Pratinha - Chapada Diamantina

Brazil's education system has already decided to embrace Debian GNU/Linux with KDE. It will be served to approximately 52 million children and adolescents. A reader of ours from Brazil recently estimated that GNU/Linux is already used by about 8% of the population in Brazil and by watching the following new article, a shift in momentum becomes rather evident.

Universities that do not use Free Software: Time for a boycott?

I received an email recently from a young man in Brazil who wanted me to come to his university and talk to the students and faculty about using Free Software. I am normally happy to advise universities to use Free Software, but usually this is done in conjunction with some large conference held at the university or some other venue. I just do not have the time to visit each and every school. But I did investigate the university of the student and found that Microsoft was indeed a sponsor of the University. In fact, the university had a large banner on the front page of their web site talking about Microsoft as a partner. It was the first time I saw a university advertising a commercial firm on their home page.

I started doing a little more investigation of the student's city and found that there was another university in the same city that was very active with Free Software. In fact, they had a mirror of Debian software and were actively promoting Free Software.

[...]

Ten years ago a boycott might not have been possible. There were too few universities that had access to enough really good Free Software to ask the students to make a "sacrifice" in forsaking a university that only used proprietary software to teach. Now, with the range of Free Software that is available, and with the marketplace crying out for new programmers trained in Free Software development techniques, and with many more good universities using Free Software to teach courses, the university "marketplace" is ready for the boycott.

“As for IDC, they twist figures or prepare definitions that are biased by design. They are engineered to deceive.”Ina Fried, a known 'Microsoft mole' from CNET, is doing a batch of articles with photos of Brazil's slums and articles about "Linux" (forget the GNU philosophy of freedom). Fried is therefore encouraging the view that only poor people would 'settle' for "Linux" and that it's all about cost.

Remember that CNET was funded by Microsoft's co-founder and it's only a small part of the corporate sponsorship maze in the press.

At the same time, CNET is citing ZDNet (also known as "Ziff/Gates" to some) with the usual bogus numbers from IDC. It's the servers FUD all over again (a quarterly or bi-annual occurrence). We covered this just a few days ago.

As for IDC, they twist figures or prepare definitions that are biased by design. They are engineered to deceive. We saw it and remarked on this before. in reality, Windows servers are claimed to actually be on the decline. Says one reader in Linux Today:

They go to great lengths to mask some numbers. Windows market share is down almost 2% from 38.4% to 36.5%.

Bravo. Good corporate lackey. Ina Fried gets a fluff job from the Microsoft head liar in Brazil and she runs with it THREE times and now you jump on it. Bravo.

--Paul DeGroot, a Directions On Microsoft analyst (a fortnight ago)