Software with a :-) face

Microsoft execs have in the past cast aspersions on open source software, calling it "communistic", so this news story can't help: Cuba Embraces Open-Source Software. I generally agree with free software saint Richard Stallman that people should know what's running inside their machines, especially in publically significant ones like voting machines. But here I'm mostly entertained by what the dregs of Stalinism say and plan.

And students in [Comandante Rodriguez's] own department are cooking up a version of Linux called Nova, based on Gentoo distribution of the operating system.

"No va" being Spanish for "doesn't go", they're anticipating their users' reactions.

"It's basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology," said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.

Dedicated is right, because they're not doing it for remuneration. As Raoul Vaneigem points out in the Situationist critique of Surealism, ideology is the state's replacement for religion and divine right; the self-justifying mythology for its exercise of economic power. The unpalatable alternative to state controlled operating systems is people picking their own software with their own funds. Lenin proteje nos del capitalismo! It's going to big a long march for commie programmers.

Even so, most of the computers at this week's technology conference showed the red, green, blue and yellow Windows start button in the bottom left-hand corner of their screens.

And the start of the open-source sessions was delayed as organizers fiddled with the computer running their projector. The conference room screen had been displaying the words "Windows XP."

Heh. Big brother billg is everywhere.