The news have been making the rounds about Alexander Ponosov, a secondary school teacher in Russia who is being accused of software piracy. Since the penalty he faces for something that doesn actually includes time in a siberian labor camp (I am not joking, this is right out of Les Miserables), things have scaled to the point that Mikhail Gorbachev wrote an open letter to Bill Gates, pleading that Ponosov’s prosecution be halted.
Now Technocrat links to a MosNews report that because of the case, Russian schools will be switching to Linux.
Linux is the clear winner out of a dispute between the Russian legal authorities and schools over who should carry the can over the use of pirated Windows software, The Inquirer magazine reports.
Rather than attacking mobsters who peddle pirated copies of Windows directly to companies, the Russian coppers decided to lock up a Sepich headmaster who bought hot Windows software which came from Perm region’s Capital Construction Administration.
Microsoft says that the incident has nothing to do with them, but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.
At least something good came out of this scandal, and people are realizing that there are alternatives to piracy if you don’t have the budget - alternatives that won’t land you in Siberia. Here’s hoping that Microsoft does the sensible thing and requests that Ponosov not be prosecuted, even if they don’t to it publicly.
Disclaimer: I’m a Mac user for my development machines, and Linux for the servers. Not ranting about open vs. closed here, but it’s clear that open and free alternatives like NeoOffice or The Gimp are more than good enough for most people, and would save them not only money but a lot of grief.
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