I'm surpirsed to not see this on L1 news or on this forum.
A decade ago, Munich was at the vanguard of a movement towards open-source software, switching thousands of staff to Linux from Windows at a time when a move on that scale was almost unheard of.
After spending nine years and millions of euros on the project, today the city's politicians agreed to begin preparing to return to Windows by 2021.
Under a proposal backed by the general council, the administration will investigate how long it will take and how much it will cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees.
Once this work is complete, the council will vote again on whether to replace LiMux, a custom version of the Linux-based OS Ubuntu, across the authority from 2021.
There is quite a bit to this story, although I haven't really looked into it that much, but it includeds...
a newly elected mayor of Munich who "apparently" hates free software and is a self confessed Microsoft fanboy.
a study into the the Munich's current IT problems, conducted by Accenture, who were 'Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year 2016'.
early indications that Accenture are recommending Windows 10
an iterim realease of the Accenture report ( in German) that actually shows Accenture did not only not recommend Windows but found under resourced IT departments and issues that didn't directly relate to Limux.
Munich's ditching of FOSS is just a small drop in the bucket. Many countries and cities out in the world use Linux, for either government, or public use. Venezuela, Turkey and North Korea all have their own distros.
On Wikipedia their is a page that documents the countries and cities that use Linux in some fashion. That page can be found here.
This seems to be somewhat of a big deal as apparently Munich was the poster child for possibilities of FOSS; not in the server world, but in the desktop world.
You have to hand it to Accenture though. It appears they did an impartial job as the report does not put Linux as the root causes of Munich's IT problems. *Apparently their report even shows that MS software has similar issues.
Not to mention the most of aftica uses linux where there isn't much for IT. The internet boats that travel the rivers are pretty fascinating to research about.
"For 80% of the workstations running in Munich, the operating system doesn't matter," he said, adding that if the council agrees to replace LiMux with Windows at the same time as restructuring IT, "the problems will be solved and it looks like Windows has solved them, but it won't have".
Nothing wrong with anyone using Linux. They use windows too..
Im not sure why they make their own distros any way, I actually think its a bad idea. They should use distros with support and customise them with supported tools. Far easier to maintain.
Of course you can...Totalitarianism is a system of Governance. Fascism is only one type of a Totalitarian system with a specific political position. Fascism legalizes the totalitarian nature of the state by presenting it as a representative of a superior race, religion and culture in general. You can justify a Totalitarian system without using racial or cultural criteria. North Korea for example is actually an anti-fascist regime and completely rejects the definition of superiority based on race and justifies its totalitarian nature as a method of social engineering to create an equal classes-less system (the same way every pseudo-communist regime justified it in the past).
EDIT: And i think the earlier use of the terms was used by leftists in order to criticize the soviet regimes.