While there’s been a lot of attention paid in the last couple of months to Russia’s use of Microsoft to charge nonprofit groups they don’t like with copyright infringement (something that Microsoft is now trying to reverse), there was also another controversy in Russia a few years back concerning Microsoft. You may remember that Russian prosecutors were threatening to send a Russian school headteacher to a Siberian prison camp due to “pirated” software on school machines. In that case, the school had bought what it thought was legitimate copies of the software that later turned out not to be. The guy was found guilty, and while the court did spare him from being sent to Siberia (which really was one of the options), they did fine him half his monthly salary.

In response to this high profile case, many Russian schools started to switch to Linux, and in response to that, Russia apparently declared that all schools should switch to Linux-based software by 2008.

However, apparently that didn’t actually happen. Glyn Moody points us to the news that another Russian school teacher has been fired for complaining that his school still used Microsoft software. Even though the 2007 order required schools to switch to Linux, apparently a training system the government is making the school use requires Microsoft Office. So the teacher filed a complaint, pointing out the contradiction in orders… and for his efforts he was fired.

This seems like a fairly ridiculous response to someone simply pointing out a contradiction in the rules, doesn’t it?

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