It is interesting that in the same week Russian Mac users are petitioning for Russian localization of OS X Tiger that Russia is named as a major offender in global CD piracy. Of course, this study was limited to music CDs, not software but it isn’t hard to guess why Apple, Microsoft and others are hesitant to turn out Russian versions of their software.
I should say this is nothing I have against Russians. In fact I lived in Ukraine for two years and speak Russian. Having lived in the former Soviet Union, I also know you can buy Windows on the street for $5.
If anything, I’m as anti-Microsoft and pro-freeware as you can be. But I do believe in honoring licenses. And I’m confident you can find a Linux distribution with Russian support or tweak the Cyrillic support already in the OS. Just don’t count on a change of heart until the atmosphere improves.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.