Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuth-anandan wants to leave his mark in history as a hegemon-hunter. And as far as hegemons go, what could be more hegemonic than software giant Microsoft? In a bid to replicate its anti-imperialistic gesture of banning aerated drinks from the Coca-Cola and Pepsi stable, the LDF government has chalked out a plan in which 12,500 high school students in the state will switch from learning the Microsoft operating system to Linux. While the motive may be dodgy - to strike out all capitalist pug marks off Kerala's soil - is the move of making youngsters migrate from a platform that can cost a packet to a legitimate free platform worth it?
The 'open source-ness' of Linux over the proprietorial operating systems of Microsoft (or Macintosh) is a genuine advantage. In any case, the 'open source vs paid source' debate is an old one that finds its defenders on both sides of the fence. If Kerala is to become a free and open source systems (Foss) destination, it might not be a bad idea to make high school students switch from Windows and replicate open source success stories in other parts of the world.
Despite the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the present Left government, the switch to Linux should not be politically difficult. After all, it was the previous UDF government that had issued the Microsoft to Linux plan. It was simply not executed. So if the comrades, because of ideological underpinnings, inject more competition, hell, give us communism - non-monopoly-style.