Germany's Corruption Problem Curtails Adoption of GNU/Linux and Free Software
Microsoft bribes in Germany not only outsourced the EPO to Microsoft
THIS new report in German (by Esther Menhard, automated translation here) bemoans "Billions for Oracle, Microsoft and Co. instead of open source". It mentions Anke Domscheit-Berg, whom we covered here before. To quote the automated translation: "The federal government spends billions on products from large IT companies such as Microsoft and Oracle and accepts the strong dependency on manufacturers. This emerges from an answer to a small question from left-wing politician Anke Domscheit-Berg on the subject of digital sovereignty and open source solutions. In it, the federal government publishes some figures for framework agreements. In addition to the answer, Domscheit-Berg also published an analysis of the information. The latter also includes data on individual questions from the inquiry, which the federal government has declared classified information."
“Pure lip service” is mentioned; this pattern of political posturing (pseudo-nativism) includes some parts of France and Germany that moved to GNU/Linux at the Federal level (or said they would). To quote some more: "But there are problems elsewhere too. The federal government has not set clear targets for the use of OSS as to when and where OSS should be implemented. For example, it has not yet developed a concrete, overarching strategy on how to standardize interfaces for OSS. This would be particularly important for interoperability. Such a strategy could also make it possible to get an overview of the OSS used. The federal government has already made initial plans for this, such as the Central Office for Federal License Management (ZLB), which is supposed to collate and publish data. According to Domscheit-Berg, this is a sensible measure, but also “long overdue”."
"The current figures now show: Like its predecessor governments, the traffic light buys expensive proprietary software for a lot of money. “Not even Minister Wissing, who is responsible for the digital strategy, is sticking to what he announced,” says Domscheit-Berg. He only spent 0.5 percent of his software development budget on the development of OSS. Promoting OSS and seeing digital sovereignty as a guideline for IT decisions are therefore “pure lip service,” said the MP."
In the European Union, adoption of GNU/Linux has been slower or lower than in the rest of the world, on average. Could bribes explain all this? Germany is drowning in GAFAM and GNU/Linux adoption is at less than 3%, compared to 3.7% as the international average.
The situation in France is a bit better and has long been better. Going by the numbers from statCounter, Chrome usage and Firefox usage are high (Firefox measured at 10% this month), Android now consistently exceeds Windows in market share (unlike in Germany), GNU/Linux "proper" is at over 3% for desktops/laptops connected to the Web, and Twitter is waning among Social Control Media sites (the mayor from Paris made some headlines over quitting it).
Germany gets an "F" for its GNU/Linux adoption. In Munich, Microsoft bribes were taken by the mayor to sabotage an existing large-scale deployment of GNU/Linux, which moreover means that Germany is corrupt. We've repeatedly seen this in the context of the EPO. Not only did the German government tolerate serious EPO crimes; it also promoted the illegal and unconstitutional UPC (fake "court" for patents) - all this for monetary gains. This is a political crisis, which spreads to the EU and deepens the sense of distrust, elevating the radical right in German and overseas, e.g. Holland (the Netherlands is governed by a person who doesn't understand most issues). █