The German Federal Ministry of the Interior in Berlin agreed on Monday to a partnership with IBM Corp. for the vendor to supply the open-source Linux operating system to federal, state and local governments. The ministry is joining a small but growing group of European governments, including Finland and France, that are throwing their support behind open standards.
Under a deal signed by German Interior Minister Otto Schily and Erwin Staudt, chairman of IBM Deutschland GmbH, federal, state and local governments will receive discounts on IBM hardware and software products that support Linux.
IBM plans to preinstall on its servers a version of Linux, supplied by SuSE Linux AG in N