testeroniousGerman state moving 30,000 PCs to Linux and LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Blog
I wonder if this is related to www.sovereigntechfund.de. This as it shouldn’t be about saving cost. It should be about being sovereign.
danI’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
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!”
germanatlasAnd some lobby bitches say “Schuldenbremse”
ManniSturgisTo 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
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 $3M savings for the govt.
That’s called a pareto optimum
That’s still not how governments work
It would be nice if it worked like that, but we both know it doesn’t
In reality it’s gonna be something like:
M$ 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.
And having a government as a significant backer for an open source project is a great recipe for conflicts of interest.
who else should be a significant backer for an open source project? NGOs? “the consumer”? google?
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.
Well think again, Germany invests in open source.
sciencebusiness.net/…/germany-launch-sovereign-te…
The fund will rise with the savings for sure
Germany to launch sovereign tech fund to secure digital infrastructure
Germany is set to launch a sovereign tech fund to support the open source software that underpins the internet amid fears the US could withdraw support for this neglected but crucial building block of digital infrastructure. Initial backing of €3.5 million per annum for the fund is far less than campaigners hoped for. But supporters see it as a crucial first step to bolstering European resilience against internet security flaws, for example, that can cripple companies and research institutions.
Possibly linuxI hope your government has an emergency fund. Savings are really important
nasi_gorengI recall randomly check open source project and some of them has German public funding.
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 :(
Munich Is Ditching Linux For Purely Political Reasons
Brief: Once the flagbearer of open source adoption, the city of Munich is finally shutting the door on Linux in order to welcome Windows. German city Munich was among the first to opt for Linux as the main operating system and adopt open source office product. After more than a
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 do Office Feature X 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.
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.
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”.
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 :(
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.
AatubeThat 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 thingyI 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!
Really?!
I’d never heard about that.
MereoThey will need to stay the course and not be tempted with huge Microsoft savings Microsoft will give them just like what happened with Munich: zdnet.com/…/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shift…
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.
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 send to be the primary impetus. Saving money is the secondary.
☂️-digital sovereignty is among the best reasons to switch, good on them!
Saving money is secondary.
Weird how that’s always the case in a capitalist society.
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.
Let’s hope they put the money they save into the projects
ivanafterallThis makes me want to try LibreOffice again. Is it really close-enough to on-par? I tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice a few times through the years and always found weird hiccups, like filetype issues, files looking different between programs, weird UI choices, etc... I would love to have a legitimate replacement option.
simpleOnlyOffice is good. Better compatibility with MS office and nicer UI than libreoffice.
I don’t like that it feels more like a webpage in a browser than real software.
Yeah, it does suck that they made it in Electron and performance is not great but it’s still pretty good imo.
I use Word at work and OnlyOffice and it works perfectly fine for my needs.
I don’t see any reason to go back to any proprietary software at home 😇
No issues here. Have to use (mainly) excel at work, but use libre office calc at home, for years. Hate excel with all my heart. Mainly autocomplete and UI issues, but also issues when using more than one instance with excel. No problems with file exchange, p.e. with my tax person. Imho excel was THE leader but they enshittyfied it to the max.
Libreoffice is strongest when you’re using ODT format because it’s an open standard. It’s not at all their fault for docx incompatibilities because they change the format CONSTANTLY and of course their only documentation is internal.
Personally I haven’t had those issues though, only slight formatting differences when opening docx files, and half the time it’s because I didn’t have the font installed. You can change to the ribbon style if you really want but personally I prefer the older style, I find it’s easier to find what I want.
This is a really good tip. I admit I never really experimented beyond .doc/.docx due purely to muscle memory. It makes sense that would cause issues.
No issues as long as you switch the toolbar to use tabs or contextual groups.
I’ve been using libreoffice for several years, and when I have to cowork with someone, compatibility issues always happen. However, since last year, I’ve been experimenting transitioning to onlyoffice for a few academic works, and it has been so smooth. So far, I opened all documents people sent me without issues, and published some works, and no one involved in the process complained about anything. If you need compatibility with ms office, I suggest using onlyoffice. It’s also foss and can be used at most OSes, even on android.
If you need MS office compatibility, don’t use Libreoffice. If you just want to use the software for your own documents, Libreoffice is (imo) better* once you get used to it. If you need Basic Excel macros, Libreoffice won’t work unfortunately.
- the thing I hate about excel is that everything works “like magic” which is fine as long as it works. When something doesn’t work, you are screwed because you cannot explicitly tell Excel what to do. It wants to do its own magic instead of obeying your will.
originaluciferi could swear they did this before.. like 10+ years ago when ODF was being pushed hardcore, but then i read they switched back to microsoft for some reason.
the reason was microsoft mobbying for itself