In a major victory for the Linux operating system, Russia has mandated that all Russian schools will be using open source software by 2009. Open source is indeed a great learning environment and it is unfortunate that students here in the US continue to have their educations dumbed down by being forced to use Windows based products.
Already Russia is again emerging as an economic superpower due to energy resources, see post regarding move to sell energy in rubles, and this move to Linux will clearly now position them to surpass the U.S. in software development.
With Microsoft’s largest customer now the Pentagon and its foundation openly violating rules governing non-profit organizations by using itself as a conduit for installing donated Microsoft products in schools and libraries around the country and creating a dependancy on these products, one has to wonder how Microsoft would fare in a truly competitive environment. Today it is succeeding on government contracts as smart organizations rapidly adopt open source, not only for cost reasons yet more importantly the capacity to innovate more quickly with new products and services.
