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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

#191

Post by quesera »

panzi wrote: post #119
shrubble wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean emailing .doc files around to co-workers, like what happened yesterday?

Nowadays they mail .docx around, haven't seen a .doc in a long time. I'm a software dev on Linux and haven't even LibreOffice installed. I tell the sender to please send it to me as .pdf. I write docs in markdown on GitHub (the company I work for uses GitHub, make of it what you will).

PDF is easy to read. It's a ridiculous document format for the purpose of internal sharing and reading, but it still works well for that purpose.

But PDF is not really optimized for editing or collaboration, and the tools available on Linux especially are limited.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#192

Post by groestl »

hackerlight wrote: post #94
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.

Yepp. The only money that might "cost" something, to a nation state, is money that leaves it.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#193

Post by [deleted] »

morsch wrote: post #76
Rinzler89 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

Governments can take a longer and more strategic outlook than private enterprises. It's not even primarily about nationalistic trade wars: I want my tax euros to fund as little closed-source software as possible. It's crazy how much money even just our schools spend for software that can't be freely redistributed or modified. That said, I'm not holding my breath regarding the success of this most recent move.

[deleted]

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#194

Post by Grimeton »

Stranger43 wrote: post #139
Rinzler89 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

If the alternative is not getting the security certifications required to operate legally in the sectors they depend on for revenue what alternative does an organization really have to seeking/implementation solutions in sync with the mandated regulations. And this is not an private company whose demise is insignificant to the society at large(as all companies must be in an functional capitalist economy) but the gove…

There's also this: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11... from 2019.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#195

Post by MichaelZuo »

moooo99 wrote: post #60
dikei wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure?

A huge chunk of cost increases in modern high rise building (outside of land and taxes) is due to ever more stringent fire safety requirements.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#196

Post by zelphirkalt »

CalRobert wrote: post #117

My wife just started a new job in the Netherlands and I was super excited to hear that her office uses Ubuntu and LibreOffice for all their PC's. She wasn't interviewing for a tech job but apparently her being reasonably familiar with both was helpful at her interview (all those years of Raspberry Pis around the house paid off!) Is this normal? It certainly would be an outlier back in the US.

Do you know, if that company offers remote jobs for developers? And what company is that?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#197

Post by Qwertious »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #56
Stranger43 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

You don't need everyone switching over. Let's say that by next year, a total of 10% of orgs in the EU are using LibreOffice, and then Redmond is hit by a comet. It'd be painful for the other 90% to switch but there would be some familiarity with the process, whereas if there's an MS monoculture then it would take a whole lot longer and be a lot messier.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#198

Post by guappa »

LunaSea wrote: post #181
guappa wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

openstack

No. OpenStack sucks to deploy and maintain with the result being an inferior cloud with a lack in services.

The goal is not "superior", the goal is "USA can't kill our infrastructure pressing one button"

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#199

Post by LunaSea »

guappa wrote: post #198
LunaSea wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. OpenStack sucks to deploy and maintain with the result being an inferior cloud with a lack in services.

The goal is not "superior", the goal is "USA can't kill our infrastructure pressing one button"

The goal is also to have a usable cloud on which you can efficiently develop software.

Otherwise we can simply go back to paper.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#200

Post by TacticalCoder »

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...

I remember that one... In the end the harsh truth for MS is that a guesstimate of 99% of all offices and administration users are using and, most of all, only need 1% of the features Office (including Excel) do offer.

The other harsh truth is that those using more advanced features are typically creating spreadsheets full of errors and bugs, which should be better rewritten in dedicated apps.

The world is using MS Office but the world really doesn't need that turd.

I ve both ported an Excel spreadsheet to dedicated app and helped SMEs move everything to Google workspace.

Fuck MS Office.

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