Microsoft’s Lock-in Finally Broken in Turkey
It’s a good day for free software. Why? Because Microsoft will no more be able to force Windows pre-installed PC’s onto Turkish citizens.
Lawyer Nihat Karslı -who is the president of Pardus Users Group (Pardus Kullanıcıları Derneği) and also a member of Linux Users Group- filed a lawsuit against Windows pre-installed PC’s. Consumer Court of Ankara (Ankara 1. Tüketici Mahkemesi) ruled for Karslı and banned the forced sales of Windows operating system with a new PC. We’ll see if this ruling will be taken seriously by PC stores.
Regardless of this ruling, the interest in Free Software have been rising steadily in Turkey. I have been observing this for a couple of years now. Firefox is the first thing people install after a new Windows format-reinstall cycle. OpenOffice.org has gained a lot of ground (now more and more government PC’s are OO.o installed). Most important is that people have been installing a flavor of Linux on their PC’s.
I hope this will be a breaking point for all PC users in Turkey because Free Software is a far better choice for most them.
Free as in Flying 