‘Halloween Horror Story: Nigeria Buys Windows XP Classmates’: The e-book and DRM angles

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By David Rothman

Microsoft derailed plans to run Linux on thousands of Intel Classmate PCs in Nigeria. XP will be there instead. OLPC News and Slashdot have the Kruegerish details, based on information from François Bancilhon, Mandriva Linux‘s CEO.

The e-book and DRM angles: Yes, you can run FBReader and all kinds of wonderful open source software under XP, which I use myself because of the need to keep up with the e-book mainstream. The issue is what happens later on if Microsoft keeps squeezing out competition. Remember. Wherever Microsoft goes DRM follows, and in the future in some cases we may not just be talking about options for e-books and other content. I’m not anti-Microsoft per se. But I’ll feel much better about Microsoft if it can change its software and business philosophies to rely less on "protection."

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