Russian Prime Minister Prefers Open Source
I hope everyone had a happy new year holiday and welcome back to the real world. In a move that I am sure many will use to vindicate those who think of open source advocates as a bunch of “long haired, hippie, pinko, commie, leftists – it seems the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin is ordering that the Russian government transition to open source by the second quarter of 2012. While the former KGB official has not been spotted wearing a Penguin button or anything like that, it seems that he is a big fan of Linux.
While we all of course know that Russia is no longer ruled by a communist government, a move this large is significant. One would have to wonder if Steve Ballmer or some other Microsoft exec is not already on the way to Moscow to try and undo this. It is one thing for a third world smaller country to adopt Linux, even for a country the size of Brazil to do so. But when a country the size of Russia does it, maybe 2011 will really be the year that we see governments around the world move to open source.
While for many of these moving to open source means moving to a Linux OS for servers, the rest of the open source stack is usually not far behind. It probably also signals the acceleration of the death of the rest of the Unix variants as well as even Novell Netware. So this doesn’t just hurt Microsoft.
Of course signing an order and actually having it carried out are two different things in today’s Russia. But with Putin behind it, it will probably receive more attention that it would otherwise. What will be even more interesting is if we see an copy cat type of moves by other governments. I suppose the smart thing to do would be a wait and see how it turns out.
For those American patriots out there don’t forget that President Obama has also indicated a strong desire for open source solutions being used by the US government as well. Lets see which government does a better job of adopting open source per its leaders wishes. Anyone want to take any bets?
All kidding aside though, the path ahead is clear. At least in the public sector the message is coming down from high and far. Open source is the way to go. Now government IT administrator have to heed the message and get busy!
