Petition Summary: The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
They’re already putting out a petition so they’re not wholly against the idea of an EU-Linux.
Also, this has been done before by other governments, like parts of the UK’s and many Indian governments.
I think it’d be a big step, but a doable one and for the better.
Why do you compare it to destroying and rebuilding one of the EU countries, if I may ask?
Because destroying and rebuilding the digital infrastructure is very similar. It’s extremely expensive and causes a lot of breakages in the process.
most software is web based and OS-agnostic so there is no destruction and rebuilding happening, and for everything else, FOSS is literally free. How is it expensive to switch from X with a monthly cost to X that is free? Even if things breaks initially, the cost would equalize and long-term be considerably reduced.
I don’t think EU backend and government job software is OS-agnostic.
Yes but they need to switch and develop new utilities which is time and money.
That might be true depending on the maintenance costs of the new solutions.