[ Thanks to Rex
Djere for this link. ]
“The Russian government recently made a surprising
decision: to create a national operating system based on GNU/Linux.
The motivation for this development is crystal clear: escaping the
Microsoft Windows monopoly. Russia will gain two other huge
advantages due to the shift: lower software expenditures and full
access to the operating system’s source code. The source code
access will allow any discovered security flaws to be quickly
fixed. Russia appears to be following China’s lead. A few years
ago, China also decided to shift to a Linux-based operating system
known as Red Flag Linux. In this article, I will discuss some of
the underlying issues that are causing countries, institutions,
individuals, and governments to defect to GNU/Linux.“Redmond’s Image Problem
“Though Microsoft recently posted an impressive quarterly profit
rise, it is suffering from an acute image problem. This image
problem arises from the common perception that users are locked
into Windows by tactics that are often seen as questionable. Here
are a few of these tactics:”