German State Replaces Windows With Linux After Microsoft Threatens To Bill Them For Every Update It Never Delivered
COPENHAGEN — In a stunning display of bureaucratic audacity that would make the most zealous open-source evangelist blush, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has formally announced it will abandon Microsoft entirely across its public sector, affecting 30,000 employees — civil servants, judges, and even the police force — in what officials are calling an existential stand against vendor lock-in.
“This is about data sovereignty,” declared Dr. Kurt Vogel, the state’s IT procurement czar, who has spent his entire career configuring NixOS configurations while simultaneously screaming at every Microsoft update notification that appears in his life. “We refuse to have our judicial decisions filtered through a licensing agreement we did not write. We refuse to pay Microsoft €10 billion a year in royalties for software that runs perfectly fine on GNU/Linux.”