What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable?

I’ve run projects for a few different employers to look at doing this. The math doesn’t math unless you can segment your workforce. For example, at one place we had a field workforce that operated dispatch centers and field techs. That was all iOS + Linux or Chrome.

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable?

Russia is waging war on Europe. America is increasingly aligned with Russia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvd01g2kwwo

When the US government has become erratic, unreliable, untrustworthy, and aligned with your enemies then it's necessarily time to de-risk your infrastructure and supply chains by removing America products and services from them.

It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable?

Mostly the widespread perception that the USA has betrayed the security guarantees given to Europe, and that the USA isn't a reliable partner anymore.

Recent comments (and by now published strategy) of the US administration have certainly shifted public and political perception. Not necessarily 180° but enough too make such projects/attempts more viable.

In the end, from a European/German perspective, it matters little whether these thoughts/comments/strategies are a negotiation tactic, "trolling", serious threats or something else entirely. And the fact that "Government adjacent" people like Elon Musk behave the way the do certainly doesn't help.

The fear that the United States may use it's tech companies as blunt offensive weapens does now exist (in a semi-abstract form) where it didn't 5 or 10 years ago.

I think at this point in time nobody can say what the end result will be or how things may develop in the future. Either on the political or the technological field.

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable

Germany has had a fairly active Linux community for decades. A large portion of German local government has had experience using or RFPing FOSS alternatives since the 2000s all the way back to Munich's bake off of Windows vs Linux.

While the geopolitical portion is sexy and fun to look at, in most cases American vendors just don't find much value in supporting DACH customers because their budgets are significantly lower and they tend to be much more on-prem heavy unlike their Scandinavian, CEE, or British peers.

DACH local governments also tend to rely heavily on MSP/MSSPs and for these kinds of businesses, margins really matter and vendors don't like dealing with channel sales because they just don't bring enough money to the table for the amount of money you have to spend wining, dining, and supporting them. And given MSP/MSSP margins, it makes sense for them to adopt FOSS.

Finally, some German local governments have used public proclamations like these to renegotiate vendor deals (I think Munich did something similar).

That said, private sector players in DACH have largely consolidated around American or Israeli vendors, such as Schwarz - despite their proclamation for digital soverignity - using American-Israeli SentinelOne [0].

It's good to have competition though, and I do strongly feel that MSP/MSSPs and organizations dependent on Channel are better suited to using FOSS tooling.

[0] - https://www.sentinelone.com/press/sentinelone-and-schwarz-di...

Here is a concrete example of what other comments are talking about (threat that MS/USA is no longer reliable partner).

Microsoft blocked official email account of Karim Khan (a prosecutor of International Criminal Court). That was due to Executive order by president Trump (Executive Order 14203 - Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court).