I mean, if they halted operations, presumably permanently as they seem to imply, it shouldn’t matter right? Since they intend to ditch all their assets and exit the market anyway, right?
Unless this whole thing was a marketing ploy for Western audiences and they plan to start right back up once people stop paying attention. Hmm…
Yeah exactly, if they were serious about leaving then what’s all the fuss about. Looks like a bluff got called.
…with a weaker bluff. It’s childish, like the toothless sanctioning of Biden and Hilary Clinton. Or threatening international volunteers for the Ukrainians with legal action, while inviting Syrian mercenaries at the time. The noises coming out of the Kremlin have become farcical.
Nationalizing stuff is most definitely not a bluff. There is absolutely no reason for them not to do this, what’s the west going to do in response exactly?
Never invest there again. This will hurt Russia long after Putin’s gone.
Just saying, the Western sanctions that started this economic battle have already put Western companies off investing in Russia, for a long time even after the sanctions end. That was their intention
I recall what started the economic battle was Putin invading his neighbor, Ukraine. This has blown past whatever BS he said about the provinces he destabilized and led to a direct attack on the sovereignty of said country. Imagine the wealth that might have been preserved, if only Putin could keep his second-rate army within his borders.
The west was never going to invest there again anyways. Russia’s future is going to be aligned with China and India, the two biggest growing economies in the world.
Yes, as a client state to China, as North Korea is now. And when China and India flare up, Russia will be forced to choose China. Their options only become more narrow, so long as Putin remains in control.
You continue to exhibit stunning lack of understanding of geopolitics or even basic geography. Comparing Russia to DPRK is beyond hilarious, but you go on further with the deranged notion that there’s going to be some China and India flare up when it’s becoming clear that India is patching things up with China right now seeing western insanity. India is currently exploring how to use yuan to pay Russia for energy and just had talks with China about resolving their border dispute.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254958.shtml
If you ever decide to look at a map, then it’ll become crystal clear to you that India’s interests lie with Russia and China.
Why do you think Microsoft not investing in a place would hurt people there?
The company has a history of monopolistic anti-consumer practices (as decided by the US supreme court in 2001 and by the european commission in 2004, and they’re facing another complaint now), anti-worker cartel behaviour (settled charges in 2010, more charges in 2013, and a lawsuit in 2015 was dropped because of timing), and directly attacking public interest technology like open source (a small selection of examples).
Those monopolistic practices have created a software ecosystem that’s dominated by their OS. They aren’t the only solution anymore, but they are still the largest.
How is the government going to handle the use of public computers if Microsoft is getting out of Russia? I mean, I’m sure they already have a lot of pirated copies and old versions of Windows, as any (at least third world) country does, but at some point I don’t see any option to either pirate every copy of Windows or start using Linux.
I’m guessing Linux will end up being the long term solution, and they’ll just keep using old versions of windows before they can phase it out. Astra Linux is the main domestic distro there and I imagine it’ll be getting rolled out more aggressively now.
I don’t see any option to either pirate every copy of Windows
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts 🏴☠️
I know you can pirate it, I doubt a government will decide to launch a national scale campaign to pirate every machine with Windows, it would probably be easier to install Linux any way since you have a lot of older machines.
I think you’re right that government departments would use Linux in the long term… seems to me it could take months, if not years, for workers to learn all the new ways of doing things, virtualise / wrap / port any Windows-only software they’re using, replace or write drivers for any non-Linux-supporting hardware they use, and fill any holes in accessibility tech – I’ve heard that JAWS is a long way ahead of Linux equivalents.
Setting up a fake license server, or rolling out something like MAS using Group Policy might make a lot of sense in the meantime…
I agree there are cases where you need specific software and in that cases it might be hard, but also there are a shit ton of other cases where everything you need is simply a word processor and spreadsheet.
To be clear, I hope places just cut straight to Linux, I’m saying it seems likely there’ll be a transition period. It still takes time to retrain on a different word processor or spreadsheet software, especially if you’ve been using Microsoft’s 20+ hours a week.
Yeah, I know, I know, also people who are not tech savvy, you change the smallest thing to their GUI and they get lost, you need to do some training stuff.
Apple and windows have administrative access to all device right?
Coulnd’t they juste brick 99% of Russia PCs over night if they wanted?
Not sure if they could brick. But it’s possible for them to render the OS installation unusable.
The problem is this: what kind of message does it send to their international market? Not a good one I suppose.
A small part of me wants that to happen, just to really hammer in the fact that open source is the only reliable way to run your tech fleet. Especially if the US hates you.
Even open source is not 100% safe. I mean the other day I was checking out CMake licensing(because I was bored), and I was shocked to find that you can’t use CMake if US hates you. In what universe would such a tool threaten national security?? It’s just stupid
I mean the other day I was checking out CMake licensing(because I was bored), and I was shocked to find that you can’t use CMake if US hates you. In what universe would such a tool threaten national security??
Then it’s not open source. Not by the definition.
Both the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation agree that you cannot put restrictions on what the software can be used for and still call it Open Source or Free/Libre Software, respectively. Not even conditions like no commercial use or no military use are allowed. This is why CC-BY-SA (do whatever you want as long as you cite the creator and re-license under the same or compatible license) is considered an Open Source/Libre license, but both CC-BY-NC-SA (no commercial use) and CC-BY-ND-SA (no derivative works) are not.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
edit: also I’m just sad that a tool I used to trust and love is not really open source as I thought it was:(
I mean, they’re not supposed to be able to per the TOS. Not saying they actually can’t though.
there’s a joke in here somewhere about centrists crying about broken windows 🤔🤔
