Linux is Communism!

[Samuel Thurston]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Douglas Pollard <dougpol1 at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 12/28/2010 07:23 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>> Sorry, forgot Russia's capitalist now:
>>
>> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/12/putin-orders-russian-move-to-gnulinux.html
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
> I heard that he might do that. I hate to see that happen. I don't think
> it's a good thing for OSS.  A better thing is for OSS to be better where
> people would rather use it and go to the powers that be and say we want
> to use Linux because it is more efficient or in some way better. A
> decree by a dictator does not help Linux.             Doug

For a long time there have been concerns by foreign governments that
MS has permitted "backdoors" for the various US intelligence agencies.
 While I do not believe there is any legitimate evidence to
corroborate this theory, it is nonetheless a concern-- and
unfortunately there's no way to be sure in a sealed system like
windows.  Oftentimes governments require that MS pony up at least part
of their source as part of their licensing agreements. With Linux
however, systemwide audits are possible and therefore in this sense it
is in fact "better than the competition" and that is more or less the
reason for decrees like this.  Governmental procurement processes
rarely allow individual users within the structure to choose their OS
and so it's unlikely you can get even a small fraction of migration in
the absence of such a decree.

It could be argued that Putin who is the appointed Prime Minister of
the democratically elected head of the Russian Federation (Medvedev),
is no more of a dictator than the Vice President of the United States
or any other official of the US's executive branch, and I find it
unlikely Doug that you would bemoan such a declaration if made by one
of them.

What this means in practical terms is thousands more global Linux
users, improved Russian language support and hundreds more eyes likely
contributing to the codebase.  I find it hard to see the downside for
the community.