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IBM Opens A Linux Training Center In Russia

Posted by timothy on Sat Oct 11, 2003 05:43 PM
from the nyet-nyet-nyet-for-darl dept.
IBM GNU is Not Unix Linux Business
prostoalex writes "IBM and Russian Ministry of Communications announced the opening of the first Linux Competency Center in Moscow. Representative of the goverment was quoted saying that such a center will help 'create a Linux ecosystem enabling Russian hi-tech companies to expand into global markets faster. IT solutions based on Linux and open standards will open up great opportunities to businesses in Russia.' This news piece in Russian also quotes Russian government official planning to expand the Linux initiative into provincial cities as well, if the center in Moscow turns out to be a viable idea."
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[+] Linux: Linux To Be Installed In Every Russian School 293 comments
J_Omega writes "According to an article from last week at the Russian IT site CNews, Linux is slated to be installed in every Russian school by 2009. The article makes it appear that it will be going by the (unimaginative) name 'Russian OS.' As stated in the article: 'The main aim of the given work is to reduce dependence on foreign commercial software and provide education institutions with the possibility to choose whether to pay for commercial items or to use the software, provided by the government.' Initial testing installations are supposed to begin next year in select districts. Is 2008/09 the year of Linux on the (Russian) desktop?"
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  • Repeat after me (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ya lyublyu Microsoft Windows.
  • ...no, no, I won't. Millions after me will, though.

    I see this as a good thing. Open source will definitely help give some countries a good advantage into getting on a competitive tech level with the rest of the world. Of course, if enough non-America nations wind up embracing Linux as their sort of official operating system, we could have a situation like the English units/metric units thing... but maybe I'm looking too far ahead. Or maybe I'm just being stupid.

    • Great News for Russia: Linux and Moody's Upgrade (Score:4, Interesting)

      by reporter (666905) on Saturday October 11 2003, @06:21PM (#7191891) Homepage

      News that IBM is opening a Linux Competency Center in Russia comes a day before Moody's Investors Service upgrades Russia's foreign debt to investment grade, according to "Russia Earns Investment-Grade Status [voanews.com]". These developments are wonderful news for Russia and the West.

      Russia certainly has many flaws: there are signs that civil rights are being abridged in Russia under the Putin government. However, Russia is far ahead of China in human rights, civil rights, and basic decency. Consider the recent atrocity described in "China Detains Health Official for Publicizing AIDS Coverup [washingtonpost.com]". The Chinese arrested (and possibly tortured) a person for revealing that Chinese officials had attempted to sell AIDS-tainted blood products to Americans in the USA.

      It is a no-brainer as to which country deserves American support. American companies should bypass China and put all their investments into Russia and Eastern Europe. American consumers can encourage the American companies to do so by boycotting any product or service that is "Made in China" (which includes "Made in Hong Kong" or "Made in Taiwan"). Furthermore, we should pull our money out of mutual funds that invest in any company located in China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan).

      It is imperative (for the preservation of Western society) that Russia outperforms China economically. The Russian value system shares much more in common with the American value system than the Chinese value system.

      ... from the desk of the reporter [geocities.com]

    • Of course, if enough non-America nations wind up embracing Linux as their sort of official operating system, we could have a situation like the English units/metric units thing...

      I disagree with you on this point. I think the problem is that many Americans have never heard of Linux. If more people new that they could get a free operating system, more people would use it. All that most people want with a computer is internet, email, and an office suite. These things are no harder to use in Linux than
    • Interesting comparison with the units/metric system; the metric system is more thought through, but many people stay with units as they are used to it... Much like Linux and Windows - many people stay with Windows as they are used to it and haven't yet recognized the superiority of Linux beeing open source.
  • Ballmer just got the Microsoft private jet out, and is on his way to sell the Russians Windows XP and Office at a GREATLY reduced price ;)
    • In Russia all MS products de facto cost $3 for 650MB for companies smaller than 50 employees. People just buy them on the flea-markets.

      So I do not see Ballmer in Moscow any time soon with such mission. :-) It could work for Munich, Germany, but not for Moscow, Russia.
  • IBM trains you

  • To be the first Russian to comment on it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by egork (449605) on Saturday October 11 2003, @05:51PM (#7191767) Homepage Journal
    These are great news.

    Just a year or so Russian Ministry of Education approved a deal to Microsoft, not to local educational system developers. It was a normal case with a rumors of bribery wich usually turns out to be true.

    Today we see that technological superiourity and the development model of Linux opens the doors even in Russian political system.

    I am happy for Russia, and you know, we have a lot of smart people who will contribute back to Linux soon.
  • ... Subject says all.

  • English is great. European languages... okay. But how many friggen users can read Russian? You expect us to believe that Soviet Russia actually reads the trolls?

    Geez.
  • Imagine Selvestre Stallone promoting this new center for IBM:

    Rocky: Yo, Adrian! Check this out! ADRIAAAAAN!
    Adrian: I CAN'T DO IT ANYMORE, ROCKY! Windows has hidden it's network configuration from me and put it in another place where I can't find it! IT'S JUST TOO MUCH!
    Rocky: Yo Adrian, I was just doing some pull-ups on this tree branch out in the middle of nowhere, with two-foot logs tied to my shins, and I saw IBM opening a Linux Competency Center over there! Yo!
    Suddenly, Mr. T appears out of nowhere
  • somehow I don't see the USSR running anything out of Digital or AT&T... They probably developed their own operating systems and hardware... does anyone know what this was or weather it was developed after the fall of the Soviets?
  • Linux training centers open IBM!

  • Russia and IBM (Score:4, Funny)

    by surfcow (169572) on Saturday October 11 2003, @06:05PM (#7191831) Homepage
    One is a huge, slow-moving, ultra-conservative, monolithic bureauocracy which has recently been forced by circumstance to open up to unconveltional methods ...

    and the other is Russia.

    =brian

  • Say Nyet to .NET! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Say Nyet, say Nyet...to .NET!

  • Rough translation of the russian text (Score:4, Informative)

    by parkanoid (573952) on Saturday October 11 2003, @06:27PM (#7191908)
    This is the best I can make of it:

    The Ministry Of Communications will promote Linux.

    Yesterday, the Ministry of communications and information of Russian Federation and IBM corporation have signed an agreement about the creation of a Linux competency center in Moscow. Among its tasks will be not only support of governmental institutions in using Linux, but also testing and porting of applications based on open source. Up to 60 people (including foreign specialists from IBM) will be employed at the center, which will open in 2004.

    (snipplets follow, translating the whole thing will take too long):

    -The center will be located on the territory of a university, and students will also take part in its work.

    -The federal government already has limited experience in using IBM technologies

    -"Our task now becomes usage of open source programs in making current and future systems in the government work as a whole" (A. Korotkov)

    -Experience shows that, in other governments, open source software may constitute 30% of [all software]. Our country is far behind that, and it's unlikely that usage of standard software, such that [software products by] Microsoft, can be left behind completely due to the aggressive promotion by the manufacturers.

    -"Open source programs aren't completely free, and I cannot say how much we will have to pay for the center"

    -The resources ... will include Intel-architecture IBM eServer xSeries, high-performance Linux clusters, data storage systems. Use of the full specter of IBM software for linux, including WebSphere, DB2, Lotus, Tivoli and Rational, is expected.

    -The first meeting [between the sides] occured back in september 2002.

    -Once the center [is fully operational, tested, etc], similar centers may be deployed in other cities.

    -"This will save tremendous amounts of money for the budget, and this is just the beginning" (minister of communications)

    Pardon any awkwardness in the language, it's hard to translate on the fly.
  • We have several Linux user groups here
    and the penetration is very high - for instance every businness here in russia uses linux for sure... bc it saves bucks and opens up some deals.
    Generally linux prevails here (i live in siberia)... Every government entity won't buy microsoft snake oil but hire competent sysadmins/developers to support some apps.
    So the support is very strong here.
  • Representative of the goverment was quoted saying...

    Pardon my ignorance, but is the Russian government so unstable that its members can't even be named in a press statement? That is, do we not expect this guy to be in office next week, or what...?
  • I will post an accurate translation of that article in about 5 mins as a reply to this post. Start counting!
    • IBM has signed an agreement with Russia's Department of Communications as part of an effort to increase the use of Linux within Russia's government. A "Linux Computer Center" will be created in Moscow that will hire up to sixty people (including IBM's own specialists) by early 2004. It's purpose will not only be to encourage government organizations to use Linux--the employees will also spend time testing the operating system source code and porting applications to this platform.

      The Center's location wi
  • Great news but will it make any difference? Linux is seen as a "cheap" alternative to Microsoft in the West, but when you can purchase virtually ANY piece of software for 2$ at any corner store, why would people want to switch/learn about Linux? Those who want already do know what Linux is.

    By the way, how come no one has ever discussed OwL Linux [openwall.com] here -- a security-enhanced operating system made in Russia. It is worth a mention.
  • One of the VA Software SourceForge developers is based in the Ukraine. Just an excellent engineer. We only met him for the first time a few months ago -- he's been with the team for over two years. Shows what can be done using SourceForge for distributed development. It's great to see staff in the Ukraine, US and Japan all working together on new development and bug fixing.

  • There's a really interesting org called the Long Bets Foundation [longbets.org] which takes bets that won't be resolved for many years. One for the first was Esther Dyson's for ten grand:

    "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect." [longbets.org]

    It will be interesting to see if the world looks back in nine years at this event and sees it as a turning point.

  • ...nothing is enough for them!

    First, they conquered 10% of our territory during WWII, as they wouldn't have had enough already. Now, they're hijacking our uni department [helsinki.fi], too!

    Couldn't they just go and download some MS stuff from KaZaa?
      • Finland was only one of several pawns that got traded during pre-war times. Other pawns were on both sides; Hitler took some Austria, Stalin took some Poland... Say what you want, but those times were tough and unfair - and that was only the beginning.
  • IBM has a major presence in Austin -- and one of the things they've been able to use as a (quite lucerative) bargaining chip with potential customers is use of their local labs to port our software (which already runs on Linux) to their big-iron hardware (or to AIX).

    I'm curious whether their Russian "Linux Competency Center" will also have an AIX box or two available -- basically, I'd be unsuprised if this is something completely new for them as opposed to having similar facilities elsewhere.
  • Personally, I think Russia is a far better place to encourage technology than China. Russians are nice people, and their government is slowly but surely becoming more reasonable as the years go on. The Chinese government, on the other hand, doesn't really like the US and is only trading (er, dumping their goods) with us just so they can raise the money needed to build up their military. China will never allow US companies to penetrate their markets or make any money there...

    The United States and Russia
    • "Russians are nice people"
      And the Chinese aren't? You should know of course, having personally met over 50% of all Chinese and Russian citizens (isn't that around 600 million people?). I doubt that you ever met a single native Russian or Chinese person.

      "their government is slowly but surely becoming more reasonable as the years go on"
      After Putin came into power the government's grip on the "independent" TV and print media has clearly tightened. And of course there is Chechnya, but that is a different de
    • Russia (and many russians) is currently wary of the USA. Too many threats and unfriendly moves come from North American continent recently. For example, NATO expansion, military alliance with Georgia, military bases in Central Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan... whether you like it or not, Rissia sees itself surrounded, because it is. Why those restless, emire-building americans can't just stay at home and be happy, like everyone does?
  • Will they be rounding up capatalist^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft sympathizers and shipping them off to Syberia?

    --

    • Will they be rounding up capatalist^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft sympathizers and shipping them off to Syberia?

      I hope so! Let the Microsoft apologizers freeze to death in Siberia, because this Linux training center is in Moscow.
  • As far as I know Sun has MUCH stronger market presence there than IBM. Why? Because their hardware is cheaper. The main purpose of IBM coming to this market is to push their hardware there (and then services when buyers discover what kind of poorly-cobbled-together crap they've bought). In Russia this is a hard thing to do, there are not that many companies with multimillion dollar IT budgets. Some can afford Sun servers and workstations, and virtually nobody can afford ultra-expensive IBM mainframes. Also,
      • IBM isn't making money on their Intel hardware (nobody but Dell and HP do) they make money on mainframes and support. So the main reason for them to come to Russia is to try sell their overpriced junk.

  • here's the real deal (Score:3, Interesting)

    by golgotha007 (62687) on Sunday October 12 2003, @04:57AM (#7193656)
    As an American living in Russia, let me tell you about the linux scoop:
    there is practically no linux here. why? because MS is free, or practically free.
    I can run down to the metro station and pick up MS winxp, MS office for 2 bucks a pop (licenses included).
    Games and DVD's are no different, and they have all the latest stuff.
    it's quite common when purchasing commerical software that the 'crack' resides on the same CD as the software.
    Games are just the same
    Russia has a beyond serious pirating problem (I'm sort of not complaining, I was tired of paying $50 per game in the US).

    If a business has an option to run on linux for free or windows for free, they would probably choose windows, and that's what they do here.

    I would love to see some member of the SPA or MS come here and try to do an company audit on any of the businesses here. i guarantee you these people would be left crawling out of the building with broken legs.

    I've been a linux consultant and my business has been running since 1999, and in the States we're doing pretty good. I thought it would be easy to do some consulting here in Russia.

    are you kidding? the only consulting I've been doing here is for a company in Sweden...

    because internet costs here by the megabyte (usually between 3 and 6 cents per meg), i've written an accounting and billing application (iptables, php, mysql) that counts packets NAT'd behind the firewall for each machine. the whole thing runs on linux, and i'm finding more and more private underground networks that are more than willing to adopt linux to perform this function.

    believe me, i'm trying like mad to get people interested in linux over here, but the fact that all MS products are practically free keeps getting in the way.
    • I'm willing to bet a nickel that Microsoft is (1) extremely well aware of this and (2) biding their time until they make a case about this. Right now in their view, piracy gets them market share and people can't afford MS products. Once they have the market locked down and people can afford to pay for software (they may already, I don't know)-- MS will strike down on piracy.
      • Why do I get the feeling that the posts about $2 MS products in Russia are being made by MS representatives?

        ack, have at you! i've never been so insulted...

        The main reason that I ask is that I keep seeing all of these posts about how Linux isn't used much in Russia because MS is $2 on the corner (always $2).

        ok, ok i'll be a bit more honest. i've seen winxp for between 60 and 120 roubles, which is between $2 and $4.

        i've been living in Saint Petersburg now for 6 months. i haven't met a fellow linux
  • As it stands now, there is no future for Linux in Russia. Two main reasons for this are:

    Desktop is taken by MS. Contrary to other countries, there is no reason to switch to Linux to save money because Linux and WinXP costs the same - about $3. You can buy pirated XP and almost any Windows software and development tools for the same cost - about 100 rubels - everywhere. What works for Linux in eastern countries doesnt work in Russia.

    Servers are taken by FreeBSD. Ask any russian sysadmin and you will hear th

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