they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
It would be nice to redirect a part of that money to support the development of used software. Thunderbird for example is constantly at risk of being shut down.
public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird)
Submitted 10 months ago by not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone to technology@lemmy.world
https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-source-digital-sovereignty
Comments
cotlovan@lemm.ee 10 months ago
kolorafa@lemmy.world 10 months ago
ambitious plan
Good, good, but I guess it is only a plan to negotiate for lower prices.
But if they actually deliver without going back… 😍
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Ofc its Schleswig-Holstein. The only sane state with sane politicians
Wolf@lemmy.today 10 months ago
I’m more surprised that a city in Germany didn’t switch to Linux a decade or more ago.
Late to the party is still showing up, good for them.
unabart@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Too busy faxing each other. Germany is Luddite Land, by choice.
Source: moved here 7 years ago. Germans are a weird bunch. Change is not welcome in just about any form.
Nice to see them adopt the open source apps, though. They can probably get some screaming deals on some US Robotics 56k modems on eBay Local.
🤪😘
atlien51@lemm.ee 10 months ago
LETS GOOOOO
redditor_chatter44@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Would love to see further movements towards foss software in many other governments
Puddinghelmet@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Moreeeee MOREEEE preach it
TheLastOfHisName@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It would be nice to see the European governments start a genuine effort on funding open source development, and start laying the foundation for a migration to their own Linux distro. Microsoft isn’t trustworthy. Hell, most American big tech is untrustworthy. Moving your government offices to an in house developed OS is going to be paramount for their security in the future.
bonnashejve@europe.pub 10 months ago
Agree. Fb, Whatsapp, Instagram, Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, Tumblr - I do believe that social networks should be independent and decentralized and not manipulated by one person - thats why Lemmy, Mastodon is the best choice for me
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 10 months ago
I hate it so much that Whatsapp made itself a social media
Mwa@lemm.ee 10 months ago
from what i know Germany already does this
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Holy fuck, that’s the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don’t want the US in their computers.
bonnashejve@europe.pub 10 months ago
very interesting observation… I came to conclusion if USA withdraw from NATO - EU and Great Britain will not send military troops to Poland in case russian invasion
zqps@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I think you may have the thread confused.
sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
In other news: the German military partners with Google to provide the software for their new cloud service…
Blackmist@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Don’t worry. They’ll get a big discount on licenses and swap right back again.
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I dunno, free’s still a lot cheaper, once it’s setup, it’ll be so much more flexible, it’ll hardly be worth going back.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
At that scale it starts to be about the cost of support, and if M$ will hold their hands for the installation, configuration and maintenance, at some point that costs the state more to provide for Linux than the M$ licenses…
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 10 months ago
A small part of Germany, but maybe
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
spongeborgcubepants@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.
Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there’s that…
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
I have seen this happen before, for a while, then somehow M$ convinced them to switch back.
RealM__@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I admire the plan, but I doubt the public sector is going to completely acclimate to Linux. The average age of an employee in the public sector is something like 40+.
You might get lucky and get them to use one new program like LibreOffice, but there’s no way you’re going to completely revamp every desktop PC to Linux. I work in this field, and while everyone has been nice and friendly, they (and the entire system around them) are also hugely resistant to digital change. If they ever make the move to a Linux Desktop environment, the IT support will go through hell.
Ironfist79@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I also work for the state and it’s pretty discouraging how MS has us by the balls on everything. Every application we use is written in VB.net or Visual C# which also depend on running on a Windows server. Switching to Linux would be a nightmare and cost millions for no real gain.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
the IT support will go through hell.
I thought IT support was already in perpetual hell?
For the last 10+ years “the desktop” has been over 90% the browser, and the Chrome, Firefox, Edge user experiences are pretty similar to start with. Chrome on Linux vs Chrome on Windows is virtually indistinguishable.
I gave my wife a Dell laptop new from the factory with Ubuntu on it about 3 years ago. The printer support in Windows was already bad, and yes it’s a bit worse in Linux, otherwise she just complains less and has fewer screaming fits of frustration.
doktormerlin@feddit.org 10 months ago
There used to be skins for KDE that made it look and feel 1:1 like Windows XP, I don’t know if these things still exist. If yes, there you have it: Just make the system behave like Windows and they won’t notice a difference. They only have to use Office, Mail and print files anyways. Most other tools they use are browser-based and will feel the same way
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
The names have changed. I literally had that conversation with “an engineer” 20 years ago wherein he concluded “I don’t know, if I have to learn new names for most of the programs I use (Word, Photoshop, maybe two others) I don’t think I want to use that other OS.” I had to support his position, if you can’t retrain to click on “Libre Office Writer” instead of “Office Word”, then a move to Linux isn’t for you.
thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 10 months ago
Yep still exist.
Wrrzag@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Eh, I don’t know. I’ve worked developing software for the administration and their computer use is just the applications (web or native) they had built to perform their tasks. The OS is very irrelevant to them, some orgs even had shortcuts to these native programs put in their intranet, back in the days of java applets.
Obelix@feddit.org 10 months ago
I know what you are saying, but it is not so bad: First of all, most things people are doing at work is not really related to the OS underneath. So if you are responsible for creating passports, you are using the special government program for passport creation. If you are a policeman, you are using the special police software to do your policework. Yeah, you need additional training, but in the best case your usual software keeps working. Most people are not really interacting with the OS during their work day.
(and let’s be honest: Microsofts totally insane UI changes are also requiring lots of training. If you are used to just click on some specific buttons that somebody told you to click on, you’re totally lost in Microsofts crazy wonderland of ridiculous UI changes )
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
Cross platform app development has been a viable and very available choice for 20+ years now.
Organizations which are developing their specialty applications locked in to a specific OS… get what they deserve.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Look im an IT guy, and enforcing 2FA for all accounts at our company directly caused at least 2 people to quit at my company.
People are enormously resistant to change. It doesn’t even matter if it actually impacts their job or anything, they will freak out and complain.
Hell 2 weeks ago I added a 3rd AP to one of our offices and just the act of moving the APs around caused enough of a disturbance that HR heard about it. And that was me giving them better internet! There wasn’t even any downtime! I just moved the things that sit on the ceiling and nobody notices!
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Plus government computers are always old as shit so Linux should install nice and easy, give em mint for that windows like UI.
thickertoofan@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Good, amazing but I’m not a linux fanboy who will feel giddy for this. My friends would definitely press me over this. But yeah I’m happy
sommerset@thelemmy.club 10 months ago
Unfortunately nextcloud sucks
drmugg@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
So use some of that money saved to pay some nextcloud developers to improve it.
sommerset@thelemmy.club 10 months ago
They need to refactor architecture. But all they do is stupid hub, communication that noone use.
They need to move to swoole and hyperf but they are not showing any intention and dumping all the money into crap.
Bravo@eviltoast.org 10 months ago
The money saved will pay for one dev, or two if you cheap out
nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I was thinking about trying it out on my server. Why does it suck?
sommerset@thelemmy.club 10 months ago
It’s based on legacy share nothing PHP architecture which is extremely inefficient for something like next loud
Bassman1805@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Personal/Family use is fine, it’s kinda fiddly but so is most selfhosted software.
At an organizational level, that fiddliness spirals into a ton of work, which doesn’t really overlap with other IT Duties in the way that troubleshooting OneDrive usually ends up solving problems with the whole Microsoft suite.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 10 months ago
I’ve been using it for over a decade. I use it to auto upload all my family photos from family phones. I use the calendars to organize. I use Notes on my phone all the time and pick them up my laptop. I use Passwords for all my passwords. I use Contacts to sync my contacts from my phone and Thunderbird. Then I nightly remote backup it to a machine I leave at my parent’s. It’s great.
acchariya@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I wouldn’t say categorically that it sucks.
-
It is inefficient and requires far too many server resources for what it does. Won’t really run on less than 2gb/RAM minimum, with 1-2 users.
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Add ONS seem to be all over the place with lots of incompatibilities, some default add ons that just plain don’t work.
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In my short testing it seems to be a bit unstable.
In my opinion, it suffers from many of the same problems as other projects that started out and we’re developed largely by hobbyists like zoneminder, and even home assistant to some extent. Sprawling growth, no strict architecture, little concern for refactoring.
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BoycottPro@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don’t need to pay tax.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
Just remember, the license fees mostly don’t go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for “sales” which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert “all that money” into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.
BoycottPro@lemm.ee 10 months ago
There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.
raldone01@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And there could be insight into whether the money is actually used for developing the relevant application.
toastmeister@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
An interesting fact about Europe is they disobeys their own procurement laws to choose Microsoft software, whether its corruption or what I’ve got no idea, I assume so though.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
I think it’s simple pragmatism. It will cost them, money and lost productivity, retraining all their computer users.
Regardless of the technical aspects, just the bitching and moaning of the workforce alone is enough to push the decision makers to take their chances with enforcers of the procurement laws instead.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 10 months ago
There in that place where closed systems are frowned upon, Install Linux, Problem Solved.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
That is such a crazy amount of money on license fees, especially when you consider that there are mostly free alternatives. I am always choosing foss options as I build my small business.
Right now, I am using onedrive, and Microsoft for my business email. Which I think comes out to like $5 a month.
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
I agree with your assessment of e-mail… you either rent under a big provider or you spend countless hours playing whack-a-mole with whitelist-blacklist keepers. The big providers do this too, but they’re so big it’s not a major slice of their operation.
a crazy amount of money on license fees
License fees pay for development, sales, support, and profit. When you go open source you can skip the sales and profit, but you have to pick up a bit of development and ALL the support, which is considerable during times of big changes, like migration to a new desktop.
llii@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.
I don’t know. I never had a problems with a smaller mail provider.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
Define smaller.
I gave up running mail through my own domain hosted by a “smaller” provider (Canadian hosting company with less than 1M clients) because I was constantly having delivery issues because somebody somewhere on an adjacent subnet got blacklisted for SPAM, or worse.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
These days it’s really about managing SPF and DKIM records. But I usually tell people just “use an email provider”. It doesn’t have to be a big one or anything, just someone else because email is an enormous headache and it’s just frankly not worth it.
exchange12rocks@lemm.ee 10 months ago
It isn’t or the op posted the wrong number: 6 EUR/user/year is nothing for organizations
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 10 months ago
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail.
That’s technically accurate, but it depends on the context. For example, if you set up DMARC properly and use a brand new custom domain as a personal email, yeah, you’re much more likely to get sent to spam, but not necessarily right away, and as you use that more frequently, or communicate with people using the larger providers like Google or Microsoft, the higher the “reputation” of your domain will get.
If you want the highest possible level of reliability though, then yeah, Google or Microsoft’s options are likely gonna give you the highest chance right off the bat without any fuss.
foobaz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The domain name doesn’t matter at all. The really important thing is the IP of your MTA (the server sending mails). Eg. if it was previously used to send spam you need to get a new one from your server provider, as it will be blocked everywhere. Also the server configuration needs to be good. Use dkim, dmark, spf, mta-sts, etc.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Kinda lame, but at the same time I get it.
So, I guess I’m sticking with OneDrive and Microsoft email.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I prefer Evolution over Thunderbird, personally. But to be fair, there aren’t any mail clients for Linux that I genuinely would say I like. I’m always open to suggestions, though.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Germany has done this multiple times before. Microsoft has historically swept in with some sweetheart deal to lure them back.
Hopefully it sticks this time.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Hard to catch fish if you see the fish as dumb idiots, for some reason the fish don’t seem to respond well to it idk.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
The German IT fish keep coming back for the bait - never bothering to avoid the hook.
lostbit@feddit.nl 10 months ago
188K doesnt sound much
Madagaskar_sky@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think the big money is in support contracts.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
Small state.
midori_matcha@lemmy.world 10 months ago
A cost worth cutting nonetheless
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Some localities in Germany have been incorporating Linux into their systems for 20+ years.
That may explain why the financial benefits seem low.
exchange12rocks@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Certainly not this one: 6 EUR/user/year doesn’t cover even Windows
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
I think this has been tried before.
Don_alForno@feddit.org 10 months ago
Yup. And MS had to bribe the city of Munich with moving their German HQ there to make them switch back.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 10 months ago
If the trend continues then maybe the hacker community will start focusing on Linux. Can you imagine “I don’t need a virus scanner, I use Windows, the under dog OS”
Ironfist79@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You say that like it’s not already focused on. The majority of Internet infrastructure runs on Linux.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 10 months ago
But the vast majority of viruses focus on end users.
tempest@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
The hacker community it’s very focused on Linux since most servers in the world run it. The fly by night script kiddies and botnet creators definitely prefer end user systems though.
MangoCats@feddit.it 10 months ago
The easiest hacks use social engineering. Much more social to exploit in the end-user arena.
Tja@programming.dev 10 months ago
This right here. Linux security is so good that the easiest way to break in is via Phishing someone with a windows laptop.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 10 months ago
it is just step 1
we will get rid of all closed source shit.
weak bavarians failed after successfull transistion to “LiMux” (their linux fork) they got bribed with 8k M$ jobs in munich.
but not the state of schleswig-holstein! we will prevail.
Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m not seeing nextcloud mentioned in the article. If they are moving to nextcloud, I wish them the best. It’s great for my personal use, but from my experience it’s lacking in what I would expect in a work environment. With a government entity coming to use them, it would be fantastic to see some improvements on them because they’re almost there.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 10 months ago
Microsoft blocking email access to the ICJ director may be the best thing to happen for Linux adoption since the SteamDeck. Now every Microsoft lobbyst can be asked what would happen is the US government order Microsoft to block them out of their infrastructure.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think the Netherlands did this a couple of years ago?
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 10 months ago
LibreOffice is a great alternative for 99% of people, but there is that 1% of people who is gonna be disappointment. This is a great step though.
seven_phone@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Lie to me once Microsoft shame on you, lie to me twice shame on me.
ConstantPain@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Just wait for Microsoft to start astroturfing the initiative.
harsh3466@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Let’s hope it sticks when Microsoft backs up the money truck.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I switched to Thunderbird about a year and a half ago.
Last week I had to help a coworker with their Outlook and holy shit is it so much worse than when I dropped it. There is so much AI garbage in every little thing and bad design getting in the way of just sending and receiving emails.
Same thing for the other office products
tibi@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s 188k euro that can be used to improve the quality of open source software.