This week's announcement of a Linux-based cooperation agreement between IBM and Germany's ministry of the interior changes the rules of the game dramatically. Microsoft still has deals with the German government, and will undoubtedly still sell software to it and to Germany's states, but the territory covered by the agreement and the terms used by minister of the interior Otto Schily signal that Linux has already won the server war in principle, and that the German government intends it to do so in practice.

Full story at The Register