this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

It would be nice to redirect a part of that money to support the development of used software. Thunderbird for example is constantly at risk of being shut down.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It would be nice to see the European governments start a genuine effort on funding open source development, and start laying the foundation for a migration to their own Linux distro. Microsoft isn't trustworthy. Hell, most American big tech is untrustworthy. Moving your government offices to an in house developed OS is going to be paramount for their security in the future.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Agree. Fb, Whatsapp, Instagram, Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, Tumblr - I do believe that social networks should be independent and decentralized and not manipulated by one person - thats why Lemmy, Mastodon is the best choice for me

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago

LETS GOOOOO

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Would love to see further movements towards foss software in many other governments

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Germany has done this multiple times before. Microsoft has historically swept in with some sweetheart deal to lure them back.

Hopefully it sticks this time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hard to catch fish if you see the fish as dumb idiots, for some reason the fish don't seem to respond well to it idk.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don't need to pay tax.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Just remember, the license fees mostly don't go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for "sales" which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert "all that money" into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (4 children)

And there could be insight into whether the money is actually used for developing the relevant application.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (15 children)

Holy fuck, that's the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don't want the US in their computers.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.

Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there's that...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I have seen this happen before, for a while, then somehow M$ convinced them to switch back.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I think this happens somewhere in Germany every few years. MS then makes a concerted effort to woo some politicians back, and a few years later we have news that a city or state is moving back to MS. Yes, it is good that cities / states are trying Linux and challenging MS, but there is soo much more to any of this than technical superiority or licensing fees.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

188K dollars or euros, is basically the cost to put one warm sales body in the territory, to keep the hooks in acknowledging that they should be paid for their software.

To me, it's about digital sovereignty, and the states should stand on their own two feet and know how their own computers work, not just rely on a foreign company.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago

In other news: the German military partners with Google to provide the software for their new cloud service...

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bundeswehr-relies-on-Google-Cloud-10397526.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A small part of Germany, but maybe

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I admire the plan, but I doubt the public sector is going to completely acclimate to Linux. The average age of an employee in the public sector is something like 40+.

You might get lucky and get them to use one new program like LibreOffice, but there's no way you're going to completely revamp every desktop PC to Linux. I work in this field, and while everyone has been nice and friendly, they (and the entire system around them) are also hugely resistant to digital change. If they ever make the move to a Linux Desktop environment, the IT support will go through hell.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I know what you are saying, but it is not so bad: First of all, most things people are doing at work is not really related to the OS underneath. So if you are responsible for creating passports, you are using the special government program for passport creation. If you are a policeman, you are using the special police software to do your policework. Yeah, you need additional training, but in the best case your usual software keeps working. Most people are not really interacting with the OS during their work day.

(and let's be honest: Microsofts totally insane UI changes are also requiring lots of training. If you are used to just click on some specific buttons that somebody told you to click on, you're totally lost in Microsofts crazy wonderland of ridiculous UI changes )

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Plus government computers are always old as shit so Linux should install nice and easy, give em mint for that windows like UI.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago

Eh, I don't know. I've worked developing software for the administration and their computer use is just the applications (web or native) they had built to perform their tasks. The OS is very irrelevant to them, some orgs even had shortcuts to these native programs put in their intranet, back in the days of java applets.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

the IT support will go through hell.

I thought IT support was already in perpetual hell?

For the last 10+ years "the desktop" has been over 90% the browser, and the Chrome, Firefox, Edge user experiences are pretty similar to start with. Chrome on Linux vs Chrome on Windows is virtually indistinguishable.

I gave my wife a Dell laptop new from the factory with Ubuntu on it about 3 years ago. The printer support in Windows was already bad, and yes it's a bit worse in Linux, otherwise she just complains less and has fewer screaming fits of frustration.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (6 children)

There used to be skins for KDE that made it look and feel 1:1 like Windows XP, I don't know if these things still exist. If yes, there you have it: Just make the system behave like Windows and they won't notice a difference. They only have to use Office, Mail and print files anyways. Most other tools they use are browser-based and will feel the same way

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Yep still exist.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm more surprised that a city in Germany didn't switch to Linux a decade or more ago.

Late to the party is still showing up, good for them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Too busy faxing each other. Germany is Luddite Land, by choice.

Source: moved here 7 years ago. Germans are a weird bunch. Change is not welcome in just about any form.

Nice to see them adopt the open source apps, though. They can probably get some screaming deals on some US Robotics 56k modems on eBay Local.

🤪😘

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (13 children)

That is such a crazy amount of money on license fees, especially when you consider that there are mostly free alternatives. I am always choosing foss options as I build my small business.

Right now, I am using onedrive, and Microsoft for my business email. Which I think comes out to like $5 a month.

My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

I agree with your assessment of e-mail... you either rent under a big provider or you spend countless hours playing whack-a-mole with whitelist-blacklist keepers. The big providers do this too, but they're so big it's not a major slice of their operation.

a crazy amount of money on license fees

License fees pay for development, sales, support, and profit. When you go open source you can skip the sales and profit, but you have to pick up a bit of development and ALL the support, which is considerable during times of big changes, like migration to a new desktop.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Good on them. Those are all solid choices.

I prefer Evolution over Thunderbird, personally. But to be fair, there aren’t any mail clients for Linux that I would say I genuinely like. I’m always open to suggestions, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Ofc its Schleswig-Holstein. The only sane state with sane politicians

[–] toastmeister 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

An interesting fact about Europe is they've long disobeyed their own procurement laws to choose Microsoft software, whether its corruption or what I've got no idea, I assume so though.

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