The Germans must be smarter than this MSFT funded group.

From the "Germany chooses Linux" article posted by Steve :

>>>>
But the German deal added another reason to the list: security. Germany wanted to avoid "monocultures" of computing equipment, that is, reliance on a single type of equipment that can be crippled by a single security weakness. Using a variety of systems generally means some systems will survive hacker attacks.

"With the contract with IBM we meet three key targets," Otto Schily, Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany, said in a statement. "We raise the level of IT security by avoiding monocultures; we lower the dependency on single software vendors; and we reach costs savings in software and operation costs."
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What the think tank failed to mention is that governments/corporations have the option to modify Linux to increase their security. Try that with Microsoft products!

Although it's not all necessarily tied to security reasons.
[link|http://www.idg.net/ec?content_source_id=25&idgnet_page=1&page_id=1773&channel_id=1-3921&remote_addr=67%2E225%2E107%2E37&doc_id=873631&site_id=366&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eidg%2Enet%2F&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eidg%2Enet%2F&sud=1"|
German opposition party supports open source
]
DUSSELDORF, GERMANY - Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) published on Wednesday a policy paper outlining its Internet strategy for government, including an endorsement of open source software, if the party's leader, Edmund Stoiber, is elected chancellor in September.

Stoiber is the major challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, whose Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, on Tuesday sealed a pact with IBM Corp. to promote the open-source Linux operating system and other open-source products in the public sector.

The CDU policy paper, "Chancen@Deutschland - Eine Internetstrategie fur die Politik" (Chances@Germany - An Internet Strategy for Politics), calls on the country's entire public sector to support open-source software. The paper has taken a clear position: should Schroder, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), lose the election, Germany would remain committed to open source software and Linux.

In addition to endorsing open-source software, the CDU policy paper supports flat-rate tariffs for Internet access, particularly at the retail level. German operators briefly offered flat-rate tariffs for dial-up service but abandoned them, claiming large revenue losses. Most DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) services in the country are flat rate.

The paper also supports patent protection for software in combination with "embedded processors" and with two conditions: source code must be open, and patents should have a duration of five years.