That's what whole Europe should do already years ago because considering all the data mining Microsoft conducts in their products it become quite dangerous to use anything they released in nearly a decade.
In 2015 Munich reverted their decision from 2004 about migrating to Linux (they opted for an Ubuntu derivative) and OpenOffice [1][2], so let's hope that the Schleswig-Holstein government will stick to open source solutions this time for good and that will become a trend worth following.
The first article seems to be very pro-Microsoft and doesn't mention how Ballmer lobbied Munich hard to return to the Microsoft system, including offering steep discounts and promising to open an MS headquarter in Munich. I wonder how nice the dinner the 2 mentioned politicians got.
I do remember this story about Munich going for open source and then switching back but I don't recall any side story about MS lobbying for opening headquarter in the city or offering discounts. That's what brave search served me when I enter the keywords so excuse me for choosing the source - sadly, the sites that do PR for the companies pretending to serve news, leaks, reviews are all around us.
And honestly, it's not really surprising that MS lobbied - they managed to do the same in Poland too many times in the past. My sister starting computer classes in the high school was given a pamphlet with instruction how to register an account in (back then) Windows Live ecosystem, how to use mail and create a blog there, and how great SkyDrive is for storing your files.
In addition ot governments' concern for security, I'm am amazed that corps happily use s/w tools that routinely exfiltrate data. This includes gmail, outlook, teams, ST's CubeIDE, cloud storage and many many more.
If you were a company that was a majotr competitor to M$, would you be OK hosting your executive strategy meetings on a M$ or Goggle meeting platform? When the EULA says they can mine your meeting?
And offering these tools in schools (where "free" licenses are provided) only locks the next generation of users, including s/w engineering students, into the M$ platform. It's basically tax payer funded M$ training. I'm shocked (shocked I say) at the number of young s/w engineers I work with who are hopeless outside of a windows desktop.
As you mention, I also certainly hope that the current conversion away from M$ will sustain, and influence other agencies and companies to migrate away...
Yeah, I don't see what this is going to different. I mean at the end of the day, we have LDAP then you just package all the other fun bits around it kerberos, sssd, dns, cert management etc.
And after that, an information security auditor from a cyber insurance company comes and says: "sorry, you have to delete all of that, our automation that checks for insecure settings only supports the real AD".
In the meanwhile, in the Philippines, I had to buy Microsoft Office for my company's treasurer who, so far, used LibreOffice successfully. The reason is that the only officially approved application for submitting the "alphalist" of withheld taxes to the tax agency (BIR) has a hard dependency on Excel for printing (instead of printing, it launches Excel with some pre-populated spreadsheet), and auditors require a hard copy.
P.S. Without this "export to Excel for printing" functionality (EDIT: and maybe something else, too, I have not tested all the buttons), the app also works in Wine.
This is the kinda thing that makes me nervous. My brother asked me about my Linux workstation and said he wanted to try it after I explained why I like Linux. After a month, and tons of tech issues, he was back on Windows. I've only seen it work at tech companies and, for what it's worth, they were all using Google workspaces.
Operating systems, and enterprise solutions, are complex ecosystems. You never know what you'll need, and find that a lot of basic stuff doesn't work properly. For example, with 30k people, you know they have graphic designers. Hopefully they don't get forced to learn inkscape and gimp, so they're already out. What about the millions of conferencing applications that people use? Personally, I've had many embarrassing failures with Zoom and Webex on Linux. What if you need to do an external presentation? Hope you don't have any compatibility issues with the projectors(real story T_T). Of course I still wish them luck as I would prefer a Linux based world, but let's not pretend this won't be a bumpy ride.
If you're referring to the ink scape / gimp comment, that's because it's not realistic to expect that of your graphic designers / artists. The FOSS editors lack many critical features these professionals want. Even if they don't need those features, you'll be hurting their career by making them learn a whole new program that won't be a transferable skill outside of this job. Imagine your job decided to use an old IBM mainframe, and made you learn PL/I and z/OS. It's not like LibreOffice to Office, which are nearly drop in replacements for most people.
> The FOSS editors lack many critical features these professionals want.
The main issue with these features is that they're numerous and the specific set of features that each individual needs is different, so the projects can't just instantaneously add support for them all but adding support for any given one is only a modest effort.
Large institutions have software developers and the programs are open source. That means you can reasonably add the features that your people need. And as those features get upstreamed the projects improve overall.
> Even if they don't need those features, you'll be hurting their career by making them learn a whole new program that won't be a transferable skill outside of this job.
The programs are free, and also run on Windows and Mac, so they could continue using them in their new job too. Especially now that they have the features needed in their subspecialty.
If what you said was true or viable we would already see these programs flourish. Tell me, why hasn't a company like Google supported gimp? They have a lot of artists and support a ton of other projects.
The reason they don't is because it would not be cost effective, and their artists don't even want it. You need the artists to accept these tools first.
> The reason they don't is because it would not be cost effective
Google is a trillion dollar company. Their annual revenue is larger than the GDP of more than a hundred countries. A million dollars is pocket lint and they have a billion users to amortize it over.
> their artists don't even want it. You need the artists to accept these tools first.
They don't want it because it lacks features they want. Give them access to a developer who can add any feature they ask for and see what happens.
> Schrödter also claimed that the move would help with the state's budget by diverting money from licensing fees to "real programming services from our domestic digital economy" that could also create local jobs.
It’s nice to see that they looked at previous attempts and do not underestimate (or at least are aware of) the insane complexity of this move. I’m really curious about their migration plan details, knowledge bases and all other supportive structures involved. Documenting this openly could be an immense help for both this and future migrations.
LibreOffice is fine, but IMO the main appeal of Office is all of the collaborative tools: realtime collaboration on documents, SharePoint/document sharing, OneDrive, Teams integration, etc.
28 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 71.7 ms ] threadIn 2015 Munich reverted their decision from 2004 about migrating to Linux (they opted for an Ubuntu derivative) and OpenOffice [1][2], so let's hope that the Schleswig-Holstein government will stick to open source solutions this time for good and that will become a trend worth following.
[1] - https://onmsft.com/news/german-city-that-ditched-windows-for...
[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20150821225906/https://www.techr...
This site admittedly looks like a conspiracy site, but it says onmsft.com is a bogus site: https://techwrongs.org/o/2015/08/24/sabine-pfeiler-and-otto-...
And honestly, it's not really surprising that MS lobbied - they managed to do the same in Poland too many times in the past. My sister starting computer classes in the high school was given a pamphlet with instruction how to register an account in (back then) Windows Live ecosystem, how to use mail and create a blog there, and how great SkyDrive is for storing your files.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/china-to-view-window...
In addition ot governments' concern for security, I'm am amazed that corps happily use s/w tools that routinely exfiltrate data. This includes gmail, outlook, teams, ST's CubeIDE, cloud storage and many many more.
If you were a company that was a majotr competitor to M$, would you be OK hosting your executive strategy meetings on a M$ or Goggle meeting platform? When the EULA says they can mine your meeting?
And offering these tools in schools (where "free" licenses are provided) only locks the next generation of users, including s/w engineering students, into the M$ platform. It's basically tax payer funded M$ training. I'm shocked (shocked I say) at the number of young s/w engineers I work with who are hopeless outside of a windows desktop.
As you mention, I also certainly hope that the current conversion away from M$ will sustain, and influence other agencies and companies to migrate away...
Colour me intrigued - but don't we already have this with FreeIPA?
P.S. Without this "export to Excel for printing" functionality (EDIT: and maybe something else, too, I have not tested all the buttons), the app also works in Wine.
Your perspective is indicative of a very narrow view of the world caused by being raised in a M$ ecosystem...
The main issue with these features is that they're numerous and the specific set of features that each individual needs is different, so the projects can't just instantaneously add support for them all but adding support for any given one is only a modest effort.
Large institutions have software developers and the programs are open source. That means you can reasonably add the features that your people need. And as those features get upstreamed the projects improve overall.
> Even if they don't need those features, you'll be hurting their career by making them learn a whole new program that won't be a transferable skill outside of this job.
The programs are free, and also run on Windows and Mac, so they could continue using them in their new job too. Especially now that they have the features needed in their subspecialty.
Google is a trillion dollar company. Their annual revenue is larger than the GDP of more than a hundred countries. A million dollars is pocket lint and they have a billion users to amortize it over.
> their artists don't even want it. You need the artists to accept these tools first.
They don't want it because it lacks features they want. Give them access to a developer who can add any feature they ask for and see what happens.
Also public money, public code.
Lots of earlier discussion on the official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173
How does that work on Linux+LibreOffice?