German Parliament Considers Linux

daramannen writes ""The committee is examining whether switching the Bundestag's more than 5,000 computers to open source would improve stability and security, as well as save money, Schroer said. By the committee's estimate, implementing open source software throughout the federal government could result in savings of 250 million marks (US$116 million)." "

Comments

The german govt. is already OSS friendly

[steve.m]

the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology help fund the development of GnuPG.
Check out the press release.

Germans sponsering open source

[pyretic22]

Well I remember germany sponsering GPG development, and lately encryption extensions to both kmail and mutt. This seems like one giant step forward in this process.

fearing espionage / some states alread switched

[eMago]

The administration of the state
Schleswig Holstein already switched to Linux some time ago.
Other administrations (or parts of them) are switching currently.

The main reason is not the money but Germans fear that there are hidden backdors in US commercial software. After Echelon they don't trust
US closed source software anymore.
There are rumors (and proofed facts) that the US is doing economic espionage on German firms.
The administration could be the next target...
So they try to become independant.

study shows Germans major Open Source developers

[pjones]

A study, we did at UNC in 1999. Showed that .de is the second most common email ending of open source contributors following only .com

European mail endings accounted for 37% of all contributions!
http://www.ibiblio.org/osrt/develpro.html
for more including graphs.

Re:Choice?

[Rogerborg]

• They aren't on very good terms to begin with (since their dispute over Microsoft's EULA

In the EULA case, the government wasn't involved, it was (IIRC) a civil case where a reseller took on Microsoft and won hands down in court. The verdict couldn't have been clearer. Microsoft was instructed in no uncertain terms that they would not be bullying anyone in Germany with extra-legal EULA's. I don't honestly know how they dealt with that, it's in stark contrast to the convoluted and toothless conduct remedies that they have become used to arguing against or just ignoring in the US.

Interestingly, Microsoft have already voluntarily modified Windows to remove a component with very tenuous links to Scientology to head off any trouble in Germany.

No, Microsoft and Germany really don't see eye to eye at all.