A story that we covered here on Monday has received quite some attention, far more than we anticipated. It's basically about a letter composed by two technically-incompetent people, which means it's full of factual errors and serves more as Microsoft endorsement and scare tactics against GNU/Linux, ODF, and Free software. It's about Munich, where two officials got a lot more press than they deserved (even in English-speaking media [1, 2, 3]). As one article put it, "proprietary software companies are known for their public affairs (lobby) large budgets." The article recalls "90 percent discount from then Microsoft CEO Steve 'I've had the time of my life' Ballmer to keep Windows" (a form of bribery in a sense).

"The article recalls "90 percent discount from then Microsoft CEO Steve 'I've had the time of my life' Ballmer to keep Windows" (a form of bribery in a sense)."Continuing the trend and the line which we went along the other day, in this article from the Monday Glyn Moody said that Russian "Members of parliament [are] worried about personal and classified data being sent to the US."

The British media covered this as well, saying that "Russian lawyers have filed a complaint calling for an outright ban – or at least tight restrictions – over the sale of Windows 10 in Russia."

Well, they're right and Munich would be ever so dumb to abandon software Freedom, having already paid a lot to escape the lock-in/exit barrier, whereupon it chooses to be spied on by a hostile country which targets Germany (political espionage). Moving to Windows would mean Vista 10 or later (our contacts at Microsoft says that future version will have even more spying).

Munich is going to stay with Free software, as before, but the Microsoft camp keeps trying to maintain the mythology of failure there. The negative press gives many officials the wrong impressions and scares them, discouraging any other nation-wide moves to GNU/Linux. That's what it's all about. ⬆