the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow.
The term digital sovereignty is very important here. If a public administration uses proprietary, closed software that can’t be studied or modified, it is very difficult to know what happens to users’ data:
We have no influence on the operating processes of such [proprietary] solutions and the handling of data, including a possible outflow of data to third countries. As a state, we have a great responsibility towards our citizens and companies to ensure that their data is kept safe with us and we must ensure that we are always in control of the IT solutions we use and that we can act independently as a state.
Digital sovereignty seems to be the primary impetus, so this might go far. Saving money is secondary.
digital sovereignty is among the best reasons to switch, good on them!
There were also previous notes about public tax dollars should not feed private corporations, but stay within a public system
Lol. Geez in America this would be radical ideas haha.
Seems nice not to have tax dollars going to private companies at a glance. However, I do not trust the government to get the job done right by themselves either in many cases.
- Wouldn’t be government anyway.
- I’ve worked on both public and private sectors, and they’re both run by people with the same potential for good and bad decisions and performance. I’ve seen great things coming from public organizations and terrible things coming from successful private organizations. Don’t buy into the narrative that government = bad.
Saving money is secondary.
Weird how that’s always the case in a capitalist society.
They will need to stay the course and not be tempted with huge Microsoft savings Microsoft will give them just like what happened with Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. “We will adhere to the principle of ‘public money, public code’. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city’s software will also be made public,” the agreement states.
poggers
I don’t think it is that great of cost savings as you need staff to support Libreoffice
You only need IT support, which you would be paying for one way or another with MS.
You need support for Windows and MS Office.
So the Germany has been moving back and forth between Microsoft and Linux / open-source.
When Munich decided to ditch many of its Windows installations in favor of Linux in 2003, it was considered a groundbreaking moment for open source software – it was proof that Linux could be used for large-scale government work. However, it looks like that dream didn’t quite pan out as expected. The German city has cleared a plan to put Windows 10 on roughly 29,000 city council PCs starting in 2020. There will also be a pilot where Munich runs Office 2016 in virtual machines. The plan was prompted by gripes about both the complexity of the current setup and compatibility headaches.
Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
No it doesn’t. It smells like Microsoft has a monopoly on office software, and city employees are not tech enthusiasts. Anyone who used Office at home or in another job is going to complain when they have to learn a new software (regardless of which is “better” - for the average person, different is bad)
Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn’t 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
Migrating an entire enterprise to FOSS software is not easy, and in government where leadership changes can be more regular, it’s not shocking to see the pendulum swing back and forth.
Could be both of those things as well.
Definitely could be both, but I’d posit that it would still happen regardless of corruption, just because they’re taking on the ambitious task of trying something new.
Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn’t 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
That’s not like that with governments. Governments are huge clients, they can and should dictate file formats to suppliers.
If the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, with a GDP of 2/3 of that of Munich, could transition to Open Document Format almost 20 years ago, Munich can.
They definitely can dictate requirements, however that means that you’re now making your staff play document format police.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s an additional headache. If I were working in that office, I’d die a little inside each time I have to go back to a consultant/contractor/community member and say “can you please resubmit this, the formatting is broken when I open it in Libre Office”
Yes, again, they have the authority to do this, and it is technically feasible, but it’s going to be a bad user experience for a long time until everyone is properly “retrained”. Especially if you’re working with partners outside of Germany who have their own document standards.
I’m not saying this is a bad move, just that I understand why they might be inclined to jump back and forth.
your staff play document format police.
Often the email filter will just convert everything not allowed to PDF.
For the average person; msoffice and libreoffice function pretty much the same. Even the icons mostly match.
Oh, cool, so I can have multiple people editing a live document at the same time?
Only Calc / Spreadsheet
https://help.libreoffice.org/6.1/en-US/text/shared/guide/collab.html?DbPAR=SHARED
That’s possible, but in the past I think Germany stuck with Windows after Microsoft gave them a better deal or something.
Heck, they may have even paid Germany to keep using Windows.
That is how big companies operate. There was that huge lawsuit / fine of
1.4 billion corruption
A large corporation gave cash to companies and Govt officials to migrate to their software products.
There’s a lot of high level corruption in Germany these days, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
IIRC the last time this made big headlines they tried to roll their own distro and it went very poorly longterm. The TL;DR version was they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail, and then MS swooped in with some great offers and that was that. (This is entirely my dusty recollection of articles I read about it at the time, FWIW.)
I don’t know whether it was malicious compliance because the folks doing the change didn’t actually want to do it or what, but that effort was as doomed as Firefly was when Fox aired it out of order and with a constantly shifting schedule.
Hopefully they make some sensible choices this time around (at a minimum not trying to create a custom distro) and it goes better. It would be great to see this become a cascade effect.
they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail
Typical government move going full malicious compliance while allowing “a few selected friends” from consulting companies to make a ton of money. They could’ve just picked Debian and rolled with it. Let’s face it, nobody develops desktop applications anymore most of the govt work is already done on custom built web platforms, any OS that can run a browser is good enough to address around 90% of the govt daily work.
Meanwhile China is creating their own distro that will be successful for sure because they’ve plans to move the public sector and whatever private they influence to the thing.
No.
Things were very different “back then.” Linux was less friendly at the time. And non-Microsoft products still had noticeable gaps. Web browser office suites didn’t exist.
The parts I remember reading were just that it took a long time for workers to get used to the system. Back then, home computers were uncommon for the average person. And what computer experience the average person did have was noticeably different from Linux.
I did not see articles about tech issues such as viruses or data leaks or configuration issues. Please show any if you have them.
Because there’s no “Germany” in this movement. Different lands, different governments, different offices, etc.
What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
See that’s the neat thing SH has (together with HH, HB and ST) its own IT consultancy. Public enterprise, not some public-private partnership, and 5300 staff a quite a bit more than what Munich’s IT department has.
And yes of course Munich is corrupt what do you expect it’s Bavaria.
So… it’s exactly what I said but with extra steps.
A way to provide money to the friends and have underplayed govt workers without the benefits and the stability 😂
Nah dataport doesn’t make profit, or at least it’s not paying out any to the states. It’s about as close to a ministry as you can get without being required to pay government wages and there’s not many in the industry who’d work for that. They don’t pay as much as FAANG or even SAP but among the wider industry it’s definitely competitive, especially if you don’t plan on job-hopping and dodging lay-offs.
This is unironically a good move for them. As Office gets more and more interconnected you have to wonder if there’s a danger of using sensitive data as training for their AI. Not only will it save them money it’ll also keep their data secure.
I hope they do not try to save that money but rather take the opportunity to invest some of it into the open source ecosystem that are now relying on.
Hahaha no way. Im Germany we say “Sparen!”
And some lobby bitches say “Schuldenbremse”
To become chancellor you have to swear an oath on the “schwarze Null”.
To become chancellor you have to swear
an oath on the “schwarze Null”.that you forgot what you did during the largest tax-scam in history
I recall randomly check open source project and some of them has German public funding.
That’s not how governments work
Why not both?
Let’s say MS charges $5M a year.
Their support contract, assuming they get one, for libre office might be $1M.
They could still invest another $1M in OSS and still save $3M
A $1M net gain for OSS and a $3M savings for the govt.
That’s still not how governments work
It would be nice if it worked like that, but we both know it doesn’t
That’s called a pareto optimum
In reality it’s gonna be something like:
M$ charges 5M €. Libreoffice might be 1M € so they will give 1M € to OSS and waste the remaining 3M € on some overly expensive one-time crap like car infrastructure. Later they will realize that they had understaffed their IT department and will need extra 5M € paid by more state debt.
That, again, is not how governments work.
What you depict is how companies work: You save amount X on something, so there are X moneys left to invest in something.
Governments work with separated and highly regulated budgets. That is sometimes bullshit, but sometimes necessary to make sure government aids are spent fairly, for example. So: You save amount X on something, you aren’t allowed to just give this amount to someone. There has to be either a program, a law, or (most often) an entirely different budget somewhere else that this someone is allowed to receive.So the “trade-off” logic cannot be fulfilled by governments, and it shouldn’t be. Think about the myriad of bullshit, money would just be dumped into by the government if this wasn’t the case. On top of the myriad of bullshit that already made it through the nets, that is.
Well think again, Germany invests in open source.
The fund will rise with the savings for sure
And having a government as a significant backer for an open source project is a great recipe for conflicts of interest and general trust erosion.
who else should be a significant backer for an open source project? google? microsoft?
Things get weird as corporations increasingly have power comparable to nation states.
But, generally, I would rather a megacorporation than a government. Because megacorps are at least “smart enough” to pretend they aren’t trying to take over the world. Whereas governments have a tendency to justify a lot of horrible shit for righteous reasons.
But, in a perfect world? I would rather a wide range of different donors and backers but mostly clustering around maybe fortune 500 companies instead of fortune 10?
Because megacorps are at least “smart enough” to pretend they aren’t trying to take over the world.
there are enough examples for corps doing evil things. You hear about them less often, because they cover their tracks and the outcry is generally smaller than when governments do similar things.
Whereas governments have a tendency to justify a lot of horrible shit for righteous reasons.
corps justify a lot of horribble shit for financial reasons. Is that better?
Corporations can also act on behalf, or on the orders of nation states. So you don’t solve anything, if a state wants to get involved, it will. You have the additional cons that corporations tend to cater to their financial interests anyway, while a public institution might not always have ulterior motives.
I hope your government has an emergency fund. Savings are really important
I have an idea in which federal state Microsoft Germany headquarters will move next…
MS HQ in Kiel? That would be so desperate.
Doesn’t Germany do this every so many years to get a better Microsoft deal?
bavaria… we are different.
Which is leas good, but still fine.
One of the marginal transitional benefits of open source software is keeping proprietary shit at least kind of in it’s place.
I wonder if this is related to https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/. This as it shouldn’t be about saving cost. It should be about being sovereign.
I’m not sure it’ll even save them money, at least initially. They’re likely paying consultants to work out the best approach, they need to retrain staff, and they’d probably go with a distro like RedHat that has vendor support (plus have paid support for LibreOffice too)
Not being held hostage by one US company should be a priority by much more countries
Moving to Firefox will make a huge impact too
Not sure why you were downvoted
It’s the validation downvote. If you get any attention at all someone somewhere will downvote you.
Maybe a $BROWSER user…
If they put as much money into these foss projects as they where giving microsoft before, maybe Libreoffice will become halfway decent.
I use Libreoffice and it’s fine for a non-power user, but it sure has some rough edges
It has some rough edges to be sure. I’ve found myself fighting with it quite a bit. But it’s usable.
I’m just glad there is more incentive for [organization] to help patch the issues.
While I’m all for OSS, I’m also objective enough to know where it’s not a good idea. And I think this is one of them. They have commercial one available in their own country called softmaker, which comes with support which is really important for a business or organization. I’ve been using it for many years because the OSS where just not right for me. Also liked WPS more but Linux dev was slow, but now I found my match
LibreOffice does “develop and maintain a certification system for professionals of various kinds who deliver and sell services around LibreOffice.”
But let’s be honest, most seats at the government does not use anything much advanced anyway.
There are places where nested formulas in pivot tables are needed to work, but most places are using just simple documents.
A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.
As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don’t use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.
The intense pressure from Microsoft doesn’t have anything to do with it I’m sure.
It’s cheaper to find support
*at first
Its only cheap because its normalized in that domain. As more work is done to iron out bugs and get people in the office space the feature they need on Linux the more experience IT folks will get support.
Its an investment as always. There is no such thing as a free lunch
Society favours the short term and it will be a long time before Linux sys admins are cheaper than Windows sys admins
Or even asking random kid out of high school how to do x
Who else to start the trend than the government that was created for the public good in the first place.
You have too look at it at scale too, and most places should either be adopting some platform that already does or be planning on scaling some special service they do.
Every Podunk municple probally should have to have a AD expert, a security expert, a hardware/software lifecycle management person, etc etc
That’s how o365 can be cheaper total cost of ownership then an army of siloed sys admins, even if the software is at no cost to them.
Its an investment in total operations of the organizations of the state, from the current state of 1990s tech most operate off of to a modern IT infrastructure.
Microsoft certainly tries it’s best to keep you locked into their ecosystem by making it inconvenient but not impossible to leave though that’s not the real reason, it’s security. Businesses and especially governments are scared of nation state hackers contributing malicious code to open source products and falsely assume it’s safer to use closed source software because those incidents aren’t public. There’s so much great software out there I’d love to use and the first question I’m asked when I bring it up is can you prove China hasn’t contributed code?
As the result of a change in the city’s government, to leave LiMux and at the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant’s decision to move its headquarters to Munich.
Just a coincidence.
Again with the squeaky shoes
Awesome. Bravo.
Which municipality was it that switched to Linux only to be seduced back to Windows?
Sadly, I think most employees would hate it particularly if the transition isn’t well managed.
That was apparently Munich. And even with a promised 90% discount (of which I don’t know the terms), they stayed away from Microsoft. But recently they switched back anyway :(
My buddies and I have worked at companies that went through similar transitions and reversions.
The issue is not the cost or even the ideology. It is the training and support. There are a LOT of really good training resources for MS Office and, at least for millennials, outright education in k-12. So, by switching to libre office or anything similar, you are suddenly putting a large burden on yourself and random enthusiast youtubers who will start advertising nordvpn partway through explaining what a pivot table is. Because the vast majority of people don’t know how to google “how to edit the footer for slides in Libre Office”
And that RAPIDLY adds up to being a lot more expensive than even the full priced licenses from MS. your more technically competent staff suddenly have very large support burdens because “Oh, I just have a quick question” and that increases their burnout.
That said, it is going to be really interesting in the next 5-10 years (… assuming the world doesn’t end in a series of thermonuclear explosions first) since gen-z are very much brought up on Google Docs and the like. So even MS Office will have a significant training overhead for new hires.
At one of my other jobs we had to migrate a codebase from SVN to Git. it… was incredibly overdue and it was making for a greater burden on new hires who had to learn an antiquated toolset to contribute. But it was a genuine concern because most of the existing developers who understood “where the bodies were buried” had already “suffered through giving up on CVS for no good reason”. And we genuinely had to acknowledge that we would lose staff “on both sides” and, while I am not proud to admit it, more or less set up a few underperforming early career staff to be sacrificial lambs. Making it a point to let Old Fuck #5 know that the guy who was struggling to understanding how to write performant kernels was available to work through how to write a commit message. That way the rock stars who we were dependent on would not put in their notice.
This really depends on adequate training. And it’s a shame this training does not start in school. Microsoft and Google have a very strong hold in schools and that conditions people to stick with what is familiar :(
Because the vast majority of people don’t know how to google
My mother is like that. Every now and then she asks me whether I’m skilled with Excel and how to do x thing in Excel. x is usually some pretty basic thing that I don’t know how to do but I’m sure it is googlable. I wonder whether this is the norm for people who use a computer for work daily but aren’t “tech guys”.
I don’t have the direct experience you do, but when you say “training and support” I would venture that includes “the vibe” of the thing.
People who have used Windows & Office forever will find using a new platform irritating just because everything is just a little different.
Couple that with the fact that non-tech people often perceive opensource as the free+shitty version, and it’s surely a recipe for an “ideology” whereby employees feel that they’re being abused - forced to use a shitty platform so the city can save a few dollars.
There’s also a halo effect, whereby any issue gets blamed on free+shitty platform instead of simply tech being tech.
I just don’t think that training and support can really solve that. You really need employees to believe in the benefits if opensource and I’m not sure that’s achievable.
The “vibe” doesn’t really matter. You are getting paid to do a job, you are gonna do it. You can’t refuse to write documents because you have to use Word instead of Google Docs or whatever.
No, it really is the training. Because the most obnoxious thing in the work force is an old white guy. They can’t outright say “no”. But they will do everything in their power to talk about how EVERYTHING is a blocker and they can’t get any work done because nobody wanted to teach them something. Or nobody was able to answer the questions that they refuse to ask. And so forth.
Having a database of training videos or even an outsourced consultant goes a long way toward “Hey Jon? Nobody gives a shit. Do your job”. Whereas having to link to just a document or explain something yourself is how they will actively refuse to ever retain any information.
If only my employer, the state of Geneva, Switzerland, did the same.
I hate the fact we’re giving so much taxpayer’s money to the GAFAMs.
That was Munich. This is also Munich.Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government.
Munich is in Schleswig-Holstein now?
Anti Commercial AI thingy
I saw a 2020 link someone else posted and got confused.
Tuens out after the switch back to windows which I linked to in another reply, they actually switched back to Linux in 2020!
Really?!
I’d never heard about that.
Awesome. Now stick with it!
And remember, different isn’t wrong, it’s different.
MS will erect another campus and things will go back to “normal”. Hopefully this will last at this time…
Good documentary about MS hold over German government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg
it’d be funny if municipalities all over the eu started switching to Linux because they want a Microsoft campus
That’s only half the story if you look into it. I think they also had issues with the transition.
I think they also had issues with the transition.
They were blown out of proportion. Every single problem was magnified as if Windows had none at all. IIRC the sysadmins actually said they had less support tickets to deal with than before.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
