Earlier quoted context omitted.
Volunteer firefighters.
At least in Germany, they are not professionals working unpaid. They are just volunteers with other jobs. Not really comparable.
Not everyone in open source is a professional software engineer.
German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
51–60 of 402 posts
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#52> Why should local governments use taxpayers’ money to buy proprietary, closed software from a single vendor? I don't want to be a pessimist, but working with non-traditional tools is going to cost the taxpayers more money when important documents are not formatted correctly or the software behaves differently than the proprietary alternatives. Linux is successful on the server because it has huge corporate backing.…
if all DE will switch to libreoffice, they'll use a single format, so shouldn't be such a big problem. The problem may arise when communicating with other countries (maybe?)
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#53Genuine question, is there any other professional field in the world where people work for free like how Software Engineers work in open source?
>> Genuine question, is there any other professional field in the world where people work for free like how Software Engineers work in open source?
Woodworking, restoring old cars, building airplanes. These are all things that people do for themselves at their own cost. The difference is that software has a marginal cost of zero, so they hand it out to everyone and collaborate to make it better.
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#54> Why should local governments use taxpayers’ money to buy proprietary, closed software from a single vendor? I don't want to be a pessimist, but working with non-traditional tools is going to cost the taxpayers more money when important documents are not formatted correctly or the software behaves differently than the proprietary alternatives. Linux is successful on the server because it has huge corporate backing.…
Germany can afford to fund libreoffice development which will benefit the taxpayer by providing good free alternatives to microsoft products.
I also dont think any tax payer is concerned about the cost of a document being formatted differently.
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#55[deleted]
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the alternative? Would they be able to do more without cloud office solutions? Like in the days long last we used to email .doc files to each other? I doubt it. Would hosting an on-prem alternative yeld better cost and a higher uptime? I doubt it.
The drive here is to reduce dependencies to locations the state itself have jurisdiction over i.e. things that can be controlled. It's essentially to avoid having the states data taken hostage when the slowly brewing conflict between America's lack of respect for it's foreign partners data protection regulation and the EU's very popular trend towards less and less tolerance for corporate data abuse comes to an head a…
And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US?
Companies buy Office 365 subscriptions so they can focus on their main business and don't want to think about their office solution and want something that JustWorks which is already compatible with what everyone else uses.
They have a business to run and money to makes, so spending extra time and effort on alternative office solutions with various degrees of compatibility, just to fight a virtual trade war, will slow then down significantly from their main business goal.
Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? You think they don't have the technical know-how, or is it because it's not worth the effort and better use what everyone else is already using and focus your resoruces on what really matters?
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#57This ship sailed 20 years ago. Who is still fighting this ancient crusade? Pay the small fee, use the Microsoft software, live life. There’s much better battles to fight than the office software one.
the fee will no longer be that small considering microsoft's intention to charge a lot for extended windows support, it's not like the price is constant
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#58Genuine question, is there any other professional field in the world where people work for free like how Software Engineers work in open source?
Off course, vets volunteering at animal shelters, same for MD's, medics and nurses at shelters, lawyers doing pro bono work, etc
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#59Did not work well in Munich, my hometown, in 2004. Hope the lessons have been learned. https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/
Microsoft spent so much money to make it fail.
How do they do that? I mean, practically?
If the open source solution works, where do Microsoft spend money to make it fail?
Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice
#60Genuine question, is there any other professional field in the world where people work for free like how Software Engineers work in open source?
To be fair, there are not many professions that a single individual can make so much impact as Software Engineering. People say 10x Software Engineer, rarely 10x Electrical Engineer.
I would argue most volunteer firefighters and other social volunteers have more net-positive impact than the vast majority software engineers.