I couldn’t really come up with a pithy headline. Sorry.
Cuba’s government has decided to switch to using an open source based operating system to give Microsoft the finger (and one supposes, the United States, too). As the Associated Press reports:
“It’s basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology,” said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.
Other countries have tried similar moves. China, Brazil and Norway have encouraged the development of Linux for a variety of reasons: Microsoft’s near-monopoly over operating systems, the high cost of proprietary software and security problems.
It’s not like things are swell for Microsoft at home, either, if sluggish sales of the new operating system Vista are any indication.
