A year ago, the German Tax Authority switched 12.000 desktops to SuSE Linux, now a police precinct from Berlin issued a press release a few days ago where they complain about their report system, named POLIKS (Police National System for the Information, Communication and Processing), that it is not stable and reliable enough for the officers to do their job efficiently. When a civilian comes to file a complaint, it usually takes between 30 and 90 minutes to fill it in, together with a police officer. Helmut Sarwas, Vice-president of DPoIG Berlin (German Police Trade Union) says: "If a citizen wants to fill in a complaint, he often spends more than 30 minutes, together with the police officer, to finish it. This is very embarrassing."

The total amount of down-times this year, for a single Berlin precinct, was estimated at 50 hours. In other federal states, these down-times take no more than two hours. "This is inconceivable. The authorities should consider switching to a different operating system." - says Helmut Sarwas.

As a result, the Berlin Police Union wants to quit Microsoft Windows and use an operating system which will allow a cheaper and more efficient resource management, for example Linux. The switch would save millions of euros. The Vice-president says: "There are countless open source operating systems on the market, also many which were certificated by the EU." The Berlin police must be able to work without complications and with maximum efficiency.

Instead of reducing the Christmas bonus, the senators should acquire open source operating systems for the German police. "The saved money could then be used to pay the officers their full Christmas gratification.", stated Helmut Sarwas in the press release.

The German police was known to be one of Microsoft's "reference customers", until now.