Yes, Germany did do this for a few years. And the Microsoft came calling again - guess what they use now? It is the example I used to tell clients about how i

Yes, Germany did do this for a few years. And the Microsoft came calling again - guess what they use now? It is the example I used to tell clients about how if your organization is big enough, publicly visible enough and open to being in the news/or a case study) and has great lawyers, you can probably get Microsoft licensing for essentially "free". And those "nearly free" licenses will increase over the next 2-5 years. The cynic in me says that Germany did this to get better bargaining leverage with Microsoft... (Apparently they are cycling around back again, over the last couple years trying to transition away from Microsoft for some states/groups/municipalities within Germany)