Microsoft Turns Many Russian Officials into Linux Supporters
December 19, 2008 |
Russia is a country well known for plenty of cases of copyright infringement everywhere – be it in illegal downloads of music or videos or in use of pirated software. Living here I have to admit – no matter how uncivil it may sound – that we do have a terrible situation in everything copyright-related here.
A couple of years ago the entire country began watching closely a story of a director of a school in a Russian village who was accused of having pirated versions of Windows operating systems installed on a number of machines in the school he supervised.
The thing is that Russian schools are rarely able to afford buying expensive software (like Windows or Office products by Microsoft) as after they purchase computers and are provided with internet connection they rarely get enough money to be able to buy and update the most popular – yet expensive – software products. I know from my own experience that multiple Russian companies can easily be accused of stealing software with various software titles installed on their machines by system administrators who somehow have a habit of easily finding perfectly cracked versions of absolutely every program you may need in your work.
And the school this person worked in was no particular exception as they simply purchased the machines supplied with operating systems installed – and did not bother to check if everything was fine with the software. But for some reason the school was inspected and after the software was found to be illegal, the director of the school was accused of copyright infringement.
Eventually he was pleaded guilty – even though he was only on conditional sentence. The entire process was very loud here and the majority of people here supported the teacher in this ridiculous case when one does not really knows what exactly one buys with a machine – yet one has to face a lawsuit anyway.
The story ran for two years now but today we have an incredible new event to it as after he appealed to a court of superior jurisdiction the teacher was actually pleaded not guilty by this court. So while the teacher himself is now receiving words of support and relief from everywhere and from everyone more or less familiar with the lawsuit, we can’t help but notice one fact: Microsoft completely failed to use the process to its own advantage.
The thing is that the teacher is now a huge supporter of open-source software taking part in various conferences and advocating use of open-source tools in schools and his voice is very loud with lots of supporters everywhere, including from the Russian government. This litigation has definitely demonstrated to many people here that use of copyright-protected software can be dangerous and turned them into supporters of Linux and Open Office.
What’s more, Microsoft could very well use the situation as an excellent PR event if it chose to agree with the government to supply its software products to schools free of charge or with significant discounts – and educating children to use Microsoft products from their early days at school could easily bring them lots of loyal paying customers when the children grow up and are able to afford the products manufactured by the software giant.
But instead of playing smartly and giving something away for free in exchange for substantial revenues in the future, Microsoft now has a full country of people having an additional reason to steal its products and the government that now openly supports use of open-source software or at least software produced by local companies in the Russian schools. So instead of having a rapidly growing market here, Microsoft now has a country with its government officially supporting use of Linux at school. Definitely far from a smart move.
