🐧 Now and then, I see news about this or that government using or creating Linux distros for their Administrations. It really warms my heart. But, I wonder, why don't they all do that? In fact, why aren't "national distros"?

You'd think a Public Domain system that all citizens can participate in building and improving, and which can simultaneously be used as a learning opportunity to increase digitalization and IT literacy, would be a slam-dunk, from the point of view of the State. Why buy an OS from some foreign megacorp, and be at the whim of their profit-motivated choices, when you can tailor your own system to your own needs, have full localization of language, standards, norms... and invite the citizens to participate themselves in giving feedback, cotributing to it, building it up, etc. They can organize armies, collect taxes, run ports, enforce laws, etc, on their own. Some of them have National Churches, National Healthcare Systems, National Education Systems. Truly enormous and outstanding organizations. I can't imagine why they wouldn't make and run their own publicly-supported, free-at-the-point-of-purchase, open-source OS?

Hell, France had even come up with their own "internet" standard at one point, the Minitel. Where'd that kind of effort go?