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The company Microsoft Rus together with Intel and Volnoye Delo Fund intends to double the number of school PC in Russia in the near future. The software installed on computers within the charity project launched by the fund will cost four-fold less than within the existing education projects, i.e. MS Office + Windows XP will be supplied for $3.
"Could it be that Microsoft is finally facing the reality that: the future is one of open source and if they act now, through deals, they can painlessly become a part of it?"
t seems we’ve arrived upon Microsoft open source. In the last couple of years, whenever there was discussion of Microsoft’s open source projects and efforts such as CodePlex or Port25, there was typically the standard open source response: it’s not OSI-approved; it’s not real open source.
Almost 10 months ago, I wrote the post, "Dear China, Microsoft Wants to Charge You for Air Too" and now Novell follows up with its own plan to charge China for air. The Chinese assume that since Linux is open source that it means that it is less capitalistic and less money driven.
The idea is that you make the center of your product open source, but put the rest under a paid license. This is supposed to make your venture capital backers happy. You gain the benefits of open source but customers aren't "stealing" the software.
Latest examples of Microsoft's strategy, wherein it sends out affiliates to pretend to be FOSS people and then promote software patent deals, separation between Open Source and Free software, departure from the GPL, promotion of "open" core (proprietary) as "Open Source", and demotion of free/libre platforms like GNU/Linux along with free suites/formats like ODF
In my opinion, a major problem with OSI at the moment is that it perpetuates (mainly indeliberately) that a mere license makes something Open Source. In my view, an Open Source license is really the first step in making software Open Source.
HP is among the biggest backers of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the world. As such they've developed their own best practices and tools to help their customers understand what Open Source licenses their applications contain as well as helping to maintain compliance with the terms of the various licenses.