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Main page of the Petitions Portal. General information, most recently uploaded petitions and further links to procedural pages. Further links to the European Parliament website.

The petition is open to all EU resident. The goal is to replace all Windows in all public institution in Europe with a sovereign GNU/Linux.

If the petition is successful it would be a huge step forward for GNU/Linux adoption.

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    1·
    11 days ago

    The latter, and it is good from an organisational perspective, but its never a nice experience, and for many, this will be their first real experience with a Linux.

    Right now Linux is “That nerd OS”, if this goes badly, for millions it could change to “That OS they forced on us at work, where I can’t XYZ”

    Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to. If they are smart, they’ll follow the Munich model and stick to upstreaming any changes they make.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      10 days ago

      Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to.

      When I said “hidden from the public”, I was meaning refusing to disclose the source code even when asked. I do wonder how the laws would apply to government organizations violating copyright 🤔. Like what if it was the OS for some defense system? I’m not sure a government would be too keen on disclosing that — even if it was requested though some sort of freedom of information request (if the respective country has that) — and would rather classify it and refuse to disclose regardless of the license. I’m not aware of any precedent of this.

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
        0·
        10 days ago

        Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.

        I’m not sure how FOI would work, but I dont think they just automatically get approved.

        I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work