> 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...

I think you’re closest to reality here vs the geopolitical stuff. I find it really interesting, because virtually none of my tech colleagues in the US would reach these conclusions.