German Free/Open Source Migration Project

Jaws writes: "BSI (the German equivalent of NIST) has announced a project proposal for planning and implementation of partial migration of certain federal government offices to free/open source products. Three sites in two cities, servers and desktops, each site with a few dozen/several hundred seats. They are asking for a full-service, detailed plan including infrastructure, installation, documentation, support, and education. Looks like a reasonable pilot project. (The original in German; Fish-English version)"

Comments

bad news for Linux?

[tps12]

Now, when I first read this, I was a psyched as the next slashbot. Hey, I use Linux at home as a desktop OS, at work as a high-throughput workstation OS, and also at work as a low-downtime server OS. It's the closest thing to the "perfect solution" to yet come out of the software industry.

So what could be wrong with its adoption by the German government?

Basically, the problem is the German government itself. While it is ancient history to most Americans, the two World Wars (I and II) still loom menacingly in the minds of many Europeans.

Likewise, the hard line taken by GNU, the FSF, and people like RMS and ESR, has reminded more than one person of the fascism practiced half a century ago in Germany. Indeed, it's taken all of RedHat's marketing skills to overcome this image in selling Linux to corporate customers.

I just think that at this point, we don't want to be seen as "cutting deals" with those that might conceivably tarnish Linux's already questionable image. The general public already associates Linux with hackers and pirates; let's try to leave Nazis out of it.

That said, there are plenty of other places that we should be trying to woo with OSS. "Good guys" like France, England, and even Canada, could be great for Linux's reputation in the global community.

For all the evil that Micro$oft represents, one thing must be acknowledged: they understand the importance of public perception. I'd hate for Linux to underestimate this, and go the way of BeOS and OS/2.