Yeah, even from inside the US it seems more and more iffy to trust our tech giants even as a paying customer. I love reading the stories about groups and governments in Europe adopting Linux/FOSS, but I’m also surprised I don’t see it more.
Everything in the news is so insane that I could see journalists ignoring/missing such mundane events as public sector software choices.
Here in Germany, at least something is happening. Recently, for example, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein decided to switch to Linux (and also LibreOffice), with the change planned for this fall.
Overall, however, far too little is happening in our country. The vast majority of federal states and the national government continue to rely on proprietary software (mainly from US corporations, especially Microsoft).
At the national level, this is hardly surprising, as our Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is more of a US lobbyist than a politician: Until 2020, he was on the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany and was also a long time chairman of the “Atlantik-Brücke”, a German-American lobby organization for economic relations (so on and so forth). Unfortunately, no change of course is to be expected from him — nor from his party, the conservative CDU, that is the most popular party for some strange reason.
In Bavaria, which is also deeply conservative, the federal state government is even considering introducing Palantir.
I don’t understand how all this can happen when it is perfectly obvious how vulnerable all these US products are making us – vulnerable to industrial espionage and worse - especially now that the US is developing into a fascist, unjust state.
But hey, I think we all have to remain somewhat positive despite all this. As I said, there is some movement in terms of FOSS —probably much more in other European countries than in Germany. So, slowly but steady, we’re moving forward! I really hope that’s how it is in the US as well.
Yeah, even from inside the US it seems more and more iffy to trust our tech giants even as a paying customer. I love reading the stories about groups and governments in Europe adopting Linux/FOSS, but I’m also surprised I don’t see it more.
Everything in the news is so insane that I could see journalists ignoring/missing such mundane events as public sector software choices.
Here in Germany, at least something is happening. Recently, for example, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein decided to switch to Linux (and also LibreOffice), with the change planned for this fall.
Overall, however, far too little is happening in our country. The vast majority of federal states and the national government continue to rely on proprietary software (mainly from US corporations, especially Microsoft).
At the national level, this is hardly surprising, as our Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is more of a US lobbyist than a politician: Until 2020, he was on the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany and was also a long time chairman of the “Atlantik-Brücke”, a German-American lobby organization for economic relations (so on and so forth). Unfortunately, no change of course is to be expected from him — nor from his party, the conservative CDU, that is the most popular party for some strange reason.
In Bavaria, which is also deeply conservative, the federal state government is even considering introducing Palantir.
I don’t understand how all this can happen when it is perfectly obvious how vulnerable all these US products are making us – vulnerable to industrial espionage and worse - especially now that the US is developing into a fascist, unjust state.
But hey, I think we all have to remain somewhat positive despite all this. As I said, there is some movement in terms of FOSS —probably much more in other European countries than in Germany. So, slowly but steady, we’re moving forward! I really hope that’s how it is in the US as well.
Best of luck in these harsh times!