I applaud this. The old official German tax software (ElsterFormular) for doing my taxes was the only reason I kept Windows around on some machine. There used t

I applaud this. The old official German tax software (ElsterFormular) for doing my taxes was the only reason I kept Windows around on some machine. There used to be a free equivalent with less functionality (Geierlein) developed by a nice person, however the option to communicate with the government backend was shut down for free software (I'm simplifying a lot here, the whole storry is interesting and there's also the ORacle Java required issue etc. etc.). Germany has since moved to a web based solution (Elster Online) so I can now happily run Linux everywhere. Personally I feel like all government software should be libre because it's paid for by the people so I don't see why it shouldn't be open to the people. At the very least they should provide a clear and freely usable API to communicate with servers for transmitting data. Humerous sidenote I always thought it was kind of funny that the software is called Elster (magpie). At least someone in the government had a sense of humor.