they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
It would be nice to redirect a part of that money to support the development of used software. Thunderbird for example is constantly at risk of being shut down.
It would be nice to see the European governments start a genuine effort on funding open source development, and start laying the foundation for a migration to their own Linux distro. Microsoft isn’t trustworthy. Hell, most American big tech is untrustworthy. Moving your government offices to an in house developed OS is going to be paramount for their security in the future.
Agree. Fb, Whatsapp, Instagram, Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, Tumblr - I do believe that social networks should be independent and decentralized and not manipulated by one person - thats why Lemmy, Mastodon is the best choice for me
I hate it so much that Whatsapp made itself a social media
from what i know Germany already does this
LETS GOOOOO
Would love to see further movements towards foss software in many other governments
Moreeeee MOREEEE preach it
Microsoft blocking email access to the ICJ director may be the best thing to happen for Linux adoption since the SteamDeck. Now every Microsoft lobbyst can be asked what would happen is the US government order Microsoft to block them out of their infrastructure.
Germany has done this multiple times before. Microsoft has historically swept in with some sweetheart deal to lure them back.
Hopefully it sticks this time.
Hard to catch fish if you see the fish as dumb idiots, for some reason the fish don’t seem to respond well to it idk.
The German IT fish keep coming back for the bait - never bothering to avoid the hook.
I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don’t need to pay tax.
Just remember, the license fees mostly don’t go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for “sales” which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert “all that money” into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.
There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.
Yes, RedHat has been doing this for decades.
Thing is: RedHat probably can’t price match M$ in a bidding war, probably not even close.
And there could be insight into whether the money is actually used for developing the relevant application.
I don’t see how this gives any insight into how your subscription price is being used for products relevant to you.
Your subscription price is the source of those dividends. It pays the shareholders, it pays the sales staff’s commissions, it pays for management, it pays for executive salaries and bonuses, it pays for legal counsel, it pays for political lobbying. Your subscription price is working hard, for the company, not for you.
Ahhh 😅😂
Just wait for Microsoft to start astroturfing the initiative.
Embrace, extend, extinguish will accelerate.
What makes you think FOSS cannot use the same strat ?
Mostly because the FOSS community doesn’t have a single point of leadership that is maniacally focused on becoming a total monopoly.
And that’s a good thing
Yeah but we can aspire for FOSS to take over the world right ?
Didn’t the Trump admin suspend enforcement of foreign anti-bribery laws? Microsoft just has to write a check to the right person to kill this.
Breaking anti-bribery laws of a country is illegal, no matter whether they are enforced in some other country or not. Of course Microsoft can break the law and then keep paying large fines until they decide to no longer break the law.
Let’s hope it sticks when Microsoft backs up the money truck.
188K doesnt sound much
Some localities in Germany have been incorporating Linux into their systems for 20+ years.
That may explain why the financial benefits seem low.
Certainly not this one: 6 EUR/user/year doesn’t cover even Windows
Depends on your relationship with Microsoft.
50 cents per user per month doesn’t make any sense: I think for MS it might be cheaper to give products for free than to process these payments
Note that that number (180000) is per year, not per month
I’m guessing it’s a really small state with not much IT going on.
As for cheaper to give for free: ABSOLUTELY. But, with free then they don’t have their sales guys in there talking with them, they don’t have the state “acknowledging the debt” and the legitimacy of their right to charge for their software.
In the 1990s M$ let the world pirate DOS and Windows with wild abandon, they were just happy that people were using their stuff and not others’. After the world was good and hooked, shortly after we all survived Y2K, they started turning the screws - requiring license keys for full functionality, getting serious about demanding payment.
Bill Gates net worth was “only” $30B before they got serious about charging for their software, today I see it’s over $200B even after all of Melinda’s philanthropy.
I’m guessing it’s a really small state with not much IT going on.
A small organization will have higher software license prices per user than a large one.
Also true, and at this kind of rate we can assume the state is doing most of its own IT self-support without a lot of M$ hand-holding.
It actually does now. Your M365 license also includes a windows license.
The cheapest M365 I see is 8 USD/month, not per year
Maybe you responded to the wrong person? I didn’t talk about price but yeah M365 is paid monthly. Mostly, you can get annual licenses with a bit of a discount.
But an exchange online license is only $4/month ;)
Mate, are you sure you don’t confuse per year and per month numbers? Those 180000 is per YEAR (for 30000 users)
Mate, are you sure you didnt confuse my comment with someone else’s? I didn’t put any numbers in my comment at all, I was just being cheeky and pointing out that M365 licenses come with a Windows license as well. Or at least business basic and above.
I am not German, and I don’t know what licenses or how many accounts the German government has. That is irrelevant to my comment.
A cost worth cutting nonetheless
I think the big money is in support contracts.
Small state.
Holy fuck, that’s the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don’t want the US in their computers.
This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.
Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there’s that…
I have seen this happen before, for a while, then somehow M$ convinced them to switch back.
Yeah, I think this happens somewhere in Germany every few years. MS then makes a concerted effort to woo some politicians back, and a few years later we have news that a city or state is moving back to MS. Yes, it is good that cities / states are trying Linux and challenging MS, but there is soo much more to any of this than technical superiority or licensing fees.
188K dollars or euros, is basically the cost to put one warm sales body in the territory, to keep the hooks in acknowledging that they should be paid for their software.
To me, it’s about digital sovereignty, and the states should stand on their own two feet and know how their own computers work, not just rely on a foreign company.
In other news: the German military partners with Google to provide the software for their new cloud service…
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bundeswehr-relies-on-Google-Cloud-10397526.html
A small part of Germany, but maybe
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
Don’t worry. They’ll get a big discount on licenses and swap right back again.
At that scale it starts to be about the cost of support, and if M$ will hold their hands for the installation, configuration and maintenance, at some point that costs the state more to provide for Linux than the M$ licenses… Of course, when they lean so heavily on M$ for keeping their systems running, the temptation for abuse becomes strong…
If I were “head of state” I would insist on development of homegrown talent to at least maintain the systems, hopefully configure and even build them too, not as a matter of money, but as a matter of security, independence, etc. I would try to pull back before reaching the point of developing locally used systems that aren’t used elsewhere, that’s not good long term, but if you develop the local talent to run the things, and they naturally build some of their own things, encourage that to be shared with the larger world in addition to leveraging the best shared (locally vetted, secure) tools from elsewhere.
I dunno, free’s still a lot cheaper, once it’s setup, it’ll be so much more flexible, it’ll hardly be worth going back.
Ain’t no such thing as free.
Okay.
When it’s just you, on your own PC, and you don’t value your time, it’s free.
Just from the license fees here, we’re talking what, roughly 2000 employees?
At that scale, you’re going to be paying for support. Whether through a third party, or employing enough people to fix all the things that can go wrong. And not everyone in IT knows enough about Linux to fix broken boxes.
I once recommended Linux for our customer servers, to be installed hundreds of miles away. And what I found was that employees who knew Linux (and specifically how to fix it when it fucks up) were more expensive than the trained monkeys we sent out to fix things, who at least knew how to copy data off it and reinstall Windows/slap a new drive in it, and that issues were my fault for recommending it. It was also easier to talk customers through some settings in Windows if it falls off the network somehow, than it was to deal with getting them to type things into a command line.
And that’s before you even consider servers and where your stuff all goes. With MS it goes into “the cloud”, and you don’t need to worry too much about anything other than paying for it. With your own hardware, you very much need to worry because if you don’t, then one day it won’t be there any more.
Im not dumb guy, i was just talking in …ah idc
very interesting observation… I came to conclusion if USA withdraw from NATO - EU and Great Britain will not send military troops to Poland in case russian invasion
I think you may have the thread confused.
Absolutely not. Open source software shift means not just installing Linux on your pc but also rejecting social media which now are instrument of manipulation and lie. It is clearly seen how social media channels (mentioned above) quickly remove posts that contradicts major ‘PARTY LINE’. I see it ALL the time. ‘Know the truth and truth makes you free’. Slavery starts when people live in lie.
So what’s the right distro to prepare for a Russian invasion?
A good question. I cannot tell you which distro is the best but I am definitely voting for Linux (I think less popular distro is better). A few years back almost all Ukrainian banking system collapsed because of russian virus Petya, only banks that were using Linux were OK… And bad for russia - only small banks were damaged… So it is how we survived) > So what’s the right distro to prepare for a Russian invasion?
If the trend continues then maybe the hacker community will start focusing on Linux. Can you imagine “I don’t need a virus scanner, I use Windows, the under dog OS”
The hacker community it’s very focused on Linux since most servers in the world run it. The fly by night script kiddies and botnet creators definitely prefer end user systems though.
This right here. Linux security is so good that the easiest way to break in is via Phishing someone with a windows laptop.
The old jibe was that Windows users are so gullible that they’re just easier to phish.
Yeah exactly. Nobody actually “hacks” anymore. They just send Pam in accounting a funny email
The easiest hacks use social engineering. Much more social to exploit in the end-user arena.
You say that like it’s not already focused on. The majority of Internet infrastructure runs on Linux.
But the vast majority of viruses focus on end users.
Please become a thing. Having viruses custom tailored for your OS means you’ve made it.
I don’t wanna “make it”. I just want fast, secure, private computing.
Agreed. However, more users (personal, institutional or business) equals more devs focused on the OS.
We need enough, not more. The concept of “more” and “surplus” got us into this capitalist dystopia. I know this isn’t the point you’re making. I’m just making a separate point that I thought of reading yours. :)
And that’s fine. I agree. Becoming consumist hoarders is what got us to where we’re at. Or rather, what allowed companies and institutions to take us here.
Same, I’m largely being facetious. But viruses come with success, and success also means more software and hardware compatibility. I think that’s worth a periodic scan every so often and some slightly inconvenient security systems in place.
There already are. I barely missed a linux virus from a hijacked python package what… two years ago?
Linux desktops are quite non-homogenous though, so their vectors/nature is kinda different.
Sure, and they have been for decades. They’re still not that common though.
What Python package almost got you?
I wonder if I’ve been hit but just haven’t noticed because I tend to run things in containers.
Pytorch Nightly: https://pytorch.org/blog/compromised-nightly-dependency/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/04/pypi_pytorch_dependency_attack/
Funnily enough I can’t even post what it does without the Lemmy comment filter zapping me, but it tried to scrape accounts and passwords.
The malicious binary would upload files ranging in size up to 99,999 bytes and send the contents to a specified domain.
Was pretty scary from my perspective. I missed it by a week. PyPi is a mess, and it makes me wonder how much isn’t caught.
That is scary. But it does require using a custom repository, so hopefully few were hit.
We use poetry, enough which allows specifying additional package repos and it looks like we’d be susceptible to the same attack, but for our internal package index. Looks like I have something to fix this week, thanks for the link!
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I switched to Thunderbird about a year and a half ago.
Last week I had to help a coworker with their Outlook and holy shit is it so much worse than when I dropped it. There is so much AI garbage in every little thing and bad design getting in the way of just sending and receiving emails.
Same thing for the other office products
It’s horrendous. Can’t even explain how bad it is now.
Yup. I switched to linux on my home computer and now the more time I spend with it, the more I pity my work computer for the cancer it has to deal with.
I have an Outlook account from when I decided to use it specifically to receive and interact with clients as a freelance artist.
My freelance gig didn’t launch, so I kinda forgot about it. This week I remembered that account and logged on… Only to find the most disgusting interface a user has ever seen! There are (almost) no shortcuts, not a gram of intuitiveness to be found…
Horrible horrible platform
LibreOffice is a great alternative for 99% of people, but there is that 1% of people who is gonna be disappointment. This is a great step though.
Same goes for any software.
I don’t understand why people act like Windows is the holy grail of computing.
It sucks, it barely works for 90% of users, and the rest will use anything else.
Just as Linux will work for 98% of people, and those last ones are due to handful of evil companies.
The problem is education. People know how to use Windows/Microsoft products, and are too lazy to learn anything else. Saying “that other thing sucks” is easier than admitting “Idk how to use that other thing, and I’m too lazy to learn”, especially in a corporate environment where you can’t climb ladders by acknowledging your own shortcomings.
Get LibreOffice/Nextcloud/etc into schools, and the problem will be solved in a single generation.
People ‘know’ how to use Microsoft products. I’m a data guy and might spend less than a day a week in word, PowerPoint, excel. Most of the time I spend in them is checking other people’s work. I’m still called on to help people with such tasks as switching from footnotes to endnotes, moving files in SharePoint, fixing formatting. My general knowledge of navigating the UI and googling fixes is better than what people ‘know’.
People bitch and moan every time MS Office apps are updated, too; I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard coworkers complain. TBF though, I refuse to hit the “Try the new Outlook” toggle on my work laptop - I tried it once and it was worse in every way.
I’m glad the only MS products I use at this point are work-issued.
Hey it’s getting better! They recently worked hard for months to add the very niche and almost never used feature of adding a shared mailbox’s folder to your favourites! I mean, with features like that you should expect the dev time to be long.
Actually this was a huge update. Shared mailboxes are extensively used at any company I’ve been at so being able to just open a shared mailbox without having to dig through 93744847 folders or opening another mailbox is a great addition.
In October they are forcing everyone to new outlook too! I can’t wait to have a shittier interface with less functionality!
For me the trouble has always been interactions with other people. It’s way better than 10 years ago. Just LibreOffices ribbon interface looks so much better today than 5 years ago. File compatibility is just going to be a continued growing pain until LibreOffice hits a major marketshare
ODF master race?
I.wouldn’t be so sure, the world runs on M$ spreadsheets and their shenanigans.
Yes I am aware, I see some of the most advanced spreadsheets considering I work as accountant, but a lot of the sheets people make can be replaced with better stuff or are just very basis entries which Libreoffice can do fine.
Missing the formatted as tables is probably it’s biggest issue
I just switched to Linux and got a new win11 laptop for my wife.
Had to install a old HP Laser MFC (going to switch to brother when I run out of toner).
It just worked on Linux mint. Auto installed. Printing and scanning.
On win10 worked automatically. Printing and scanning.
On Win 11 it installed with a generic driver and printed fine but not scanning. Had to get the win10 driver from the site… WTH.My Brother printer worked way better on W11 then W10, but I disliked W10 more than I dislike W11 at least at the start
Going from win7 to win10 is definitely more harsh than from win10 to win11
The only thing preventing me from full adoption in it is the lack of being able to convert to table like in excel. I’ve moved to it for my word processing. But I can’t shake excel because I use that feature almost every time I use the program.
After that i just need to find replacements for OneNote and OneDrive and I’ll finally be free.
You can do that in LibreOffice. Its just a few more clicks than in Excel. Its such a common feature they should really make it clearer. I think the feature is “Database Ranges”
Each time I tried to decipher the answer from argumentative forum posts and vague descriptions I didn’t find anything equivalent. I can take a look again, don’t think that was the name of things I tried before.
Replace OneDrive with a NAS. You can roll your own with something like OpenMediaVault.
Replace OneNote with Obsidian. It’s not FOSS, but it’s free and cross platform.
If I could afford a NAS I would have done so by now. But I can’t afford the drives. Most other hosted solutions either don’t offer the capacity I am after, or lack other features that I want from a cloud storage.
I didn’t like using Obsidian and I’m not going to learn markdown so it’s out. I’m looking at notesnook, but it’s still not quite what I am after. But might be as close as I get.
I haven’t heard of notesnook. I’ll need to check that out.
I don’t love Obsidian, it’s just the best free app I’ve come across so far.
It’s really close to OneNote so far and has an acceptable self hosting option. The import function seems good compared to other apps I’ve tried
I just checked it out and at first it looked perfect… then I started noticing local features like exports, notebook counts, etc that were paywalled behind a subscription. For an app that is “open source” that really rubs me the wrong way. I may look through the source code later. I have a feeling they’ve tied those features arbitrarily to web services to drive subscriptions, which would be really creepy… though not as creepy as if the code exists locally and is paywalled. sigh
If you self host, all features are free.
Obsidian is not a great replacement for OneNote. I tried switching but there’s a bunch of things like sharing pages (and no, emailing documents doesn’t count), easy syncing between all platforms (Syncthing doesn’t work at all on iOS and was kinda finicky on other things, and git is just not a valid option), it doesn’t do super well when embedding images or PDFs, doesn’t have the same advanced hand writing stuff, and probably some other things that I’m forgetting.
OneNote is basically the only thing besides email that I can’t find a good self hosted alternative. And I’ve been looking trust me. Obsidian is great if all you need is note taking on a desktop, but that’s about where it ends. Or if you want to pay for the subscription and cloud storage, I would imagine it’d work fine.
I admire the plan, but I doubt the public sector is going to completely acclimate to Linux. The average age of an employee in the public sector is something like 40+.
You might get lucky and get them to use one new program like LibreOffice, but there’s no way you’re going to completely revamp every desktop PC to Linux. I work in this field, and while everyone has been nice and friendly, they (and the entire system around them) are also hugely resistant to digital change. If they ever make the move to a Linux Desktop environment, the IT support will go through hell.
I know what you are saying, but it is not so bad: First of all, most things people are doing at work is not really related to the OS underneath. So if you are responsible for creating passports, you are using the special government program for passport creation. If you are a policeman, you are using the special police software to do your policework. Yeah, you need additional training, but in the best case your usual software keeps working. Most people are not really interacting with the OS during their work day.
(and let’s be honest: Microsofts totally insane UI changes are also requiring lots of training. If you are used to just click on some specific buttons that somebody told you to click on, you’re totally lost in Microsofts crazy wonderland of ridiculous UI changes )
Plus government computers are always old as shit so Linux should install nice and easy, give em mint for that windows like UI.
Cross platform app development has been a viable and very available choice for 20+ years now.
Organizations which are developing their specialty applications locked in to a specific OS… get what they deserve.
Look im an IT guy, and enforcing 2FA for all accounts at our company directly caused at least 2 people to quit at my company.
People are enormously resistant to change. It doesn’t even matter if it actually impacts their job or anything, they will freak out and complain.
Hell 2 weeks ago I added a 3rd AP to one of our offices and just the act of moving the APs around caused enough of a disturbance that HR heard about it. And that was me giving them better internet! There wasn’t even any downtime! I just moved the things that sit on the ceiling and nobody notices!
enforcing 2FA for all accounts at our company directly caused at least 2 people to quit at my company.
Thereby measurably improving the workforce.
I just moved the things that sit on the ceiling and nobody notices!
Somebody noticed.
Eh, I don’t know. I’ve worked developing software for the administration and their computer use is just the applications (web or native) they had built to perform their tasks. The OS is very irrelevant to them, some orgs even had shortcuts to these native programs put in their intranet, back in the days of java applets.
the IT support will go through hell.
I thought IT support was already in perpetual hell?
For the last 10+ years “the desktop” has been over 90% the browser, and the Chrome, Firefox, Edge user experiences are pretty similar to start with. Chrome on Linux vs Chrome on Windows is virtually indistinguishable.
I gave my wife a Dell laptop new from the factory with Ubuntu on it about 3 years ago. The printer support in Windows was already bad, and yes it’s a bit worse in Linux, otherwise she just complains less and has fewer screaming fits of frustration.
There used to be skins for KDE that made it look and feel 1:1 like Windows XP, I don’t know if these things still exist. If yes, there you have it: Just make the system behave like Windows and they won’t notice a difference. They only have to use Office, Mail and print files anyways. Most other tools they use are browser-based and will feel the same way
Yep still exist.
The names have changed. I literally had that conversation with “an engineer” 20 years ago wherein he concluded “I don’t know, if I have to learn new names for most of the programs I use (Word, Photoshop, maybe two others) I don’t think I want to use that other OS.” I had to support his position, if you can’t retrain to click on “Libre Office Writer” instead of “Office Word”, then a move to Linux isn’t for you.
Except most people just click a link on their desktop that goes to a thing they have a completely different name for anyways. If you don’t tell them anything (or just say it’s a new version of Windows) they likely won’t notice the actual differences, just complain about missing a specific icon for something without being able to correctly name what it is
Icons look different, etc. People are ridiculously inflexible.
Yet they are fine with using Windows 11, which looks completely different to Windows 7 or XP. They complained in the beginning just as much but then they were fine with it. People get used to change, they just hate it in the beginning.
When they have no choice…
I also work for the state and it’s pretty discouraging how MS has us by the balls on everything. Every application we use is written in VB.net or Visual C# which also depend on running on a Windows server. Switching to Linux would be a nightmare and cost millions for no real gain. Maybe we could run SQL Server on Linux but I’m sure that even that has some gotchas that the state would not want to deal with.
