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Defective CDs Stall Russia's Plan to Put FOSS in Schools

Last fall we heard the news that Russia mandated all schools in the nation must use free software. The transition was to be completed by the end of 2009 and the number of computers running free software in Russian schools was expected to top one million by 2010. Unfortunately, things haven't gone quite as planned.

Installation disks were recently shipped to school districts and contained four different GNU/Linux distributions so schools could choose the best distro for their particular hardware. A mistake was made by one of the companies responsible for assembling the software, rendering the disks completely unusable.

Since the government's migration plan covered only disk distribution, there are no plans in place to manage the technical aspects of the software installation. As a result, the project has all but come to a halt.

A company spokesperson told one European news agency, "This is one of the largest open source software migrations in the world, and this error is a nightmare."

• education
• schools
• russia

by Craig Harris on Jun. 22, 2009

I am sure the schools could use nice shiny coasters for their lunch rooms!

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by Jesse Babson on Jun. 22, 2009

In Russia, the CD is taken for interrogation!

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by an anonymous user on Jun. 22, 2009

"A mistake was made by one of the companies responsible for assembling the software, rendering the disks completely unusable"

Something tells me the disks were being shipped - Free of Charge - from Redmond, WA...

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by Fred on Jul. 31, 2009

Did anybody check the CD before sending it to all the schools?

OK, so even if they did not, no big deal. Burn a new image and send it to the schools again. Come on this is not rocket science, my 6 year old can install Linux.

Or even let the schools download the image from the web like most everybody else does.

The students can even help, which will actually give them some real life experience.

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