Sometimes yeah, but clearly not in this case, if you took the time to actually read the article.
You don't ask entire ministries and public operators to formulate a migration plan from Windows to Linux with a relatively short deadline just for negotiation purposes or just for the fun of it, you do that once you're committed to actually migrating.
This is not just a pilot project or some local administration doing an experiment, it's new country-wide policy enforced from the top, hardly a "negotiation strategy".
> I've seen multiple countries do exactly that, then quietly drop it after a few years
I generally consider myself well read when it comes to Linux, Europe and governments, and I can't recall a single country that announced a country-wide requirement to produce a report for how to move to Linux, deadline ~6 months, what countries are you thinking about here?
I know in France, Germany and Spain have had a lot of local efforts through the years, but never at this sort of scope, so really interested what exactly you're talking about here.
I don't think so. Having worked on a similar thing in my country, and the effort is monumental.
When doing this in a company, making technical people appreciate free software and making lasting changes is hard enough. When doing this with non-technical people, everything becomes exponentially harder.
