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Earlier this week, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent forth a public plea to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates concerning the prosecution of a Russian man charged with installing pirated copies of Windows on his classroom's computers.

Microsoft has declined to drop the charges against the teacher, and the move has the county's educational system reconsidering its choice of operating systems.

Consequently, it looks like Windows is will lose out to Linux in another market.

Of course, you can hardly blame the schools for pursuing alternatives to Windows, given the recent state of affairs. One would think that Microsoft should be going after the people selling the illegal copies of Windows rather than the unsuspecting consumers who were unfortunately duped into purchasing the software.

The fear of prosecution, and subsequent shipment to Siberian prisons, has school officials paralyzed to the point that they no longer even want to deal with Microsoft.

Nick Farrell has more in his article:

Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies, said the region’s Education Minister Nikolay Karpushin. The announcement was made in line with the report on ensuring 'license purity' in the region’s schools.

It's hard to see this as anything but a loss for Microsoft, given that Vista has been met with underwhelming approval at best and the fact that Linux is continuing to make a strong push in the OS market.

In pursuing the case against this teacher, Microsoft has effectively instilled an attitude of fear among anyone who might be inclined to use the company's software, but may perhaps have reasons to question the authenticity of the product if purchased from certain vendors. By allowing no middle ground, no room for compromise, Microsoft has given the Russian school systems little choice but to make the switch to Linux.

Here's hoping the Linux community goes out of its way to help the Russian schools make as seamless a transition as possible to the new operating system.

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