[ Thanks to Dave Guard for this
link. ]
“‘Former Soviet Union’ is a term that often makes people think
of a somehow original concept of freedom and democracy. You can
observe some heritage looking, for instance, at the facts of
today’s Belarus and Turkmenistan.“Anyway, even there, people always have had the will to express
their ideas and opinions. Think, for instance, of the samizdat, or
of the dissidents.“How could native geeks and computer scientists/engineers miss
the opportunity to contribute to the free software movement as
another expression of freedom and democracy? In this article,
hopefully the first of a short series, I will try to outline the
rise and growth of free software in the former USSR by interviewing
some of the key individuals…”