the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow.
The term digital sovereignty is very important here. If a public administration uses proprietary, closed software that can’t be studied or modified, it is very difficult to know what happens to users’ data:
We have no influence on the operating processes of such [proprietary] solutions and the handling of data, including a possible outflow of data to third countries. As a state, we have a great responsibility towards our citizens and companies to ensure that their data is kept safe with us and we must ensure that we are always in control of the IT solutions we use and that we can act independently as a state.
Digital sovereignty seems to be the primary impetus, so this might go far. Saving money is secondary.
There were also previous notes about public tax dollars should not feed private corporations, but stay within a public system
Lol. Geez in America this would be radical ideas haha.
Seems nice not to have tax dollars going to private companies at a glance. However, I do not trust the government to get the job done right by themselves either in many cases.
- Wouldn’t be government anyway.
- I’ve worked on both public and private sectors, and they’re both run by people with the same potential for good and bad decisions and performance. I’ve seen great things coming from public organizations and terrible things coming from successful private organizations. Don’t buy into the narrative that government = bad.
They will need to stay the course and not be tempted with huge Microsoft savings Microsoft will give them just like what happened with Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. “We will adhere to the principle of ‘public money, public code’. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city’s software will also be made public,” the agreement states.
poggers
I don’t think it is that great of cost savings as you need staff to support Libreoffice
So the Germany has been moving back and forth between Microsoft and Linux / open-source.
When Munich decided to ditch many of its Windows installations in favor of Linux in 2003, it was considered a groundbreaking moment for open source software – it was proof that Linux could be used for large-scale government work. However, it looks like that dream didn’t quite pan out as expected. The German city has cleared a plan to put Windows 10 on roughly 29,000 city council PCs starting in 2020. There will also be a pilot where Munich runs Office 2016 in virtual machines. The plan was prompted by gripes about both the complexity of the current setup and compatibility headaches.
Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
No it doesn’t. It smells like Microsoft has a monopoly on office software, and city employees are not tech enthusiasts. Anyone who used Office at home or in another job is going to complain when they have to learn a new software (regardless of which is “better” - for the average person, different is bad)
Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn’t 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
Migrating an entire enterprise to FOSS software is not easy, and in government where leadership changes can be more regular, it’s not shocking to see the pendulum swing back and forth.
Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn’t 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
That’s not like that with governments. Governments are huge clients, they can and should dictate file formats to suppliers.
If the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, with a GDP of 2/3 of that of Munich, could transition to Open Document Format almost 20 years ago, Munich can.
They definitely can dictate requirements, however that means that you’re now making your staff play document format police.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s an additional headache. If I were working in that office, I’d die a little inside each time I have to go back to a consultant/contractor/community member and say “can you please resubmit this, the formatting is broken when I open it in Libre Office”
Yes, again, they have the authority to do this, and it is technically feasible, but it’s going to be a bad user experience for a long time until everyone is properly “retrained”. Especially if you’re working with partners outside of Germany who have their own document standards.
I’m not saying this is a bad move, just that I understand why they might be inclined to jump back and forth.
For the average person; msoffice and libreoffice function pretty much the same. Even the icons mostly match.
Oh, cool, so I can have multiple people editing a live document at the same time?
That’s possible, but in the past I think Germany stuck with Windows after Microsoft gave them a better deal or something.
Heck, they may have even paid Germany to keep using Windows.
No.
Things were very different “back then.” Linux was less friendly at the time. And non-Microsoft products still had noticeable gaps. Web browser office suites didn’t exist.
The parts I remember reading were just that it took a long time for workers to get used to the system. Back then, home computers were uncommon for the average person. And what computer experience the average person did have was noticeably different from Linux.
I did not see articles about tech issues such as viruses or data leaks or configuration issues. Please show any if you have them.
IIRC the last time this made big headlines they tried to roll their own distro and it went very poorly longterm. The TL;DR version was they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail, and then MS swooped in with some great offers and that was that. (This is entirely my dusty recollection of articles I read about it at the time, FWIW.)
I don’t know whether it was malicious compliance because the folks doing the change didn’t actually want to do it or what, but that effort was as doomed as Firefly was when Fox aired it out of order and with a constantly shifting schedule.
Hopefully they make some sensible choices this time around (at a minimum not trying to create a custom distro) and it goes better. It would be great to see this become a cascade effect.
they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail
Typical government move going full malicious compliance while allowing “a few selected friends” from consulting companies to make a ton of money. They could’ve just picked Debian and rolled with it. Let’s face it, nobody develops desktop applications anymore most of the govt work is already done on custom built web platforms, any OS that can run a browser is good enough to address around 90% of the govt daily work.
Meanwhile China is creating their own distro that will be successful for sure because they’ve plans to move the public sector and whatever private they influence to the thing.
What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
See that’s the neat thing SH has (together with HH, HB and ST) its own IT consultancy. Public enterprise, not some public-private partnership, and 5300 staff a quite a bit more than what Munich’s IT department has.
And yes of course Munich is corrupt what do you expect it’s Bavaria.
So… it’s exactly what I said but with extra steps.
A way to provide money to the friends and have underplayed govt workers without the benefits and the stability 😂
Nah dataport doesn’t make profit, or at least it’s not paying out any to the states. It’s about as close to a ministry as you can get without being required to pay government wages and there’s not many in the industry who’d work for that. They don’t pay as much as FAANG or even SAP but among the wider industry it’s definitely competitive, especially if you don’t plan on job-hopping and dodging lay-offs.
This is unironically a good move for them. As Office gets more and more interconnected you have to wonder if there’s a danger of using sensitive data as training for their AI. Not only will it save them money it’ll also keep their data secure.
I hope they do not try to save that money but rather take the opportunity to invest some of it into the open source ecosystem that are now relying on.
Why not both?
Let’s say MS charges $5M a year.
Their support contract, assuming they get one, for libre office might be $1M.
They could still invest another $1M in OSS and still save $3M
A $1M net gain for OSS and a $3M savings for the govt.
In reality it’s gonna be something like:
M$ charges 5M €. Libreoffice might be 1M € so they will give 1M € to OSS and waste the remaining 3M € on some overly expensive one-time crap like car infrastructure. Later they will realize that they had understaffed their IT department and will need extra 5M € paid by more state debt.
That, again, is not how governments work.
What you depict is how companies work: You save amount X on something, so there are X moneys left to invest in something.
Governments work with separated and highly regulated budgets. That is sometimes bullshit, but sometimes necessary to make sure government aids are spent fairly, for example. So: You save amount X on something, you aren’t allowed to just give this amount to someone. There has to be either a program, a law, or (most often) an entirely different budget somewhere else that this someone is allowed to receive.
So the “trade-off” logic cannot be fulfilled by governments, and it shouldn’t be. Think about the myriad of bullshit, money would just be dumped into by the government if this wasn’t the case. On top of the myriad of bullshit that already made it through the nets, that is.
Well think again, Germany invests in open source.
The fund will rise with the savings for sure
And having a government as a significant backer for an open source project is a great recipe for conflicts of interest and general trust erosion.
who else should be a significant backer for an open source project? google? microsoft?
