Hacker News Reader

Germany (the government) used to foot part of the development bill. I wonder if that's changed.

This is a complicated story. The BND's priorities have changed (they are now migrating to Windows internally instead of GNU/Linux). FOSS is also a lower priority. See this video from the German Bundestag about funding GPG and related projects: http://vimeo.com/111715711 . (TLDR: We already gave them some money. Others should step in and cover the bill.)

>they are now migrating to Windows internally instead of GNU/Linux

Do you know why? Is it because it just makes it more convenient for everyone if the BND just gives the NSA access to their machines directly? I'm not even completely joking. What could possibly be the rationale for doing that?

Politics, internal power struggles, all the usual things in an administration. I also heard this is not yet set in stone and may change again with their next president. BTW, he meant the BSI (Federal IT security agency) and not the BND (foreign secret service, aka the CIA's German stable lads).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com