07.20.12
Microsoft Corruption in Russia Helps Derail Migrations to GNU/Linux
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Summary: Update on the situation in Russia and the role played by Microsoft-funded ‘analysts’
THE salesmen from IDC (dressed up as “analysts”) and the Gartner Group might have to finally admit that those ‘studies’ Microsoft buys from them are a sham. In his personal blog, one Gartner chum calls Vista 8 “bad”. Yes, even the Microsoft- and Gates-funded Gartner has its analysts say about Vista 8: “In a word: Bad.” It’s not an official position, as Microsoft typically pays them to just say what Microsoft pays them to say.
This makes one wonder. Why don’t more governments and businesses move to GNU/Linux? For one thing, Microsoft’s goons from Gartner (people like Silver) discourage this, as we last showed some days ago. Well, as we also showed before, in Russia-centric wiki pages for example, there has been a lot of funny business and misconduct. While Putin said that Russia would move to GNU/Linux within several years, his colleague Medvedev was meeting Microsoft and it is alleged that Russia is dumping GNU/Linux. To quote a Russian blogger:
The winner of the tender was the company PingWin Software, owned by… Leonid Reiman. What was the distribution they offered? It was… face-lifted Mandriva! Yes, you read it right. The prototype of Russian National Software Platform, due to be used in Russian state-owned organisations and in schools, was French! At the same time, Russian teams like ALT Linux or RBK-Soft (currently Armada), were left outside. Is it just a coincidence that the investment fund NGI, which manages the money of Mr.Reinman, partially owns Mandriva too?
That was actually only half of the trouble. The fate of Russian Government, including the Ministry of Defence, could be given to foreign (French) developers. But, at least, that could be an open-source product based on open source principles.
Things actually got worse since February 2012. Many changes happened in Russian politics since that time. The most famous of them was a castling between the President and Prime Minister. Ex-president Medvedev is now a Prime Minister, and ex-President ex-Prime Minister Putin is now a President again.
Mr.Medvedev made significant changes in the Cabinet. One of the most notable was the appointment of 29-year old Nikolay Nikiforov as a new Minister of Telecommunications.
Less than a month after the appointment of the new Minister, the curator of the National Software Platform Ilya Massukh resigned. This is how he explained his resignation: Mr.Nikiforov thinks that National Software Platform is futile and has no future. Instead, Mr.Nikiforov suggests getting proper discounts for… Microsoft software! As first steps in this process, Mr.Nikiforov has already taken part in talks with Microsoft representatives during the Saint-Petersburg Economic Forum in early June.
[...]
Why does Mr.Nikiforov like Microsoft so much? The possible reason is that this is not his first acquaintance with this company. He has his photo published on the Microsoft site in one of the press-releases. Nikolay Nikiforov helped to translate Microsoft Windows 7 and Office 2010 to Tatar language while being regional Minister of Telecommunications in the Russian region of Tatarstan. Old roots are growing bigger, obviously.
ALT Linux complained about IDC helping Microsoft derail deployment of GNU/Linux in Russian schools. We never forgot this. █
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