than that of the police legitimately pursuing a copyright violator.

    • 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.

      MS have, in all likelihood, learned their lessons very well. What they have is actual global figures for their performance, and we Slashdot readers have only 3 anecdotes in this story. They can afford a policy that costs them a few users here but raises profits in many other places.

      Yet, the Novell deal sounds new, doesn't it? Migration to a Lin

  • Peugot Citroen can use the savings. They had a bad year and are about to slash jobs. They make brilliant cars though. When the DS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroen_DS [wikipedia.org] came out in 1955, the rest of the world was stil in the stone-age. Without any of the fancy stuff, my Saxo does 25 km on a liter of diesel, (that is 58 miles to the gallon for you gas-guzzlers!).

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Ed Avis (5917)
      Yes - and what's more, in 1955 the Amiga had multitasking, a 3d accelerated desktop, and full-motion videoconferencing, but ignorant LEO users dismissed these features as making the Amiga a mere 'toy' and not suitable for real business use.
      • Without memory protection? I agree with them. Any program crashing could bring down the whole system, and could access any other memory address in the system. It allowed for some nifty hacks, but it was a glass house of a system, throwing stones back and forth with every program execution.
    • Not having kept my eye on the car market, it is difficult for me to say how good a car maker they are. But you using as an example a car from 1955 doesn't really help support your opinion any.
  • I'll never find out, but it would be good to know if the deal between Novell and Microsoft figured strongly into the desktop selection.

    The adoptions sound good, but when money is involved there's a "winner takes all" environment which I think Microsoft wants to promote. Later on, they can assimilate or crush them easily.

  • Should work even better than the old successful IBM FUD piece "Nobody has been fired for buying IBM". And like good FUD pieces, it has some truth in it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ashitaka (27544)
      I like this. Good advertising should be surreptitious, sneaking up in the reader's conscience and adjusting their behaviour without requiring much thought.

      "No one ever had to pay thousands of dollars in license penalties for using Linux"

      "No one had to re-activate their software when using Linux"

      etc.
      • > I like this. Good advertising should be surreptitious, sneaking up in the reader's conscience and adjusting their behaviour without requiring much thought.
        > "No one ever had to pay thousands of dollars in license penalties for using Linux"
        > "No one had to re-activate their software when using Linux"

        Have you seen the great new Apple Switch ad [apple.com]? It features a Vista firewall intercepting every sentence Mac & PC say to each other and requiring confirmation for each one.
  • The summary implies that all schools in Russia will be switching over.

    But the linked article only says that schools in the Perm region will switch to Linux.

  • Several words about russian mentality (Score:4, Informative)

    by MemoryDragon (544441) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:14PM (#17935786)
    Drink with them, make friendship, du not fully trust them, too many crooks, but many also are nice, make business with them, but never every try to be arrogant against them or bully them. They are very proud people, and the usual american arrogance is not really accepted. (I am not russian and live in central europe btw.)

    The russian mentality in many ways is somewhat different to the usual western mentality, you really have to be open to keep friendships with them or generally deal with them and you have to learn their ways to some degree.

    • s/russian/american

      THanks for the warning, but I'm an American and hve been dealing with that mentality my whole life.

  • Re: Teacher sent to jail for buying Windows (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shadowspar (59136) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:14PM (#17935796) Homepage

    "It would seem that after the recent Russian debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing 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."

    Excellent! This is exactly the kind of strong government action we need to see more of. Obviously the Russian government sees quite clearly that Windows' DRM, lack of security, and general brokenness presents both an economic and security threat to the state, and is willing to take a stand to prevent this cancer from spreading any further. I think anybody who voluntarily buys a copy of Windows deserves to spend time behind bars, and now it's time for Western governments to step up to the plate and make this a reality.

  • Airborne! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kidcharles (908072) on Thursday February 08 2007, @02:11PM (#17937424)

    Teachers are not that happy about it. Apparently not many of them know much about Linux and there are no specialists around to teach them.

    Sounds like we need to paradrop some bearded Linux hackers into the Perm region for an emergency education operation. Some of the heavier ones may need two parachutes.

    • Threatening to use Open Source is Negotiating Ploy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by evw (172810) on Thursday February 08 2007, @11:28AM (#17935184)
      Although it sounds very grand when whole countries or states or cities make a lot of noise about switching to open source software, if you follow them to the conclusion it always seems to work out the same: they end up sticking with Microsoft. I suspect that Microsoft comes in a makes them a sweet deal (maybe they'll open the source code a little, maybe they'll drop the price) and in the end they stick with Microsoft. As more and more groups do this, I think it's just part of the negotiation.

      "We've already established what you are, ma'am. Now we're just haggling over the price."

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Divebus (860563)
      ...just like Steve Ballmer flew in to "help" the city of Munich decide against Linux desktops. To quote a famous Princess; "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

    • Kind of makes me want to move overseas so I can work with a good stable OS

      Uh, not that there aren't good reasons to move to Europe, but you can run Linux anywhere. If you absolutely must use Office, for example, Crossover [codeweavers.com] is cheap.

      Having recently made the jump myself after years of switching back and forth, I'm curious to hear why others who want to run Linux can't or won't. I develop Windows applications professionally, but I can run everything I need under VMware Workstation, which I needed for testin

      • In my case it's because of games, mostly. Give me a virtualized solution that lets me play games at 90% native speed and I'll switch.
        Different people than me use specialized software for which no alternative exists, or special hardware for which no drivers exist. Besides, competing with free as in pirated when you're free as in no-apps-for-that-exist isn't easy.
        • Small clarification: [...] play all exotic games I feel like trying out without any problems whatsoever and negligible pain during installation, by providing a FULLY EMULATED environment. 90% D3D compliance doesn't cut it, "you need to wait 18 months and maybe we'll add special support for that game that nobody but you plays... eventually" does not cut it. :D

    • Re:Wasn't Linux always more popular there? (Score:4, Informative)

      by oliderid (710055) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:03PM (#17935634)
      I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong?

      Yes your are (still) wrong. but it depends of the market we are talking about. If you mean the web server market, clearly Linux won. If you mean the desktop PC market, Linux is almost non-existant.

      Concerning corporate/administration networks, each migration from Windows to Linux makes headlines (Munich city, French Police/Gendarmerie with Open Office, Swedish army, etc.). So I guess it is still considered as "extraordinary" events. Most are still running Windows. But it may change with the official support for Open standard/format that I've seen in recent call of tenders. Microsoft will clearly lose a big advantage.

      The situation in Europe isn't that different from the US, except maybe that the Microsoft lobby is less powerful.

    • Re:Wasn't Linux always more popular there? (Score:4, Informative)

      by soliptic (665417) on Thursday February 08 2007, @12:33PM (#17935986) Journal
      Yes, you were wrong. It's pretty much completely unheard of at home or at work. MS utterly dominates. At work we've got one Linux server now (as in: within the last year), cos I helped push towards use of an OSS CMS (plone as it happens), but apart from that, it's all MS. If I went around the office I doubt more than a couple of people would have even heard of Linux. MS having an uphill battle to get in?!? Absolutely not. (Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about the super big Enterprisey systems. I doubt it's much different to the US tbh - there's Linux adoption but the Linux installs are probably replacing Unix more than anything else.)
    • This page [linux.org] on linux.org mentions several LUGs in Russia that could help teachers, students, and others learn how to use Linux.

      The article on mosnews.com mentions that

      Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies

      And in fact there is a LUG in Perm -- contact info is for victor_v [at] permonline.ru, and they have a website here [nevod.perm.su]. The news page on the site hasn't been updated since 1999, but hopefully "Victor V" is still around and could perhaps give a crash course to the tea

    • They don't seem to grasp the concent of "if you want something you have to pay for it". Without funding, it wouldn't exist in the first place.

      Please explain where that's Russia's problem.

    • Ahem Russia with approx 300 mio people is one of the bigger emerging markets. This is really a severe blow to Microsoft, I hope some chairs are now flying! Russians are generally nice, but they are somewhat different, they do not like to be bulled with from out outside (they do their bullying themselves)
    • Aren't puns by definition supposed to be terrible? With Novell's moves lately, Citroën may very well have bought a lemon, and the visual similarity between the words... the pun's funny on multiple levels. Just because you don't get it...

    • YOu've driven a Peugeot? Owned one for longer than 6 months? I thought lemon was almost funny in that context.

    • Paying for people's NON-work (Elvis is dead. No one who makes money from his work now has contributed anything significant to the art) is antithetical to a healthy society. It's a social malaise.

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