Munich is now using a unified desktop system, Limux, its own distribution based on Ubuntu GNU/Linux on 14,000 of its total 15,000 desktops, spread over 51 offices across the city. That is 2,000 more than it's intended goal of using Limux on 80 % of its desktops.

The UK Government Service Design Manual says to "Use open source software in preference to proprietary or closed source alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, Web servers, databases and programming languages." The policy is in place to move forward.

A government committee recommends a change in German law to enable public administrations to make their software available as free and open source. The current law prohibits governments from being part of the development process in the free software community.

Greek advocates of free and open source software are warning that the Greek government is going to waste millions of euro on proprietary software licenses for the country's schools. They are calling on the Ministry of Education to cancel its latest procurement.

In a welcome gesture on October 16, Dr. Richard Stallman made a public note supporting the Swedish Pirate Party’s position regarding trademarks, patent monopolies, and copyright monopolies.

On January 30th, 2012, I started a petition requesting that the U.S. government broaden their use of Free Software and Open Source software to save money. I deeply believe that this one step is PART of the solution to the problem of the crushing national debt that the United States is currently facing. Software expenditures are a very small part of our national budget.

Hungary's public administrations will by default use open document standards for their electronic documents, as of April this year, the government ministers agreed on 23 December, and all public organisations are encouraged to move to open source office tools. Hungary's government also in December decided to cancel the funding of proprietary office suite licences for all schools.

RMS: « Wikileaks has documented how governments around the world use digital technology for massive surveillance, through computers, GPS, and portable phones. »