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?
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 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…
