Win 95 banned in India due to timezone map

[Monty Solomon]

FYA


Begin forwarded message:

Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:35:00 -0400
From: Rod.Holland at East.Sun.COM (Rod Holland - Sun BOS Software)
Subject: fenestration
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII

> 

> Subject: Really interesting Win 95 banned in India
> Content-Length: 1246
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> 

>  Wanted to update you guys on this.  Kind of hard to
>  believe, but this is a real issue.
> 

>  The timezone map doesn't display the correct borders for
>  north region of Kashmir according to the Indian
>  government.
>  

>  This is an area they are at war with Pakistan over.  The
>  map in Win95 is the map used by the UN, so we thought it
>  correct.  The Indian Goverment has banned all sales of
>  Windows 95 in India and have also threatened to ban all
>  sales of all MS products in India.   (Note that the
>  difference were talking about is a dozen pixels on the
>  map.)  I've heard this is front page news there too.
> 

>  Looks like the solution of disabling the map is ok for
>  them, so that's what we'll do and re-release a special
>  English version for India.  We'd change the bitmap to 

>  please India, but who knows how long it'd stay correct. In
>  the future, we'll have a more politically correct timezone
>  picker that avoids this sort of thing so we don't have to
>  ship a special Indian version.
> 

>  If you have any special advise on how else we might deal
>  with this, please let me know.I don't have a schedule yet
>  on when we'll be able to re-release disks and CDs for
>  India.
> 

> ---End of forwarded mail from Eric Johnson DAD ProjDev, Microsoft.
> 

> Hi Stan,
> 

> Apparently the Microsoft story is true ...
> 

> Tom
> 

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

> Subject: Re:  Windows 95
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> 

> Unbelievable, but true.
> Looks like the rectification is in the works already(according to the
> Economic Times of India)
> 

> Microsoft removes software feature with wrong Indian map (Eco. Times)
> 

>     Microsoft will omit the time zone feature in its Windows 95 software
>     package for the Indian market. This follows the Indian Customs
>     department's decision not to allow the import of software that has
>     maps showing Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan and China. Microsoft has
>     also decided to rectify erroneous maps of India in several of its
>     other products.
>