Back to the future and back again with Tux 2000

A weary early 21st century Microsoft executive travels to the near 'post-recession' future UK and is greeted by an horrific situation:

Computer hardware is now just a commodity product; software is all free and open source and technical support on stable and secure software is merely an insurance policy. Worse, regulation and agreed standards are preventing monopolies from thriving and product interoperability is taken for granted.

Our hero is right to be shocked. Back in 2008 when he left ...

• the UK Central Government was spending more on IT than its counterpart in the world's third largest economy (Germany), and ...
• the most profitable educational market in the world for Microsoft was the UK which generated hundreds of millions of dollars due to the exclusive deal with the UK Government, and ...
• the National Health Service was spending over £100 million on software licences, and ...
• Her Majesty's Government 'valued' as an 'asset' its combined Microsoft licences at about £120 million (Ed. if its an asset try reselling it).

Back to the future, proprietary vendor FUD has failed and common sense has prevailed. Failed public sector IT projects are no more. The UK school assessment agency responsible for approved software indoctrination has been abolished (National Assessment Agency).

So, asks our hero, what went wrong? How did this nightmare vision of the future happen?

Bit by bit the story unfolds.

An exhausted elite band of the 'penguinistas' surviving hand to mouth in an Earth destroyed by a corrupt and greedy financial system and incompetent box-ticking gerontocracy, had sent a Tux 2000 terminator back in time.

It's mission was to prevent the infamous meeting in Number 10 Downing Street between the then newly elected Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the then CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates. It was here their Memorandum of Understanding was to be signed.

So Tux 2000 carried a nasty Windows virus (Ed. which later was to destroy Internet Explorer 7) back to 1997. Tracking down Mr Gates on his yacht off Seattle, cuddly Tux 2000 allowed itself to be picked up (there was no fear of penguins in these times) and pass on its platform-specific infection.

Mr Gates was ill for weeks and could not travel as the virus proved to be very contagious. The rest, as they say, is history.

Our hero's mission, it is now plain, is to return to 1997 and destroy that penguin before it is too late.