On the 5th June, 1568, counts of Egmont and Horne, in current day Netherlands, were beheaded on the market square of Brussels on grounds of treason by King Philip II of Spain. What’s interesting is that these two gentlemen were loyal to the King and had fought bravely against the French in the Spanish army. What’s more, they were devout Catholic, like the King, in a country that had turned largely Protestant. This raises the question: why were they executed? Egmont and Horne came from a society where rulers were expected to at least listen to their loyal subjects’ arguments. In contrast, King Philip represented a society where a King could expect blind obedience, and anything less counted as lese-majesty.
This cultural gap led to the error in judgment by King Philip. The executions led to outrage and the start of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Empire. Finally the Dutch Republic was formed in 1648 after the Eighty Years’ War.
History is replete with cultural errors of judgment. I think Microsoft made just this kind of error in Russia. I am of course talking about the controversial Windows XP piracy case against the Russian school Principal, Ponosov. The background is that…
Ponosov, was accused of knowingly purchasing computers running pirated copies of Windows XP. Ponosov argued that he had no idea that the operating systems were counterfeit.. Russian leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin came to Ponosov’s defense, and Gorbachev even went as far as asking for Bill Gates’ help in the matter. At the time, a Microsoft spokesperson would only say, “We are sure that the Russian courts will make a fair decision.”
About two weeks ago the judge ruled that this case should be dismissed, since the charges (10,000 dollars and 5 years in jail) were unreasonable. Meanwhile this has become a PR disaster for Microsoft, as described here (thanks Rinka for this pointer)…
Ponosov is unhappy and plans to appeal, he wants to be declared ‘innocent’. Microsoft lost a very important case, made more important by its own making. And Russian officials, schools and Runet are busy discussing what it would take NOT to use Windows.
Before this episode, people were in the Windows camp and couldn’t figure out why they should use open source. Now this episode has given the Linux community in Russia a big boost. If only Microsoft had been culturally more sensitive to the situation rather than being so stupidly legalistic, it could have avoided this mess.
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