German coalition favors German-owned or open source software, aims to lock NSA out
Germanys new coalition government listed open source software among its IT policy priorities, and said it will take steps to protect its citizens against espionage threats from the NSA and other foreign intelligence agencies.
Coalition parties CDU,CSUand SPD signed up to the plans Monday in Berlin.
The new governments goal is to keep core technologies, including IT security, process and enterprise software, cryptography and machine-to-machine communication on proprietary technology platforms and production lines in Germany or in Europe, according to the coalition agreement.
But the government will also promote the use and development of open platforms and open source software as an alternative to closed proprietary systems, and will support the use of those in Europe, the parties said in the agreement. The public sector will need to consider open source solutions as a possibility when purchasing new IT, they said.
They also want to compete on a global level with software made in Germany and strengthen the quality of security, data protection, design and usability by doing so.
The government also plans to start operating in a more transparent way, for example by making parliamentary documents and transcripts of debates available in open data formats that can be used under free licenses, they said.
This is much better than the last coalition agreement, said Matthias Kirschner vice president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
However, while there are good intentions, there are also missed opportunities, he said. For instance, It would have been better if the new government had prioritized the use of open source software for public institutions instead of simply making them consider it, he said, adding that the agreements formulation is often cautious.
He said the FSFE regretted that references in earlier drafts to open standards had disappeared from the final agreement, and had been replaced with weaker terms such as interoperability.
Kirschner called on the coalition to move from words to concrete action. The question is: how hard will they try? he said.
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German coalition favors German-owned or open source software, aims to lock NSA out