Schools of the Perm region will minimize the acquisition of commercial software.

Investigative actions against the director of the Ponosov Perm school in connection with the use of unlicensed software in the educational process pushed the regional authorities to a reasonable step: the Minister of Education of the Perm Territory Nikolay Karpushin announced that in the future educational institutions will minimize the use of commercial software and replace more attention will be given to the use of free software.

Here is what Ekho Moskvy radio in Perm writes:

Schools of the Perm region will minimize the acquisition of commercial software. And they will switch to the use of free software. Today, during the press conference, the Minister of Education of the Perm Territory Nikolai Karpushin reported on the measures of “licensed purity” in schools in the Kama Region. On January 26, at a meeting on the implementation of the project “Informatization of the Education System” with the heads of municipal governments and municipal methodological centers, the proposals of experts from the Society for Protection of Copyright and Related Rights were heard. The most acceptable approach was recognized, in which schools would try to use free software, such as Linux operating system, office applications “Russian office”, “Open office”, “LaTeX”. The acquisition of commercial programs will be minimized, said the Minister of Education.
- The path of simple purchase of business and commercial programs from manufacturers, the business approach is not the most correct approach, because it is very expensive. To date, we are ready to acquire or exchange so-called scientific programs. This is an open source, open scientific resource. In fact, software in the form of certain mathematical formulas, which does not require payment and which very simply replaces expensive software.
Currently in world practice there are positive examples of the implementation of this approach. For example, in the British Kings College and the Institute of Information Technology of the Vienna Technical University, only free software is used.

The only pity is that this statement does not affect the case of Ponosov: it will only promote OpenSource to the masses.
I still worry about Alexander Mikhailovich and I hope that Putin’s word will help him in this matter. I can’t even believe that now the prosecutor’s office will take care of this, not as before, but as it was necessary to act from the very beginning. I keep my fists for Ponosov and I hope that they catch the guilty, but not the extreme ones.