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German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#81

Post by isodev »

jorvi wrote: post #31
monospaced wrote: post #3

The will likely be using Phoenix: https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/ The German government developed a fully free and open source solution that is quite similar (consisting of Nextcloud, jitsi, Collabora etc.) and can be deployed using Kubernetes: https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk

It’s kind of a bummer that there’s a bunch of these separate OSS initiatives in Spain, France, Germany and a few other countries.. Instead of everyone rolling their own subvariant of Nextcloud, Matrix, LibreOffice etc, imagine if there was an EU mandate set up and some serious money was budgeted to it. You’d get a triple multiplier of more budget, less duplication of effort, and a self-reinforcing cycle where more us…

But isn’t this the very centralisation we’re trying to avoid?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#82

Post by Havoc »

nokeya wrote: post #44

China started the process of switching from x86 to own architecture (loong-something if I recall correctly). Where Microsoft is essentially not present. I think they use Microsoft products a lot like any other governments. So we might see a big switch to libreoffice soon

China gov is already on a mainly Linux stack

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylin_(operating_system)

Unsure what office tools they use though

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#83

Post by guappa »

Moldoteck wrote: post #52
EduardoBautista wrote: post #30

> 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?)

If germany switches the other countries will follow, at the very least the offices that have to interact with them.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#85

Post by self_awareness »

andrewstuart wrote: post #24

This 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.

Much better battles according to who?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#86

Post by ChicagoDave »

I’d quit my job if I was forced to a Linux desktop and non office365 tools. The loss of productivity in this change is going to be massively disruptive.

It’s not going to go as smoothly as they think it will. I highly doubt their pilot program sniffed out all the complexities.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#87

Post by prmoustache »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #32
daeros wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sane policy. Every time Office 365 is down I watch the maddening dash of IT workers who can't get anything done, it's amusing.

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.

When did people stop doing that? Last time I checked (which was our soc2 audit last year) most people didn't understand the sharing/collaborative features of sharepoint/office365 and were still doing it.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#89

Post by dguest »

andrewstuart wrote: post #24

This 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.

Remember to thank the OSS developers for the bargaining chip.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#90

Post by prmoustache »

helloimhonk wrote: post #54
EduardoBautista wrote: post #30

> 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.

And I don't buy the argument that a document not being formated correctly is costly. People mostly don't care and when real administrative stuff needs to be shared it is done via pdf forms where the output is controlled.
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