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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

#91

Post by ctrw »

rchaud wrote: post #71
Rinzler89 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

> Like in the days long last we used to email .doc files to each other? I doubt it How long ago are we talking? I was sharing files with coworkers on a shared network drive 20 years ago. I could send files via IM as well back then.

Listening to people talk about the 00s like we barely invented fire is something else. There's been very little new in computing since the arpanet was invented. The cloud is someone's mainframe and we moved away from those for the same reason why government wants to leave the cloud.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#92

Post by nolist_policy »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #41
unkoman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I want less bureaucracy in my development so happy to see multiple versions and letting them battling them out

While your small projects with next to zero market share fight it out between themselves, Microsoft keeps swallowing more market share making more billions. Who do you think is the real winner of your sandpit fight?

You are right, we need to make a bloated project and need to pour in millions into it like we did with Gaia-X. Then it will be a big trash-fire with smoke visible from afar and not just some small sandpit.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#93

Post by rchaud »

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.…

Why bail out the US auto companies in 2008? Japanese cars had better gas mileage, it would be a win-win for the taxpayer, right?

The need for sovereignty in these areas of national strategic significance is going to override concerns about UX or a learning curve. Most LibreOffice apps are similar to Office anyway, and the Open Document Format it uses is standardized in ISO 2600.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#94

Post by hackerlight »

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.…

> going to cost the taxpayers more money

It's an investment in a public good, which is one of the roles of governments. Sort of like how the German taxpayer helped kick start the solar industry decades ago.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#95

Post by ctrw »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #41
unkoman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I want less bureaucracy in my development so happy to see multiple versions and letting them battling them out

While your small projects with next to zero market share fight it out between themselves, Microsoft keeps swallowing more market share making more billions. Who do you think is the real winner of your sandpit fight?

Until you can bribe officials to the tune of billions the quality of your software won't matter. The only reason why ms keeps winning is that it keeps bribing.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#96

Post by estebank »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #41
unkoman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I want less bureaucracy in my development so happy to see multiple versions and letting them battling them out

While your small projects with next to zero market share fight it out between themselves, Microsoft keeps swallowing more market share making more billions. Who do you think is the real winner of your sandpit fight?

Keeping the separate projects at the national level also precludes the furious lobbying efforts against it that could target members of the union with... "friendlier ears". It also allows for smaller scale testing to work out kinks, in the same way that some US federal law started as laws in specific states.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#97

Post by rchaud »

cladopa wrote: post #4

They already did that before until Microsoft offered them new conditions and they went back to MS. So take all those "digital sovereignity" with a grain of salt. It usually means: "We want you to lower your fees".

So you're saying digital sovereignty provides leverage. That itself is valuable.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#99

Post by sgift »

Havoc wrote: post #68
Stranger43 wrote: post #7

The germans have been tinkering with policies mandating non-cloud dependent products for a while wondering if this is a start of it actually getting implemented on a large scale or if the delay attempts will remain successful elsewhere across the region. If this is a start of an actual migration away from cloud dependence, it's a matter of time before windows(which is as cloud dependent as office those days for enter…

Yeah last time with Munich they moved back to MS after MS just so happened to move their HQ to that state. Microsoft is clearly keen to avoid this becoming a thing. If governments can shift successfully then so can businesses https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-germany-moves-into-a-new-h...

The link is just about a move from one part of Munich to another (MS German HQ has always been in Munich). From what I remember it was more that we had a coalition with the CSU for four years and unsurprisingly, the moment conservatives were part of the cities government all went back to "help the companies".

(MS had tried to pressure against the move from the start, but wasn't really successful in the first years)

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#100

Post by pixelpoet »

Stranger43 wrote: post #7

The germans have been tinkering with policies mandating non-cloud dependent products for a while wondering if this is a start of it actually getting implemented on a large scale or if the delay attempts will remain successful elsewhere across the region. If this is a start of an actual migration away from cloud dependence, it's a matter of time before windows(which is as cloud dependent as office those days for enter…

Do the americans exclusively use MS Office in government computers?
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