"Just as the U.S. Congress begins considering a bill
that some advocates believe will outlaw Open Source operating
systems , the German government has hired three companies to create
Free Software email options for its IT security agency's email
project.
The German Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der
Informationstechnik (Federal Agency for IT Security, also known as
BSI) has contracted with the German Free Software companies
Intevation and g10 Code and Swedish platform-independent software
company Klarälvdalens Datakonsult for its Sphinx
secure email project. Company officials predict the contract could
lead to wider adoption of Free Software by the German
government.
The three companies' Project Ägypten will focus on
making Open Source email programs KMail and mutt compatible with
Sphinx, which include standards S/MIME and X.509v3. The results of
the project will be released under the GNU GPL."