5 million a year would go a long way towards making their open source solutions meet their needs.
Hurray! This German State Decides to Save €15 Million Each Year By Kicking Out Microsoft for Open Source
Submitted 4 days ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to technology@lemmy.world
https://itsfoss.com/news/german-state-ditch-microsoft/
Comments
Serinus@lemmy.world 4 days ago
slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
The cynic in me says they are very good at burning through such amounts without any notable progress. However since it is open source, my hopes are up that this will lift the veil where otherwise bureaucracy and corruption will waste the money.
Serinus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I mean, optionally they could set up a tiny dev shop with that amount and submit the PRs they want to submit. And at worst, they could maintain their own fork.
It’d be a public service in more ways than one.
JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 3 days ago
There are some detailed articles around in german tech magazine c’t. If you want more information, look there - this initiative looks quite well managed
myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
This is so selfish. What about the shareholders?!!!??
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Another government stops renting key software and instead invests in actuall ownership!
Honestly, if Microsoft said they wanted to own the Autobahn I could only imagine people would tell them to fuck off (in english and deutche). Why would digital infrastructure be any different?
jali67@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Shouldn’t be. Glad the world is waking up to these vile tech companies. US government needs to stop coddling them too.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Be nice ic Chicago had the same attitude towards our highways ):
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Honestly. I think private companies can have a place in public infra, but it’s not in the freaking ownership. Rent seeking is the worst and most destructive aspect of private ownership and we’ve known and can look at countless example of that since Adam Smith!
Jaybird@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And since thes last update from the USA on how they view the EU, this will not be the last move EU countries will make.
I know, I work for one of them. We are ACTIVELY planning our usexit.
jali67@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Trump admin shoots the U.S. in the foot every chance it gets
Jaybird@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Trust comes on foot and leaves by horse.
It will be decades before some semblance of trust has been earned back by the USA (starting after they act normally again, whenever that may be)
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
It’s cause they misunderstood the prefix for foot and got all excited.
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
In Soviet USsia, USsia exits EU!
varnia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
I really hope GNU/Linux can run on old Fax machines and the printing out emails workflow works smoothly.
unabart@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Seriously. While I support the change to foss solutions, this is going to go over like a fart in church for the people that were just forced off fax machines and into email a year ago. And there’s a zero percent chance that Germany will use any of those savings for a support infrastructure. The German way is to figure it out, and endure the suffering while you do with the bare minimum of support from people that barely know the shit themselves.
I have a friend who is principal at a high school here in DE and the stories she’s been telling me about the new push to get tablets into the hands of kids is straight fkn Monty Python level absurdity… from the staff!
Germany painted themselves into a corner with their refusal to modernize their tech infrastructure. The “it’s not broken, so don’t fix it” mentality has left them 20 years behind all their neighbors. But, hey, traditions over everything… amirite?
JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 3 days ago
You might want to read this article. Yes, it’s in german. Yes, it’s behind a paywall. But your analysis is totally wrong here
LittleBorat3@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I am 99 percent sure they still have these overhead projectors in schools
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
This is also good news because it obviously means that german government will have to review the software used for possible security holes and close them, so everyone who also uses the software gets security fixes.
LorIps@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hehe hehe hehe. Yeah no, you overestimate Germany state governments
Mangoholic@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
From the government that still has branches that accept mail only, I doubt it.
palordrolap@fedia.io 4 days ago
In before Microsoft break out the FUD tactics and a year or two of cheap licenses.
massive_bereavement@fedia.io 4 days ago
Gates is already boarding the jet.
foo@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Nadella you mean? It’s been a while since Gates was CEO of Microsoft.
zebidiah@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
didn’t another german state already try this and fail pretty spectacularly?? cost them WAY more money and then they ended up rolling back to m$??
given that, this is fantastic news! it’s good to see people learn from past failed implementations, hopefully learn from their mistakes, and try again instead of just blaming it on bad software
vodka@feddit.org 3 days ago
You’re not thinking about when Microsoft bribed their way into them not switching by opening an office in the area?
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 3 days ago
This. It was the city of Munich. They had their own linux distro “Munix” and everything. Then the conservative got into power. You know the rest.
ShaunKL@startrek.website 3 days ago
I’ve been trying to find a source but from what I remember the transition was in maybe Munich and it was going fine.
Microsoft opened a new sales or operation center there and got cozy with the government there as quickly as possible to turn them back into a customer.
goatinspace@feddit.org 3 days ago
You have to know how to do it right. It can be bad.
stoy@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
They do this every few years, when the contract is up for negotiation, M$ will make a way cheaper option, and they will switch back
foo@feddit.uk 3 days ago
I’m holding out hope that discounts wont work this time, because the motivation is different. It used to be about cost, now it’s about digital sovereignty. I won’t bet anything of value, but I can hope.
kubofhromoslav@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Inspiration for many more governments!
I have already contacted my, Slovakian government. I should ping them again 😅
TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 4 days ago
I swear to god if this is Schleiswig Holstein again I’m giving it back to Denmark
de_lancre@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Amount of copium is insane in comments. Like, people straight up using fate, like it’s a docking religion, instead of using their head.
Other countries also tried and failed. It’s never brings any profit, instead government usually end up losing shit ton of money. Reason is simple: adoption requires contribution. You need to hire new IT specialist, that knows linux and not windows. You need to do requalification of already existing specialist. You need to adapt software. You need to teach every single focking person how to work with new alternative software. And you need to suffer downtime, cause people still new to linux and it’s software.
Adoption is very hard and those miserable savings on windows licensing is nothing compared to cost of migration. I’m not even saying “hypothetically”, here documented list.
Blind coping will get you nowhere.
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
This is such a shortsighted take. After the initial hurdle of migration, you’re free of licenses forever. It won’t take long for the savings to match the initial costs, and after that it’s more money in the bank until the Sun explodes.
sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Yeah but you’re missing the point. Them choosing to change despite the massive marketing budget of m$ is what my takeaway would be. Migrations are almost never easy.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Exactly.
This isn’t a decision being made to cut costs, it’s a strategic move because the EU just assessed how badly they’d be screwed if Trump throws a tantrum and forces American tech companies to disrupt services to their governments.
In addition, the EU has strong data privacy laws and US tech companies are resisting compliance (Elon was recently fined 150million, for example).
This has led to several hearings with tech executives who said that they could not guarantee that the data would stay in the EU and they could not guarantee that the data would not be provided to any other country.
Digital privacy laws don’t mean anything if they don’t apply to the major tech companies and they’ve said that they won’t comply.
de_lancre@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You missing the point of my comment, not me.
5 million a year would go a long way towards making their open source solutions meet their needs.
Look, those people think that it will be profitable. That it will save shit ton of money out of thin air. That what I call copium.
I did not said “it’s bad” to adopt linux, quite the opposite. What I said is that commenters here operate on a fate, not on a logic.
LittleBorat3@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I can only imagine all these bureaucrats with learning issues because something needs to be done differently now🙄
de_lancre@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I worked for “business automation” company, mainly as tech support of SAAS solution that target accountants\clerks that works with government documents.
I feel sorry for support guys\system administrators and everyone else involved.
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 4 days ago
What exactly are you trying to prove with that Wikipedia link? If anything it shows relatively wide adoption of Linux.
de_lancre@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Reread my comment then from the start.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
15mil more in the pockets of politicians as a reward for saving it, lol
oldest_meme_420@hilariouschaos.com 3 days ago
So, which distro will they be using?
modus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hannah Montana.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
This is great, But using Microsoft Windows should be illegal for public services in EU.
We can no longer allow ourselves to depend on American IT infrastructure.
naeap@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Public Money should result in public code.
It can’t be, that our public money lands as profits in non European companies.
That should be a given, imho
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I 100% agree, but some would consider that a matter of ideology.
The other point about dependency on USA when they are acting with hostility is more pragmatic.
99% of people don’t understand all the reason why open source is better for public services, except if we can say it’s cheaper. That’s the one point they understand, and the one point Microsoft has been attacking most with their propaganda against open source.
Strider@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Go away with your common sense!