Microsoft had lost the single Windows booting option in school computers in Spain some time ago. But now they are getting back: The Spanish Government announced in a surprising move that an agreement with Microsoft has been signed to give out laptops to primary schoolchildren next year.
This goes waaaaay back. We have reported about the interest Microsoft has in installing its operating system on as many schoolchildrens' laptops as possible here, here and here.
Having lost the single Windows booting option in all regions in Spain and having been ditched in most regions where single boot machines with GNU/Linux over the proposed dual Window/Linux booting is prefered, the people from Redmond have decided to move business into the place where things usually work out best for them: the back room.
[...]
Jose María Lancho, president of HispaLinux, has stated to Público newspaper that the agreement "puts free competition in jeopardy" and reminded the minister that the agreement breaks the law on several counts, including article 49 of the law for Public Sector Contracts that forbids hiring companies which "have been fined due to serious infringements with regards to market discipline matters" - Microsoft has been fined several times in Europe for those exact same reason.
As one person put it, 'Every so often someone says, "It's too late for XXX, Microsoft has *won* that battle!" Well it's time to realize that Microsoft has never learned that one - to their benefit. In fact, Microsoft practically ALWAYS loses the first 2 or 3 battles. But they persist, they practically never give up, and perhaps THAT is one key to their success.'
'Declaring a market battleground "over" and ceding it to Microsoft is THE mistake, because Microsoft certainly doesn't do the same.'
It is time to fight back. Fight for the freedom of this future generation. ⬆
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
The Web is really getting bad; it's also overwhelmed by fake material or plagiarised material, wherein the plagiarism gets disguised/hidden by LLM sausage factories