Moscow teacher fired for supporting open source
A Russian teacher claims he was forced to quit his job after he complained about being made to use Microsoft software.
Computer science teacher Vladimir Sorokin, who was deputy director of School No. 572 in southeastern Moscow, told the Moscow Times that education officials had pressured him into resigning after he complained to president Dmitry Medvedev about an online training system that required students to use Microsoft Office.
Computer science teacher Vladimir Sorokin, who was deputy director of School No. 572 in southeastern Moscow, told the Moscow Times that education officials had pressured him into resigning after he complained to president Dmitry Medvedev about an online training system that required students to use Microsoft Office.
"The education directorate is giving preference to Microsoft," Sorokin complained. "There has to be freedom of choice."
Sorokin claims the training system forces Moscow schools to defy a government directive originally issued in 2007, which requires schools to use the open source operating system Linux, as part of a drive towards a 'national OS'.
