7 ms·

Switzerland mandates government agencies use open-source software

129 points by Stratoscope 2y ago

throwawaymaroon 2y ago
[dead]
throwawaymaroon 2y ago
[dead]
fsflover 2y ago
So they finally agreed with with the arguments of this petition: https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu.
danihh 2y ago
[flagged]
- fock 2y ago
  Hmmm, k8s is OpenSource and IBM has rolled up a nice bundle to sell that. Did you think of the 80ies maybe?
- rowanG077 2y ago
  This comment is especially brain dead in the wake of crowdstrike. Brought to you by two multi billion dollar companies.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    To me, software in the 2000s was better than any software today.
    - rowanG077 2y ago
      I certainly don't miss the blue screens.
      - hulitu 2y ago
        You certainly missed the news. /s
        fsflover 2y ago
        This is an exception now, unlike in the past.
rbanffy 2y ago
It’s only responsible to use tax money in ways the resources used revert to its internal markets as much as possible. What good is Swiss tax money that creates jobs in Redmond?
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  I think this is probably not seeing the forest for the trees. If using LibreOffice and NextCloud (or whatever) ends up costing more than ~€40/headcount/month in admin, hosting and productivity, then the Swiss citizens are losing out on this decision.
  - medstrom 2y ago
    But it'd be Swiss IT guys getting paid, right? That money goes back into Switzerland.
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      Well it's either getting a positive RoI or not, if you just want to give Swiss people some tax revenue back, why not just give them a tax cut? Losing productivity is money that's just being thrown away, even if you ignore all the additional operating costs, I don't think you'd have to lose much productivity to make up the difference. I'm not sure what the average pay of Swiss civil servants is, but I can't imagine one standard E5 license (~€40/month) is far off an hours work.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        First, I am a Swiss developer so that's my perspective. Because long term if we invest in domestic ability to support, debug and improve software is a benefit. Getting actual control over the software deployed, rather then just what Microsoft want's you to get. Switzerland is behind in Digitization, and having an increase amount of open software to interact and build with makes a hell of a lot of sense. A you do digitization, every part of the software from every deparment needs to interact with every other software. Having this stuff be open source based on open standards, supported by local developers who can make this happen is vital. We should not just hand our IT infrastructure to Microsoft and Oracle, just as we are not handing of our railway system to Virgin (looking at you Britain). Of course if its just about LibreOffice, there is no point, we need a much more systematic, wide-reaching long term digitization plan, and open source must be a big part of that. I frankly don't care if short term it costs a bit more,
hodgesrm 2y ago
Munich tried switching to open source (from MS Office) back in 2003.[0] It was a bit of a rough road, though I suppose no more so than many rollouts of software to enterprises. SAP implementations are a case in point. [1] [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/108-do-all-sap-implementation-projects-fail-why-nieto-rodriguez-uvmuf/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/108-do-all-sap-implementation... edit: typo
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mrwyz 2y ago
Excellent, good for them! I don't understand why other governments don't follow suit, or why people are opposed to it. There might be some valid cons about requiring the use of FOSS (e.g. LibreOffice vs MS Office), but the part about requiring government sponsored code to be released as open source is clearly good for governments. Having the code freely open is good leverage against greed and good insurance for vendor failures.
- SSchick 2y ago
  Probably makes it harder to outsource inflated projects to contractors and makes them more publicly liable because now the public can audit them.
- baq 2y ago
  There’s no workable Excel alternative, FOSS, OSS or paid. You can deal with the word processor and presentation software, but Excel is alone in a class for itself. Also not sure how you deal with LDAP/Kerberos - is samba good enough for large deployments?
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    FreeOffice PlanMaker is an Excel clone for Linux and Mac. Not sure what corner cases it doesn't cover though.
  - kkfx 2y ago
    Hem... I fail to see a single reasons to use a spreadsheet or create slides in PowerPoint alike software actually... We can compute easily in R, Python, Clojure, also with some wrappers from Jupyter to R-Studio to Clerk for those who want it, personally I present in org-mode (dslide) with easy and no extra overhead. Maybe it's about time to teach administrative people how to use a computer...
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Some discussion a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852084 and this week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41047172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41047172
pojzon 2y ago
Does that also cover public healthcare ?
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Unless that software was written explicitly for the government, then no. Title is misleading
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fetzu 2y ago
Really curious to see what turns up. A lot of stuff like geo-data and tools [1], as well as meteorological tools and models [2] were already partly public. Having worked for the federal administration and using their IT at least a few weeks yearly, the rest is mostly Microsoft and SAP software, or classified software that they can’t and won’t release. In Switzerland, a lot of public services are located at the « Cantonal » (i.e. state) or « Communal » (i.e. city) level, which AFAIK isn’t affected by this. [1] https://github.com/swisstopo https://github.com/swisstopo [2] https://github.com/MeteoSwiss https://github.com/MeteoSwiss
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Really curious to see what turns up Bill Gates and Nadella talking to the head of Swiss government and making him an "offer" ? /s
bdw5204 2y ago
This seems like something almost every government would have already done. Open source software means they aren't locked into a single vendor and can hire anybody they wish (including their own internal developers) to modify their software to meet their needs. With proprietary software, a company like Microsoft or Apple can change your software whenever they want and however they want even if that isn't in your interest. From the perspective of a consumer, being able to hire your own developers to modify your software is basically useless. But this is very useful if you're the government and have relatively unlimited funds taxed from your subjects.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > This seems like something almost every government would have already done. Yes, thank god we have legal corruption aka lobby. /s
ranger_danger 2y ago
Misleading title, it says they only have to open-source software when that software is explicitly written for use by the government.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Good. I would like to see an industry wide movement away from proprietary formats as well, especially Office or Adobe related formats.
- hulitu 2y ago
  As long as companies can recover from Crowdsrike like failures and as long as the greed is big, it won't happen.
germandiago 2y ago
Good. This will probably also lower the conflict of interests with regulations and collusion temptation.

129 points by Stratoscope 2y ago

throwawaymaroon 2y ago

[dead]

throwawaymaroon 2y ago

[dead]

fsflover 2y ago

So they finally agreed with with the arguments of this petition: https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu.

danihh 2y ago

[flagged]

fock 2y ago
Hmmm, k8s is OpenSource and IBM has rolled up a nice bundle to sell that. Did you think of the 80ies maybe?
rowanG077 2y ago
This comment is especially brain dead in the wake of crowdstrike. Brought to you by two multi billion dollar companies.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  To me, software in the 2000s was better than any software today.
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    I certainly don't miss the blue screens.
    - hulitu 2y ago
      You certainly missed the news. /s
      - fsflover 2y ago
        This is an exception now, unlike in the past.

rbanffy 2y ago

It’s only responsible to use tax money in ways the resources used revert to its internal markets as much as possible. What good is Swiss tax money that creates jobs in Redmond?

AmericanChopper 2y ago
I think this is probably not seeing the forest for the trees. If using LibreOffice and NextCloud (or whatever) ends up costing more than ~€40/headcount/month in admin, hosting and productivity, then the Swiss citizens are losing out on this decision.
- medstrom 2y ago
  But it'd be Swiss IT guys getting paid, right? That money goes back into Switzerland.
  - AmericanChopper 2y ago
    Well it's either getting a positive RoI or not, if you just want to give Swiss people some tax revenue back, why not just give them a tax cut? Losing productivity is money that's just being thrown away, even if you ignore all the additional operating costs, I don't think you'd have to lose much productivity to make up the difference. I'm not sure what the average pay of Swiss civil servants is, but I can't imagine one standard E5 license (~€40/month) is far off an hours work.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      First, I am a Swiss developer so that's my perspective. Because long term if we invest in domestic ability to support, debug and improve software is a benefit. Getting actual control over the software deployed, rather then just what Microsoft want's you to get. Switzerland is behind in Digitization, and having an increase amount of open software to interact and build with makes a hell of a lot of sense. A you do digitization, every part of the software from every deparment needs to interact with every other software. Having this stuff be open source based on open standards, supported by local developers who can make this happen is vital. We should not just hand our IT infrastructure to Microsoft and Oracle, just as we are not handing of our railway system to Virgin (looking at you Britain). Of course if its just about LibreOffice, there is no point, we need a much more systematic, wide-reaching long term digitization plan, and open source must be a big part of that. I frankly don't care if short term it costs a bit more,

hodgesrm 2y ago

Munich tried switching to open source (from MS Office) back in 2003.[0] It was a bit of a rough road, though I suppose no more so than many rollouts of software to enterprises. SAP implementations are a case in point. [1] [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/108-do-all-sap-implementation-projects-fail-why-nieto-rodriguez-uvmuf/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/108-do-all-sap-implementation... edit: typo

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mrwyz 2y ago

Excellent, good for them! I don't understand why other governments don't follow suit, or why people are opposed to it. There might be some valid cons about requiring the use of FOSS (e.g. LibreOffice vs MS Office), but the part about requiring government sponsored code to be released as open source is clearly good for governments. Having the code freely open is good leverage against greed and good insurance for vendor failures.

SSchick 2y ago
Probably makes it harder to outsource inflated projects to contractors and makes them more publicly liable because now the public can audit them.
baq 2y ago
There’s no workable Excel alternative, FOSS, OSS or paid. You can deal with the word processor and presentation software, but Excel is alone in a class for itself. Also not sure how you deal with LDAP/Kerberos - is samba good enough for large deployments?
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  FreeOffice PlanMaker is an Excel clone for Linux and Mac. Not sure what corner cases it doesn't cover though.
- kkfx 2y ago
  Hem... I fail to see a single reasons to use a spreadsheet or create slides in PowerPoint alike software actually... We can compute easily in R, Python, Clojure, also with some wrappers from Jupyter to R-Studio to Clerk for those who want it, personally I present in org-mode (dslide) with easy and no extra overhead. Maybe it's about time to teach administrative people how to use a computer...

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Some discussion a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852084 and this week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41047172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41047172

pojzon 2y ago

Does that also cover public healthcare ?

ranger_danger 2y ago
Unless that software was written explicitly for the government, then no. Title is misleading

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fetzu 2y ago

Really curious to see what turns up. A lot of stuff like geo-data and tools [1], as well as meteorological tools and models [2] were already partly public. Having worked for the federal administration and using their IT at least a few weeks yearly, the rest is mostly Microsoft and SAP software, or classified software that they can’t and won’t release. In Switzerland, a lot of public services are located at the « Cantonal » (i.e. state) or « Communal » (i.e. city) level, which AFAIK isn’t affected by this. [1] https://github.com/swisstopo https://github.com/swisstopo [2] https://github.com/MeteoSwiss https://github.com/MeteoSwiss

hulitu 2y ago
> Really curious to see what turns up Bill Gates and Nadella talking to the head of Swiss government and making him an "offer" ? /s

bdw5204 2y ago

This seems like something almost every government would have already done. Open source software means they aren't locked into a single vendor and can hire anybody they wish (including their own internal developers) to modify their software to meet their needs. With proprietary software, a company like Microsoft or Apple can change your software whenever they want and however they want even if that isn't in your interest. From the perspective of a consumer, being able to hire your own developers to modify your software is basically useless. But this is very useful if you're the government and have relatively unlimited funds taxed from your subjects.

hulitu 2y ago
> This seems like something almost every government would have already done. Yes, thank god we have legal corruption aka lobby. /s

ranger_danger 2y ago

Misleading title, it says they only have to open-source software when that software is explicitly written for use by the government.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Good. I would like to see an industry wide movement away from proprietary formats as well, especially Office or Adobe related formats.

hulitu 2y ago
As long as companies can recover from Crowdsrike like failures and as long as the greed is big, it won't happen.

germandiago 2y ago

Good. This will probably also lower the conflict of interests with regulations and collusion temptation.