German ministry hellbent on taking back control of 'digital sovereignty', cutting dependency on Microsoft
Found on The Register on Saturday, 21 September 2019
In an official statement, the Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer states that “in order to ensure our digital sovereignty, we want to reduce dependencies on individual IT providers. We are also considering alternative programs to replace certain software. This will be done in close coordination with other EU countries.”
The analyst identifies several pain points ("Schmerzpunkten"). The first is data security. Telemetry transfers data to Microsoft, the user has limited insight and control over this, and it may contain personal data and therefore risk of breaching GDPR, the report suggests.
First Munich moves from Windows to Linux, then it moves back. It is important to mention that the migration not only saved millions of Euros, but also reduced support requests and in general was a success. However, after Microsoft promised to mayor Dieter Reiter (who calls himself a Microsoft fan) to move its headquarters to Munich, a rollback to Windows was announced. That, of course, costs the taxpayer tens of millions of Euros, even though most of the workers were satisfied with LiMux. All this makes it sound like a really nasty bribery affair.