Germanys largest conservative political party wants to make Open Source and Open Data strong in public sector

The CDU (Germanys biggest conservative party, struggling also because of a younger and more far-right “alternative” party) finds revolutionary words in its convention resolution, basically mirroring the proposal by FSFEs https://publiccode.eu campaign. For me this comes out of nowhere and I am superexcited. Sure enough this does not mean too much yet (words on paper), but the signal is a huge positive surprise (for me). :heart: :free: :dove:
There should be parties on all streets in Germany today! (hint: start one if you cannot find them)

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It may be that struggling parties are a good thing, after all :slight_smile:

Still a long way until the day when all of government is mandated to only use open source software. And after that, only free and open source Internet services. So far, the stories of government using free software is not too long and not too great (see this recent interview about the migration of Munich to Linux, which was rolled back by the next mayor).

But for now: :partying_face:

A long way indeed. I would think that a government would need to work with an open source outfit along the lines of Red Hat Linux where the software was free, but the support cost money.

Well of course, finances and maintenance are a big issue. But we speak about “Free as in Freedom” (or Free Speech) not about Free of costs. Indeed it would not surprise me if the switch to Open Source solutions would be way more expensive (and also catastrophic and chaotic, like now but more transparent - which might “hurt” the image of Open Source/Libre/Free Software) in the short term, but ultimately globally and mid-term I would expect that the move makes sense also economically - if not: still better to be in control and pay for it vs be out of control, but for free/cheap. But with 4 year election plans long- and mid-term decisions are not always the easiest to achieve.

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