This is a big deal, not only because it’s the most widely cited example of a Linux win over Microsoft in the public sector, and because Steve Ballmer himself cut short a vacation to try to avert it, but because the deal was initially won by SuSE–no surprise, since, after all, SuSE was a German company at the time.
Last summer, however, some German friends told me SuSE was starting to lose ground in Germany now that it was owned by an American company. Indeed, ZDNet UK reported on this in March, quoting Noèl Köthe of credativ that “between 30 and 40 organisations in total have moved from SuSE Linux to Debian in the last year.”
Is Germany up for grabs?