Microsoft's $3 Windows offer is an attempt to “kill open source off at its roots,” according to columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in an impassioned blog posting at Linux-Watch.com. Microsoft “wants to make sure that young people in developing countries get brainwashed into the Microsoft way of computing,” he writes.

Microsoft announced $3 pricing for its Student Innovation Suite at Intel's Developer Forum today in Beijing. The Suite includes student versions of Windows XP and various Office applications.

Vaughan-Nichols suggests that Microsoft's low-ball Windows pricing for students comes in reaction to projects such as the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) initiative's low-cost Linux-based laptop, which is starting to take off. “Soon, millions of kids will be using a computer for the first time, and their first computer is going to be running Sugar, an innovative software environment built on top of a Red Hat Fedora-based Linux variant,” he writes.

“Unlike North America and, to some extent, Western Europe, the rest of the world isn't addicted to Microsoft's offerings,” he adds. “They can see with far clearer eyes than most Americans that Windows is not the be-all and end-all of operating systems.”

Vaughan-Nichols goes on to list a bunch of reasons why Microsoft should, indeed, be worried about the future of Windows.

Click below to read Vaughan-Nichols's complete column:

Meanwhile, in the embedded market, Microsoft attempted to counter the low costs of using embedded Linux with a $3 Windows CE licensing program launched back in 2003.

 
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