Two short and clear messages from Germany to Steve B.

Message 1: Microsoft’s FAT patent has been declared NULL and VOID by the German Supreme Patent Court. The reason: It’s not an invention in the legal meaning since everything “new” in this patent is so obvious to somebody who has the slightest clue about programming.

Read more about Microsoft’s defeat in Germany here.

Message 2: The German department of State has declared that their business case for their complete migration away from Windows towards Linux and other FOSS is based on SECURITY, RELIABILITY and COST reasons. They completed their migration of nearly all server and desktop systems WITHOUT the need for a RETRAINING of their stuff, while IT costs dropped even on the short run already below one quarter of the costs they had while using a Windows infrastructure. The article contains other success stories about the German federal administration migrating to FOSS.

Read more about this success stories here and for the background, here and here

(all articles in German language, use a web translation service if you want to understand all the dirty details, Steve :-) )

Chairs, anybody?

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