8 ms·

The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source

• GnarfGnarf 11mo ago
  I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all national governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic sovereignty. I'm sure Microsoft, under orders from the U.S. government, could disable all computers in any country or organization, at the flick of a switch. Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit. Apart from a few niche cases, the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software.
  • jll29 11mo ago
    The sabotage scenario is perhaps less likely than the alternative scenario of industrial and political espionage. There are also practical advantages: the ability to fix a bug in-house instead of waiting for a technology giant from another continent.
    • lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
      > the ability to fix a bug in-house Yes, but bureaucracies make this impossible. If you have worked at a bank before, you'll know how difficult it is to make a change to some in-house piece of software. And that's a bank, not a gov't institution. Think how much more friction there will be in the latter.
      • deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      • grim_io 11mo ago
        The culture can only change when it actually becomes possible to make any changes to the systems. If all the software one institution uses comes in the form of proprietary binaries, there is simply no need to even think about making policies about fixing those systems in-house.
        • nickff 11mo ago
          These institutions don’t bother making fixes where they can, so it seems unlikely that giving them more options will change much. Ironically, things like windows auto-update being the default probably actually help their IT departments maintain some level of security
          • grim_io 11mo ago
            Auto update is not rocket science. Linux distributions have it too.
            • 1718627440 11mo ago
              Yeah and it is better. Most things can be updated without a reboot and even for the kernel, you can either live-patch it (not always possible) or reboot only the kernel.
      • petcat 11mo ago
        EU bureaucracy is where optimism goes to die
      • jimnotgym 11mo ago
        I wonder if it is in fact easier in a German region than a bank though. A bank has massive compliance complications, where the state insists on rules being met, so their are teams of people trying to make sure no rules being broken, and therefore anti-change. Germany is a Federal system, and the region has law making powers, a bit like a US state. Therefore it can set the rules to make sure migration to a new system happens. If big fixes are not allowed, they have themselves to blame. At a bank it is the state causing the friction.
      • Terr_ 11mo ago
        It's funny, I was doing some budgeting stuff, and I ran into some corruption of payee-data in my bank's export files. Good: I already wrote a script to fix the exact same issue. Bad: It was in a pile of old stuff from 10+ years ago. Good: It worked anyway. Bad: The bank still has the same bug.
      • __d 11mo ago
        At a certain size (and government departments are absolutely large enough) it makes sense to manage software deployment centrally, from an internal package repository/cache. Once that’s in place, the process for populating that repository can easily adopt locally modified versions of upstream software: defaults changed, bugs removed, features added, etc. No one in a big business/government blinks at changing group policies for internal deployment. Changing the code is really very little different once the ability to do so is internalized.
    • whstl 11mo ago
      Less likely? This is exactly what happened earlier this year. Here's an article from the same newspaper that showed up to me as "related" when browsing TFA: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-email-block-a-wake-up-call-for-digital-sovereignty-10387383.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai...
      • nroets 11mo ago
        So you point to one instance of highly targeted sabotage aka sanctions. But Snowden and others exposed many instances of espionage dragnets.
  • crazygringo 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • homarp 11mo ago
      indeed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44336915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44336915 - Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342 - ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk
      • crazygringo 11mo ago
        Yup. Microsoft pledged not to intervene like that again, reclassifying its legal interpretation of its own services, and added language to its contracts to guarantee that it would fight future US attempts to do so: https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-services-international-criminal-court-president-american-sanctions-trump-tech-icc-amazon-google/ https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic... When the US manages to force Microsoft to do something, it responds by trying to protect itself from the same scenario in the future. Because it wants profits. The ICC leaving Microsoft is the last thing Microsoft wanted.
        • dietr1ch 11mo ago
          oh, pinky promise? sure, let's keep sovereignty at stake then, all good.
          • crazygringo 11mo ago
            Lengthy contracts between nation-states and corporations, developed and reviewed by teams of lawyers, and enforced by judges, are not exactly "pinky promises."
            • zelphirkalt 11mo ago
              They will become pinky promises, once Microsoft gets ordered to do something by orange man or some three letters. There isn't really anything Microsoft can do about that, unless they decide to move headquarters and lots of employees out of the US. It basically doesn't matter what they have in contracts, as US law or just political power with access to enforce that power trumps (ha) any contracts they can sign.
  • myaccountonhn 11mo ago
    I agree, but it also feels like it would be so difficult. It requires a ton of training, the UIs are not flashy so people are going to feel repulsed (I unironically found looks to be a big blocker when adopting open source tech) and finally Microsoft is going to lobby incredibly hard against it. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to actively sabotage any adoption.
    • whstl 11mo ago
      This excuse is as old as the hills and I've been hearing it since the late 90s, but historically there has been exactly zero training between versions of Office or Windows that changed a lot of the interface overnight. Office workers just kept using them like the rest of the planet. Not to mention companies who moved on to Google Docs or the web version of Office. Or companies who moved to MacOS 15-10 years ago. In my state back home the entire workforce moved to LibreOffice and, according to my sister (a government worker), everyone is doing fine. Recently I saw a German government worker using Office to produce a document and she mentioned that she "barely knows how to use it" and "just knows how to load templates, fill and print". This hypothetical problem of "needs training" only seems to exist when you mention the words "open source".
    • dietr1ch 11mo ago
      > - It requires a ton of training, the UIs are not flashy so people are going to feel repulsed (I unironically found looks to be a big blocker when adopting open source tech), and finally Microsoft is going to lobby incredibly hard against it. I think everyone agrees the costs are high, especially beyond monetary ones, but this stance on avoiding these costs is slowly pushing everyone into finding out how expensive is not having sovereignty. Through its tech industry the US has over time acquired too much power over critical digital infrastructure that has already compromised governments. We know of Presidents/PMs/Legislators spied upon through their phones and computers, and also Microsoft itself involved in revoking email access to the ICC's chief prosecutor as retaliation/defense against investigations. Sovereignty is too important for government, and since everyone needs to do it and get security right going for open-source with funded development and constant auditing is in my mind the only way.
    • 11mo ago
  • al_borland 11mo ago
    Today when a government pushes for a backdoor we often see companies push back. The FBI publicly complained about iMessage encryption a lot, and currently Apple is also telling the government of India they aren’t going to install their “security” software… those are just a couple examples. What happens when major OSS projects are controlled by the governments themselves? Will David still beat Goliath?
    • hamdouni 11mo ago
      Fork the project.
    • Spooky23 11mo ago
      Maybe. I highly doubt Apple or any other company isn’t complying in some way. It’s been widely speculated that there are gentleman’s agreements where strategic bugs do not get fixed. To apple’s credit, unlike say BlackBerry, they designed iMessage where many of the intercept methods are tamper evident.
    • lucianbr 11mo ago
      How does anyone "control" an OSS project in the sense that you are talking about, so the ability to insert backdoors or activate kill-switches? Maybe Linus controls Linux, but can he "flick a switch and kill" any running kernels? He might be able to insert backdoors, but will they go unnoticed? Would anyone be forced to install them? Just patch the code to remove the backdoor. I feel that you wrote some words that only seem to make sense if we don't think about them too much.
      • rocqua 11mo ago
        Linux is not a smart target. But OpenOffice, nextcloud, postfix, those are much easier targets for developer coercion to compromise widely installed software that is important for "linux on the desktop". Ah and ofcourse also the desktop environments, and perhaps systemD are all in a privileged position with much less eyes on.
      • al_borland 11mo ago
        The thought was that the government would effectively become the largest employer of OSS developers who would then be compelled to follow directions or be out of a job. Would there be enough independent developers to review millions of lines of code, patch out any back doors, or fork and maintain an entirely separate projects, since none of the government protects can be trusted? Could the government also dictate the operating system and software people use to make sure it is the state sponsored one? If I’m not mistaken some similar actions have happened in N Korea and China. I’m not saying this is an inevitable outcome, but just trying to think of worst case scenarios. A lot of terrible things have started with good intentions.
  • tonyhart7 11mo ago
    "the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software." wait until they found out that there is no "customer service" in OSS, sometimes the project is fine but people need "someone" to be held accountable in some ways that's why a lot of OSS project never take flight
    • TRiG_Ireland 11mo ago
      There absolutely can be "customer service" in OSS. You can usually find someone to pay for it.
    • 1718627440 11mo ago
      Customer service is how OSS companies make money.
  • newsclues 11mo ago
    I feel like there should be an open project to manage and support this. I think governance (both public and private) would benefit from open tools to manage communities at scale via technology.
  • rocqua 11mo ago
    I doubt that Microsoft has a kill switch. Though through automatic updates they still have pretty strong sabotage capabilities. But the OS is not where Microsofts power lies. Its in exchange (almost everywhere cloud managed, including for many governments) and SharePoint, with a small amount of teams, where Microsoft is truly a scary prospect for sovereignty.
    • smodo 11mo ago
      The kill switch is M365 account management. You take that offline, many SME’s and local governments just stop working. At least for a while.
    • codedokode 11mo ago
      They have the kill switch, it is called a "cloud account". Nowadays you need a valid cloud (MS-controlled) account to log into your computer.
      • Aperocky 11mo ago
        Haven't used Windows in almost a decade, has it gotten that bad? I can't log on to a windows computer if the cloud account don't exist? What if there's no internet?
        • 1718627440 11mo ago
          > What if there's no internet? Surely that is something only criminal would say.
        • d3Xt3r 11mo ago
          It caches your credentials so you can still login offline. But you do need to be online when you're logging into your PC for the first time, post-install. There are some unofficial hacks to bypass the online account requirement, but MS have been actively stamping these out. Now the current situation isn't like it's impossible to bypass this, mind you (as far as I'm aware there's at least a couple of workarounds), but normal users won't know/care and will end up just creating an online account.
  • consumer451 11mo ago
    I have a possibly strange take. Isn't the code of law the original open source, for very good reason? As law becomes more and more enforced by software, should it not all be required to be open source?
  • graemep 11mo ago
    Governments have more to gain from being able to work with a few big companies on things like surveillance than they do from sovereignty - which many of them regard as an out of date idea anyway. Despite all the talk about sovereign cloud the actual governments are actually going the other way. 1. The Online Safety Act in the UK pushes people to use big tech more rather than run stuff independently - the forums that moved to social media. 2. EU regulatory requirements that help the incumbents:https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/27/cispe_eu_sovereignty_framework/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/27/cispe_eu_sovereignty_... 3. ID apps in multiple countries that require installs from Google or Apple stores, and only run on their platforms. 4. The push to cashless which means increased reliance on Visa, Mastercard, Apple and Google. To be clear I do not not think that any of these things are in the public interest. However the government is not the public, and the public (and probably a lot of the government) has deeply ingrained learned helplessness about technology.
  • SoftTalker 11mo ago
    Prudent to assume that the same is possible with Linux.
  • pjmlp 11mo ago
    Similar opinion and source of income. Linux for starters, however even that has too many US contributions. In general, we need to go back to the cold war days, multiple OSes and programming languages governed by international standards, with local vendors. If sovereignty is desired, it can't stop at Office packages.
  • mattip 11mo ago
    > Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit. This is the business model of Quansight Labs, whose employees help maintain much of the scientific python stack. Mostly tech companies, not governments, sponsoring the work
  • switknee 11mo ago
    Flicking that switch would be pretty much a one time deal. Not likely. What would happen instead, and has happened in the past, is Microsoft (or juniper, etc) leaving a remote vulnerability unpatched while certain groups use that exploit. It's much more deniable. So deniable, that it's impossible to say for certain that it was intentional. It's more practical to audit FOSS systems for bugs than a Microsoft solution, and the tools for doing so are open source and getting even better every day. Like you said, sharing the burden helps with cost: It also helps with the trust issue. Going one step further, formally verified software solutions are possible (and exist!). Good luck getting that from Microsoft, they ship a calculator that needs updates and internet access to run.
• k8sToGo 11mo ago
  I wonder what they use for Microsoft Office. My office license is renewing in 2 weeks and I have been looking at alternatives but they all have their own catch.
  • cl3misch 11mo ago
    I find Onlyoffice to be the closest alternative. It presents itself as a hosted office platform but you can actually install it locally and it feels just like an office program. It's not the most efficient, being effectively a webview. But its UI and compatibility is imho much better than LibreOffice. https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/
    • k8sToGo 11mo ago
      Thanks! Works quite well.
  • eloeffler 11mo ago
    The catch depends a lot on the context that you're considering. Trying to replace Microsoft Office as a whole by a drop-in replacement like LibreOffie may work better or worse depending on who uses it. I've never used anything but OpenOffice / LibreOffice for writing academic texts in the humanities and never missed anything. The "catch" whenever I tried Microsoft Word was the menu that had the most important functions (for me) hidden away much deeper than in OO and LO. I've never been a big user of Spreadsheets but I've heard only good of Excel and trust the widespread opinion that it is unchallenged in its domain. In sociology you wouldn't use it because you've got specialized statistics software such as R and SPSS (PSPP being an attempt at an Open Source Alternative to SPSS). Looking at administration, Excel ist probably quite important but when you get rid of it, not one but various solutions might take its place, depending on who uses it. If you want something like a browseable database in a colorful table for office clerks, LO Calc might be enough. But the things Excel gets praised for a lot (I never know what exactly people mean) would probably have to be tackled another way. Governments going down that need to invest into finding those solutions by providing staff that is qualified to find them or even develop them. The state of Schleswig-Holstein considered in its Open Source initiative strategy that it may be challenged by a future legislation and put a focus on the reasons for acceptance of Open Source solutions. I wonder if that is put into action well to find solutions with the least "catch" that may even excel over Microsoft products depending on their context :)
• pards 11mo ago
  Is there a link that doesn't require me to agree to give up my first-born?
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • looperhacks 11mo ago
    https://archive.ph/Cr3H2 https://archive.ph/Cr3H2
• _n66o 11mo ago
  What if you have an excel workbook that relies on a bunch of custom formulas. I would be upset if this happened in my workplace. Datasets have been far easier to handle with lambda, vstack, byrow, and the rest. I would not like this move and would have to remain a holdout. That would also frustrate me because of the division.
  • DanOpcode 11mo ago
    Are we gonna accept being forever locked in to Microsoft because of custom Excel workbook formulas? Forever paying Microsoft a license fee, because we don't want to covert said formulas or invest in open source software to make it reach parity with Excel.
    • CerryuDu 11mo ago
      The problem with this is that the decisionmakers fucked up 10-20 years ago, and now when those decisions are being righted, some poor public servant is paying the price.
      • rowanG077 11mo ago
        And 10-20 years ago it would have also been a public servant paying the price. You are just salty it's now you. At least be happy your work is impacted for a noble cause.
        • CerryuDu 11mo ago
          I am salty, but not because I'm impacted by this. :) The reason I'm salty is that most linux desktop envs are unusable in their own right. I very much feel the pain of being forced to use some centrally-dictated craptastic linux GUI. I've been on Linux for 2+ decades and I hate nearly all the desktop envs. I totally feel for those blokes whose Windows UI is now being ripped from their hands. Where they'll land doesn't only suck for them (having a Windows background), it might very well suck for anyone, even those with a long Linux background.
    • 11mo ago
• glimshe 11mo ago
  We've been seeing variations of the same article every week. The answer has been the same for a long time: this is great but unfortunately there are advantages in using Office and that's the reason we shouldn't expect mass migration anytime soon. Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years. Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away.
  • hollow-moe 11mo ago
    Arriving first (ye ye Lotus 1-2-3 existed we know) and early extreme lobbyism sure stands strong.
    • knallfrosch 11mo ago
      You acknowledge your first argument is invalid, handwave that away and then your whole idea of Microsoft's office suite's dominance is "lobbyism"? Good lord.
  • nhatcher 11mo ago
    > We've been seeing variations of the same article every week. Time has come. Over the last few years there is more and more interest from goverments and private organizations to have relieable software that does not depend of foreign entities. Software sovereignty is becoming a necesity rather than a nice to have for both nations and enterprises. > Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years. Excel, like many other technologies in the past can be disrupted. Like mane other commenters say, it won't come cheap. Saving costs shouldn't be the the goal here. > Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away. Challenge accepted!
    • glimshe 11mo ago
      This is the year of LibreOffice on the government? I'd love if you were right, but I doubt it. The chasm is enormous, and maybe you don't use Excel enough to realize it.
• chaoskanzlerin 11mo ago
  There's a history of German public administrations using Linux and other open-source software. In particular, the City of Munich has pioneered this with their 2006-2019 LiMux [0] project, which was ultimately cancelled in exchange for Microsoft moving their German offices to Munich proper. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux / Discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661372
  • torusle 11mo ago
    Back then Microsoft was lobbying as hard as they could to turn that decision to move to linux over. They knew: If Linux makes it in Munich, it will likely spread over and they loose tons of contracts with other German states.
  • qwertox 11mo ago
    - Sir, can we bribe you? - Of course, of course.
    • TacticalCoder 11mo ago
      [dead]
  • psteinweber 11mo ago
    Munich seems to have become the preferred destination for US companies opening their German office (most recent: OpenAI, Notion, Anthropic). So if Microsoft would have paved that way, it would have been totally worth it for the city.
• tiahura 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • stefan_ 11mo ago
    It's 2025, maybe instead we can finally stop trying to emulate letters from the 1980s? If your business process today involves Word, you need to be retired so someone can come in that understands what computers are.
  • tonyhart7 11mo ago
    "Somebody needs to put a lot of $$$$ into the project" and that's the problem, people wouldn't invest that much into project no one use
  • bgbntty2 11mo ago
    I've been using LibreOffice Calc and Writer for years. I've used Microsoft Office Excel and Word, too. I can't say I've ever suffered from my choices or that I missed any features. As for "polish" - that's subjective, isn't it? I can access all the features I want quickly and efficiently. It's a tool, after all. There are some minor bugs with Calc that I'd rate 2/10 in importance - annoyances mostly. I haven't used Excel in a while, but it had annoyances, too. But even if Microsoft Office is more polished and feature-rich, I still think that the trade-off is worth it - we get data and software sovereignty, privacy and cost savings. The workers need to relearn how to access feature X in the menu or how to live without feature Y.
  • arlcode 11mo ago
    There is probably some (or even much) truth to it but it needs to pointed out that this statement comes from the political opposition and is therefore somewhat biased against this project.
  • rs186 11mo ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with "Libreoffice is junk" but that's not actually a problem, or all the problem. As the article has stated, 80% of the licenses were dropped, while 20% of the use cases continue to be supported by Microsoft Office. To me that is already a big win compared to 100% Microsoft Office. You see, most Office users are not heavy/expert users and they only occasionally need the basic features that exist everywhere and do good enough of a job. I personally have only used Word maybe 3 times over the past few years, because almost all work documents live elsewhere, while Google Docs is good enough for my personal word processing needs (which could probably be done with Libreoffice as well). In the old days I used to install pirated Microsoft Office when I got a new laptop. These days I don't even think about it. Imagine every company starts to evaluate how many employees actually need Microsoft Office, and then drop licenses for those who would be ok with Libreoffice or nothing at all. Microsoft would be shitting their pants.
• ekianjo 11mo ago
  Wait until Microsoft comes back with lobbying some well placed politicians and restores Microsoft 365 in no time. This happens every single time.
• mapontosevenths 11mo ago
  Its been a very long time since I was a Sysadmin, but I'm curious what managing a fleet of Linux desktops is like today? Has it vastly improved? When I last tried in a small pilot program, it was incredibly primitive. Linux desktops were janky and manual compared to Active Directory and group policy, and an alternative to Intune/AAD didn't even seem to exist. Heck, even things like WSUS and WDS didnt seem to have an open version or only had versions that required expensive expert level SME'S to perform constant fiddling. Meanwhile the Windows tools could be managed by 20 year old admins with basic certitifcations. Also, GRC and security seemed to be impossible back then. There was an utter lack of decent DLP tools, proper legal hold was difficult, EDR/AV solutions were primitive and the options were limited, etc. Back then it was like nobody who had ever actually been a sysadmin had ever taken an honest crack at Linux and all the hype was coming from home users who had no idea what herding boxen was actually like.
  • finchisko 11mo ago
    I really don’t get why there’s always this group of people who feel the need to constantly manage everything for others—like sysadmins, for example. Sure, there are valid scenarios where management makes sense, like printing or shared drives, but most of the stuff is just over the top. As a developer, I’m sick of all the constant restrictions—broken VPNs, stealth monitoring, and antivirus software that slows everything down. These "security measures" are supposed to help, but they just kill performance and cause frustration. At the end of the day, I just want my system to work smoothly without constant interference.
    • mapontosevenths 11mo ago
      > I’m sick of all the constant restrictions I think everyone hates it, but they're often legally required. Even when they aren't legally required, they usually are by insurance companies. Nobody wants to be on the news the first time Becky in Marketing opens an email attachment she shouldn't. *EDIT* I left out one of the biggest benefits: Dummies & Newbs. The world is filled with people who have never used a mouse before they started this job Last week and people who actually NEED the stupid warning stickers on their toasters. If you don't lock down their desktops your support costs will be astronomical and downtime will be constant. We know this because there was a time before these tools, and it largely sucked for everyone. Did you know that you can bypass the windows 98 login screen by just clicking 'Cancel' instead of 'OK' at the login prompt? Nice and simple, right? That stupid button not only wrecked security it caused 10's or 100's of thousands of hours in lost work because people forgot their passwords, clicked Cancel, and then would call the help desk wondering why network shares didnt work. It would sometimes take hours to figure that all they had to do was reset the password and login properly.
• mkoubaa 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• fermigier 11mo ago
  Cf. "The rise and fall of Limux" (2017) https://lwn.net/Articles/737818/ https://lwn.net/Articles/737818/ Initiated by the city of Munich, LiMux aimed to migrate public administration systems from Windows to a Linux-based OS to increase control over IT infrastructure and reduce costs. Despite initial success (announced at LinuxTag in 2014, I was there for the announcement), the project faced intense political lobbying by Microsoft leading to a reversion to Windows. More examples in this note: https://lab.abilian.com/Tech/Linux/Sovereign%20OS%20-%20%22EU%20Linux%22 https://lab.abilian.com/Tech/Linux/Sovereign%20OS%20-%20%22E... (in particular https://lab.abilian.com/Tech/Linux/Sovereign%20OS%20-%20%22EU%20Linux%22/#annex-comparable-initiatives https://lab.abilian.com/Tech/Linux/Sovereign%20OS%20-%20%22E...)
  • yatopifo 11mo ago
    The political climate is completely different. The US is no longer an ally but a fascist regime actively supporting far right and nazi movements in Germany. What made sense 8 years ago probably doesn’t make sense today.
• input_sh 11mo ago
  I hate when switches like these get advertised first and foremost as some huge cost-cutting measure, further solidifying open source ecosystem as some cheap knock-offs of their commercial alternatives. How about instead you donate the same amount of money you would've paid to Microsoft anyways to fund open source projects you rely on? At least for one year, then drop it down to some arbitrary chosen percentage of that cost. That way you can still advertise it as a cost-cutting measure, and everyone would benefit.
  • NeutralForest 11mo ago
    That's a really good point actually. If you're self hosting, you're already eating some cost by having people, probably in-house, doing the work but the price difference must be quite large and they should use it to support the project.
  • Bengalilol 11mo ago
    I hope those are not mutually exclusive actions. Switching and contributing may be on the Schleswig-Holstein Administration's agenda.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • MrDarcy 11mo ago
    The idea is sound but the feeling of hate is perhaps strong. It’s understandable there’s no incentive to pay for open source software, and doing so would be seen as an unnecessary allocation of resources that could better be allocated elsewhere. Given this understanding, the best away to achieve the desired outcome is to get creative about aligning incentives at the top of org structures where resources are allocated.
    • nickff 11mo ago
      >”Given this understanding, the best away to achieve the desired outcome is to get creative about aligning incentives at the top of org structures where resources are allocated.” I really don’t understand what this means; could you please explain it? It comes off as ‘mushy’ consulting-speak to me.
• boh 11mo ago
  It's crazy that organizations are willing to spend millions of dollars on Microsoft Office simply because people are used to it. There are literally no features most people actually use that aren't completely duplicated in open source alternatives. Whatever amount of time it takes the user to find the button they're looking for costs less than the permanent subscription cost for something that will only get more bloated and expensive with time.
  • forinti 11mo ago
    Many times I've seen people state that they use Windows because they know it, but they can't do trivial things such as set up a printer or connect to WiFi. Most user's Windows ability is to look for apps on the desktop or Start menu.
  • ozim 11mo ago
    One thing that is missing that nowadays you get O365 so also management of employees access and licensing in single env. You get backups, file synchronization, real time collaboration. Setting and running all of that is as simple as making O365 account and clicking couple of buttons by one person. There is no OSS solution that does that. To replicate that with OSS you need 3 to 5 full time graybeards and it still will be annoying normal people that will not understand “why they can’t just do X as in MSFT tools”.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • bgbntty2 11mo ago
      > You get backups, file synchronization, real time collaboration. Shouldn't backups and file sync be handled at a higher level of abstraction? Unless every employee is only dealing with Microsoft Office documents and nothing else (doubt it), shouldn't there be a separate backup&sync strategy already in place? There are a myriad of both FOSS and corporate backup/sync tools available. As for the real-time collaboration - I'm not sure how important that is. Writer/Word seem like useful tools for documents that have reached their final state before being prepared for printing. I think there are lots of better formats suited to real-time collaboration. Intuitively it seems like text-first documents (markdown, etc.) should better lend themselves to tools like diff or git, or any other collaboration tool, especially a real-time edit tool. It's almost like asking for pdf to support real-time collaboration. I'm not sure about Writer, but Word and pdf documents are awful with regards to edits and git-style collaboration. They're formats for presentation, not editing. In case someone here hasn't delved into the internal structures of the files, remember how WYSIWYG HTML editors jumbled the HMTL beyond recognition? It's similar in that it doesn't seem like the format we want to collaboratively work on documents before finally converting them to Writer/Word/PDF.
• concinds 11mo ago
  "Saves 15 million" on license costs, but how much will be wasted on the contractors involved, the lost productivity for state employees (especially the ones who depend on Excel, who will be converted too per the announcement)? And how much do you really save if you keep switching back and forth between M$ and Linux every decade, as state governments seem to enjoy doing? They should switch to open-source for sovereignty. Not "cost". The fact that they mention "cost" as motivation and to secure buy-in is very worrisome. If you really want to switch to open source permanently and secure your sovereignty, you should invest more (making LibreOffice Calc as good as Excel? One can dream, but it's not cheap). Cost-savings show a lack of seriousness. How long until another government switches back? How to know when they're serious: when the federal government hires an in-house team of (well-paid) programmers, and sysadmins. Not consultants. Put them in charge of public-facing and internal-use digital infrastructure, serving both the federal and state governments. Make them work to tailor a distro, or LibreOffice, to government needs. Invest in workforce training to keep their productivity up despite the switch. And then, one day (let's dream for a second), that team could also pick new projects that serve the public interest, like a vulnerability research team (like Google Project Zero), or helping out with all those underfunded core pieces of digital infrastructure out there with only a single maintainer. Creating public goods is the point of a government.
  • juliusceasar 11mo ago
    It is better to spend 20milion on German contractors, then spending just 15m on licenses to foreign company.
    • Cockbrand 11mo ago
      At least the federal government loves to contract McKinsey, so a lot of the profit still ends up outside of the country. I didn't find any quickly accessible data on the state government in Schleswig-Holstein, though.
      • baxtr 11mo ago
        >so a lot of the profit still ends up outside of the country. I have no idea how you come up with that corollary. All big traditional consultancies are partnerships and any profit is distributed among the partners. If a country (e.g. Germany) makes a loss, then profits from other countries will flow into the country to make up for this.
• hilti 11mo ago
  I really tried to read the comments on heise.de … but their website is the perfect example if ad revenue drives a company instead of providing value to their readers. Why do users have to create another page impression to read a comment?
  • Cockbrand 11mo ago
    To Heise's (slight) defense, their forum system is at least 24 years old, extrapolated from checking the date of my first comment on it. Probably even older. Apart from driving page impressions, there didn't seem to be an incentive to make the experience smoother, as user engagement is still very high.
  • Semaphor 11mo ago
    You dodged a bullet there. Heise is infamous for incendiary, low quality discussion.
  • knallfrosch 11mo ago
    heise is older than online ads.
• jeffbee 11mo ago
  Over half my life I've been reading this headline. "[Subdivision of Germany] switches to Linux". Here's some slashdot slop from 2002. You'd think Microsoft would be dead and buried by now, or that the readers would have realized how inconsequential these changes are. One or the other. https://m.slashdot.org/story/25936 https://m.slashdot.org/story/25936
  • ekianjo 11mo ago
    problem is these changes are constantly reverted (back to Microsoft services)
    • jeffbee 11mo ago
      Right, but if you point out that the median time to uninstall Open Office is two minutes people get mad.
    • aruggirello 11mo ago
      Microsoft had to move their local headquarters to Munich to have their municipality revert the change... Now, if two or more municipalities managed to migrate to Linux at the same time...
• danielEM 11mo ago
  Benefits are bigger than anyone realizes. Even if it would cost same it would still be money that are to circulate further in local economy.
• jmclnx 11mo ago
  >Almost 80 percent of licenses canceled Looks like what IBM tied. IBM allowed some people to stay on Microsoft Office, the 'some people' were VPs and a few 'important' people. That turned into a disaster. Eventually almost everyone started requesting M/S Office Exceptions, and many were granted. Other people revolted. IBM then gave up and went back to M/S Office. To do this correctly, convert everyone, from CEO, Board Members down to the lowest level of person. No exceptions.
• erikerikson 11mo ago
  That was by far the most hostile cookie banner I've ever seen by a lot. It required multiple levels of saying no with a bid level of clicking reject a few hundred times. It wasn't worth it.
  • cube00 11mo ago
    Unless you pay for the subscription you can't reject all of it anyway. * Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling - Consent required for free use The full page reload after wasting all that time to realise I don't actually have a choice was a nice touch.
    • 1718627440 11mo ago
      Delete the banner from the DOM. They can't process your data legally until you pressed that button. That's why the reload is. When you delete it, you never pressed the button.
      • GoblinSlayer 11mo ago
        Or just use noscript.
    • lucb1e 11mo ago
      Note that this is considered not freely given consent by various data protection authorities, including the Dutch one (quite strongly; could find a source but would be in Dutch) and the European-wide collective of them (more weakly): https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-should-offer-real-choice_en https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pa... It's not like GDPR is new or dubiously worded on this aspect. They're willfully ignoring both ethical boundaries and the law I don't know why people keep sending me / sharing Heise links. There's more than one news website in the world
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• cube00 11mo ago
  "We are at almost 80, without the tax administration." Guess someone decided "we need to make it sound like we have 80% anyway we can", who knows what the real percentage is.
• kaluga 11mo ago
  Cost savings make headlines, but the important part is reducing structural dependency. Governments shouldn’t base essential functions on systems they can’t inspect or control. Even if OSS requires investment, that investment at least builds local capabilities instead of external lock-in.
• bdangubic 11mo ago
  what’s the surveillance situation in the Linux ecosystem these days? :-)
• WillEngler 11mo ago
  Good move, gotta watch out for complicated contractual claims in Schleswig-Holstein. Microsoft might ally with the Danes and claim Schleswig, and then we'd have an 1864 situation on our hands again.
• PearlRiver 11mo ago
  The US becoming a national security risk can't help.
• Spooky23 11mo ago
  What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable? I’ve run projects for a few different employers to look at doing this. The math doesn’t math unless you can segment your workforce. For example, at one place we had a field workforce that operated dispatch centers and field techs. That was all iOS + Linux or Chrome.
  • perlgeek 11mo ago
    > What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable? Mostly the widespread perception that the USA has betrayed the security guarantees given to Europe, and that the USA isn't a reliable partner anymore.
    • Ylpertnodi 11mo ago
      >Mostly the widespread perception that the USA has betrayed the security guarantees given to Europe, and that the USA isn't a reliable partner anymore. Mostly the widespread perception that the Trump administration has betrayed the security guarantees given to Europe, and that the USA isn't a reliable partner anymore.
      • perlgeek 11mo ago
        Hardly a distinction worth making; if the USA votes for such unstable and highly egoistic politicians TWICE, it's quite clear they aren't a reliable partner anymore. Even if they vote in a sane president next, we cannot rely on them in the long run, because the one after that could be a lunatic again.
  • arlcode 11mo ago
    Recent comments (and by now published strategy) of the US administration have certainly shifted public and political perception. Not necessarily 180° but enough too make such projects/attempts more viable. In the end, from a European/German perspective, it matters little whether these thoughts/comments/strategies are a negotiation tactic, "trolling", serious threats or something else entirely. And the fact that "Government adjacent" people like Elon Musk behave the way the do certainly doesn't help. The fear that the United States may use it's tech companies as blunt offensive weapens does now exist (in a semi-abstract form) where it didn't 5 or 10 years ago. I think at this point in time nobody can say what the end result will be or how things may develop in the future. Either on the political or the technological field.
• kittikitti 11mo ago
  Whenever cost-cutting measures are open for recommendations, I always mention how any company or organization can save on Microsoft licenses by switching to open source alternatives. It's never taken seriously, my competence is always questioned, and I somehow form new enemies from Microsoft fans. In the end, layoffs are conducted meanwhile the bills from Microsoft increase. The worst part about it all is that if my recommendations were implemented, the savings could have been enough to save everyone from a layoff.
• mleroy 11mo ago
  Schleswig-Holstein (pop. 3M) shows that Open Source in government is viable. We need an EU that shifts its focus from compliance frameworks to actually investing and building.
• ChrisArchitect 11mo ago
  Related in October: Schleswig-Holstein completes migration to open source email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45558635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45558635
• submeta 11mo ago
  A company that cuts all services to members of the International Criminal Court because they prosecute war criminals that are protected by the US is not a reliable service provider for non-US customers. That’s why Swiss Data Protection Officers recommended recently to migrate away from MS products and services. And all European agencies should do the same immediately.
• einpoklum 11mo ago
  The key word missing from the title: LibreOffice. It is by now a trusty enough workhorse for large organizations. Yes, it's not all the way there: I've filed hundreds of bugs against LibreOffice, and many are still open (not just feature requests); and yes, I have a lot of criticism of the governance. But it is proof that a huge, end-user-facing software project can sustain itself and improve within having to rely on the MS-bucks or the Googlebucks and such. But a huge project needs a lot of support, and needs to renew its support from new people, so please help out! https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org/ https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org/ Filing bugs, contributing graphics, translating parts of the UI (which you would be a saint to do since the translation system is the pits), designing document templates, organizing an install-party, getting promotional material and putting it, and of course you can write write code (starting with easy-hacks) or contribute money. ---- Due disclosure: I'm a trustee of The Document Foundation, which manages the project. Going to speak at LOConf Asia 2025 in Tokyo later this month: https://conf.libreoffice.asia https://conf.libreoffice.asia
• bisvirus 11mo ago
  46181491
• AbbeFaria 11mo ago
  I work at MSFT. I understand why they migrated to LibreOffice. Outside of work, I use none of MSFT products. I do have some burning questions though, 1. How are they saving their work to the cloud if they use LibreOffice ? I don’t think it offers the same functionality that M365 suite does. 2. How are they handling IT security? Are they using a different vendor ?
  • bradley13 11mo ago
    Why should they save their work to the cloud? Most documents are local. Sharing should be a decision, not the default. Anyway, there are plenty of local cloud providers.
  • mmooss 11mo ago
    Also, how do they handle system administration? What replaces Active Directory, Group Policy, etc.?
  • nilsingwersen 11mo ago
    They are most likely using NextCloud.
  • einpoklum 11mo ago
    > 2. How are they handling IT security? Well, now, they can handle it more seriously, which before - they couldn't quite. That's because Microsoft - your company - is one big security breach. You are known to pass information that gets into your hand to the US federal government's intelligence agency, and you probably use it for all sorts of commercial purposes, like training AI models, directing advertising etc. So, by installing Microsoft Office, especially Office365 and cloud facilities, they were ensuring a security failure.
• p0w3n3d 11mo ago
  As a Polish man TIL Schleswig-Holstein is not only the ironclad that started WW2, but also a German province. Imagine my astonishment when I read that SH relies now on OSS having in mind that it's the infamous ship
• nperson 11mo ago
  I recently spoke with the head of a local police station in Schleswig-Holstein. This was an informal conversation, so feedback was quite unfiltered. We mainly talked about the state's transition to open source. I tried to show him the outside perspective, how much international attention the move is getting and why many see it as a bold step toward digital sovereignty, how much positive (side) effects it has. His reaction was not that enthusiastic: He described his everyday frustrations, which anecdotally align with the points made at the end of the article. Especially at the leadership level their workflows are heavily email-driven, with the mail client acting as a universal everyday tool for e.g. team scheduling. Migration from Outlook to Open-Xchange felt rushed, with seemingly limited upfront analysis of how officers actually use these tools and ensuring use cases were adequately covered. The idea of User Interviews was new to him or - if conducted - didn't reach anyone in his circles.
  • _n66o 11mo ago
    What were they using for scheduling? Microsoft Outlook has a Tasks or Planner, or perhaps they were using Shifts in Teams. All of these are mini apps that are not useful and serve no benefit. If they just meant a calendar, I would assume that the new thing has a calendar. But I would agree that every company should provide some sort of scheduling tool
• hamonrye 11mo ago
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