[plug] Bulgaria embargoes Windows licence renewals

[Shayne O'Neill]

I wonder how much of that is I8N related. I remember reading about israel
moving alot of stuff across to linux, simply for the reason that microsoft
at the time where simply uninterested in hebrew versions of office.

I have a friend who works with burmese democracy activists in burma
(dangerous stuff) and there is basically NOTHING that does burmese text.
Aparently the burmese dont tend to use the unicode segment for burma ,
partly because it tends to be unimplemented, the software doesnt support
it etc etc, so there are oft homebrewed solutions involving a tweaked
ascii character set with alot of characters replaced with burmese
equivilents over hand tweazled open source.

Try doing that on windows! (Granted the best solution is unicode stuff,
but it seems only folks dedicated to the task are interested in it). At
some point when those bloody generals go away they they might want
software to join the modern world with. Odds on windows wont be that
software.

--
"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do
it, that's trustworthiness."
-- George Bush on CNN online chat, Aug.30, 2000
RIAA Copyright notice trap: http://guild.murdoch.edu.au/~shayne/

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Bernd Felsche wrote:

> Heise online reports that the Bulgarian government is stalling on
> renewing 30,000 XP licences at this time. The decision on renewal
> has been left to the next cabinet which will be formed in June.
>
> The Bulgarian Internet Society (ISOC) has set several processes
> against Microsoft in motion and are currently under investigation by
> the federal attorney general. Further complaints have been lodged
> through Bulgaria's Fair Trade and Consumer Protection bodies.
>
> ISOC is currently acting on behalf of United Nations Development
> Programme (UNDP) on implementing the Open Source Project in the
> Balkans. The project involves supporting communities in the
> implementation and training of Linux and OpenOffice. The technical
> coordinator says that demand for the programme is enormous.
>
> The UNDP project is notable in that even in Kosovo, one can find
> support for Linux and OpenOffice. In Kosovo, as in Bulgaria,
> migration has been simplified due to lack of pre-existing standards
> and dependence on Windows.
>
> Original article (in German)
> 	http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/55570
>
> --
> /"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
> \ /  ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus!
>  X   against HTML mail     | Copy me into your ~/.signature
> / \  and postings          | to help me spread!
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.linux.org.au
> http://spark.plug.linux.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
>