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"Then, they fight you"

Posted by Cypress on · 2 comments
janimo.blogspot.com; By Cypress 		Mail this story
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Learn how the Romanian Microsoft branch is using bully tactics to convince Romanian universities not to indulge in open-source promotion. This is happening NOW. It is shameless, it is irritating, it is illegal.

There's a CS/informatics competition for high school students being held this weekend in Cluj and it is combined with educational software presentations from software companies for informatics professors.

I asked the organizers if our Free Software Group could hold a short session about the benefits of FOSS in education, with references to Ubuntu, Edubuntu and Kiwilinux and we were given a slot after the ones which had already been planned a while ago - those of Microsoft, Cisco and a local company that sells education software for Romanian schools.

That was two days ago but yesterday we were notified that the Microsoft representative in charge with the education strategy had requested the organizers to pull the Ubuntu presentation because it is 'unfair competition' to hold such a presentation at an event sponsored by them. They are indeed co-sponsors but the conference is organized by the Ministry of Education and its local office, and is being held on the premises of a public University.

It is sad to know they are resorting to this sort of coercing and that they have such influence over the educators but looking on the bright side of it, and that's how I perceived it after thinking a bit about it, THEY ARE SCARED :)

We were also promised to be given the opportunity to present at a later date to a similar group of professors in June.

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Comments (2)

MS's "initiatives" focusing upon E. European education?

vainrveenr ·
Likely to be some connection between the stifled CS session about the benefits of FOSS in education at the Cluj, Romania school and this week's earlier incident less than 400km West of this.

'Steve Ballmer Egged in Hungary!', http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/103141/index.html 'Steve Ballmer Gets the Egg-Treatment in Budapest', http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBQ4UCXQeo

Translation

Cypress Story submitter ·
Translation from a comment post on a blog discussing the subject:

"There was an official inquiry from the Free Software Group regarding a presentation about the advantages of free software and open standards in education. This [inquiry] was accepted for 1 day, the following day someone from MS asked the organizers to cancel the presentation, motivating that the Free Software Group did not support the project financially. This is where I see the injustice. Why do you have to give tens of thousands of Euros to the Ministry [of Education] to be allowed a presentation in an academic environment? WHY? Why should be such a presentation canceled when there was still room in the event's timeframe?"

ORIGINAL TEXT: "A exista o cerere oficiala si din partea Grupului pentru software liber pentru o prezentare despre avatajele software-lui liber si a standardelor deschise in educatie. Aceasta a fost acceptata pentru 1 zi, urmand ca in a doua zi, cineva de la MS sa ceara organizatorilor retragerea prezentarii pe motiv ca Grupul pentru software liber nu a sustinut financial concursul.

Eu aici vad nedreptatea. De ce pentru o prezentare intr-un mediu academic trebui sa sponsorizezi ministerul cu zeci de mii de euro? DE CE?

De ce trebui retrasa o astfel de prezentare cand este loc in program?"

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