The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source

You're not wrong, but this is actually what they're pursuing; the article just leaves it out.

> The goal is not only to save costs, but above all to gain digital sovereignty.

> [It's true] that open source is not necessarily cheaper, [..] it requires investment. But the money flows into internal infrastructure, into the further development of Nextcloud, LibreOffice, and other similar systems, instead of proprietary ones.

> Schleswig-Holstein pursues an "upstream-only strategy," meaning that developments flow directly back into international projects. The state does not want to maintain its own forks, but rather contribute all improvements directly to the main projects, thereby contributing to development for the benefit of the general public.[1]

On a side note, the real key to the project's success is that it's supported by a coalition of the conservative and green parties. They actually value digital sovereignty and longterm cost savings. Contrast that with Bavaria, where the MS lobbyist managed to get them to sign a longterm Office 365 contract…

[1]https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/hintergrund/Interview-Wi...

The German government actually started and funded quite a few projects supporting FOSS development over the past few years. For example, ZenDis was founded in 2022 to develop open-source software for the public administration. They are the driving force behind openDesk, which is shaping up to be a great office- and collaboration suite. Also, there's the Sovereign Tech Agency, where open-source projects can apply for direct funding. The available funds aren't as big as I'd like them to be, but it's not as if there's no funding coming from the German government.

An alternative would be to create jobs for people that take on part of the development of used software. They would be a close connection between their organization and the Open Source project in question. Paying money to the project would be one way to go. Providing development resources another. Both would be best :)

This has been my view too... all these years, all these organizations with collective billions, and didn't anyone have the vision to say, let's all pool some money together and actually get these open source alternatives to shed some of the papercuts, and maybe hire some UX/designers to make them look more polished?

There are plenty of decision makers who will not be sold on an abstract concept like software sovereignty, especially when it requires them to change. Tell the same crowd "$15 million saved" and more of them will listen.

They're out of their minds if they're donating nothing to Libreoffice, though.

The idea is sound but the feeling of hate is perhaps strong. It’s understandable there’s no incentive to pay for open source software, and doing so would be seen as an unnecessary allocation of resources that could better be allocated elsewhere.

Given this understanding, the best away to achieve the desired outcome is to get creative about aligning incentives at the top of org structures where resources are allocated.

True. Software and computers don’t even exist to save money. A lot of problems stem from the weird idea of MBAs that a computer, digitalization or even cloud are there to save money.

I hope Holstein prepared the switch well and kill off any Microsoft stuff as quick as possible. Nothing is worse than co-existence with something hostile which doesn’t want to be compatible.

   * No Dual-Booting
   * No VM
   * Especially no WINE (your ducked with every odd update)
   * And by the love of god, hit everyone with a bat which tries to ship incompatible files (MS-Office, ppt, xls, pst…) to you. Links to “Microsoft Teams”? Hit harder and show no mercy :)

    * Make plan.
    * Used standards wherever possible.
    * Switch file-formats and external platforms before. Use a standard distribution and DO NOT MAKE YOUR OWN DISTRIBUTION. If you have a big IT department with hundreds of employees, maybe an own repository with your custom software.
    * Enforce all suppliers hard to support Linux natively! If not? Drop them. Search a honest company which gives you also the source.
    * Avoid the usual mistake like “this a local support company” or “their offer is cheaper”
    * Don’t purchase shitty hardware. ThinkPads are a good start, but we speak about printers, NFC, label writers, scanners and so on.

    The remaining 20 percent of workplaces are currently still dependent on Microsoft programs such as Word or Excel, as there is a technical dependency on these programs in certain specialized applications. According to Schrödter, however, the successive conversion of these remaining computers is the stated goal.

PS: And don’t repeat Munich! Munich is “HOW NOT”. Three distinct IT-Departments. And the next major was “convinced ” with tax money and a Microsoft Headquarters. Result, it is worse than before.

That's a really good point actually. If you're self hosting, you're already eating some cost by having people, probably in-house, doing the work but the price difference must be quite large and they should use it to support the project.

The sabotage scenario is perhaps less likely than the alternative scenario of industrial and political espionage.

There are also practical advantages: the ability to fix a bug in-house instead of waiting for a technology giant from another continent.

Governments have more to gain from being able to work with a few big companies on things like surveillance than they do from sovereignty - which many of them regard as an out of date idea anyway.

Despite all the talk about sovereign cloud the actual governments are actually going the other way.

1. The Online Safety Act in the UK pushes people to use big tech more rather than run stuff independently - the forums that moved to social media. 2. EU regulatory requirements that help the incumbents:https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/27/cispe_eu_sovereignty_... 3. ID apps in multiple countries that require installs from Google or Apple stores, and only run on their platforms. 4. The push to cashless which means increased reliance on Visa, Mastercard, Apple and Google.

To be clear I do not not think that any of these things are in the public interest. However the government is not the public, and the public (and probably a lot of the government) has deeply ingrained learned helplessness about technology.

Today when a government pushes for a backdoor we often see companies push back. The FBI publicly complained about iMessage encryption a lot, and currently Apple is also telling the government of India they aren’t going to install their “security” software… those are just a couple examples.

What happens when major OSS projects are controlled by the governments themselves? Will David still beat Goliath?

Similar opinion and source of income.

Linux for starters, however even that has too many US contributions.

In general, we need to go back to the cold war days, multiple OSes and programming languages governed by international standards, with local vendors.

If sovereignty is desired, it can't stop at Office packages.

I doubt that Microsoft has a kill switch. Though through automatic updates they still have pretty strong sabotage capabilities.

But the OS is not where Microsofts power lies. Its in exchange (almost everywhere cloud managed, including for many governments) and SharePoint, with a small amount of teams, where Microsoft is truly a scary prospect for sovereignty.

I have a possibly strange take.

Isn't the code of law the original open source, for very good reason?

As law becomes more and more enforced by software, should it not all be required to be open source?

I feel like there should be an open project to manage and support this.

I think governance (both public and private) would benefit from open tools to manage communities at scale via technology.

"the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software."

wait until they found out that there is no "customer service" in OSS, sometimes the project is fine but people need "someone" to be held accountable in some ways

that's why a lot of OSS project never take flight

It is better to spend 20milion on German contractors, then spending just 15m on licenses to foreign company.

> Saves 15 million" on license costs, but how much will be wasted on the contractors...

Approximately 9 million, according to the article:

> In contrast, there would be one-time investments of nine million euros in 2026, explained the Ministry of Digitalization to the Kieler Nachrichten. These would have to be made for the conversion of workplaces and the further development of solutions with free software in the next 12 months. Given the annual savings, this sum will pay for itself in less than a year.

True, regardless of the cost, it feels like money spent on open source software is more ethical and a better way to spend tax money. Why pay $15 million to Microsoft that will only benefit their shareholders, when spending the same amount of money on open source software would benefit everybody (the citizens as well).

A not to be easily dismissed factor is privacy and data protection. A company that has 700+ "partners" that they sent who knows what data to from inside their e-mail client is not to be trusted. I don't want my data in the hands of these crooks.

This is the situation. And knowing how inefficient the German administration is, this would en up costing more in taxes and slower processes.

Back then Microsoft was lobbying as hard as they could to turn that decision to move to linux over.

They knew: If Linux makes it in Munich, it will likely spread over and they loose tons of contracts with other German states.

- Sir, can we bribe you?

- Of course, of course.

The political climate is completely different. The US is no longer an ally but a fascist regime actively supporting far right and nazi movements in Germany. What made sense 8 years ago probably doesn’t make sense today.

One thing that is missing that nowadays you get O365 so also management of employees access and licensing in single env.

You get backups, file synchronization, real time collaboration.

Setting and running all of that is as simple as making O365 account and clicking couple of buttons by one person.

There is no OSS solution that does that.

To replicate that with OSS you need 3 to 5 full time graybeards and it still will be annoying normal people that will not understand “why they can’t just do X as in MSFT tools”.

Many times I've seen people state that they use Windows because they know it, but they can't do trivial things such as set up a printer or connect to WiFi.

Most user's Windows ability is to look for apps on the desktop or Start menu.

Shared contacts, calendars and coordination of meeting locations and virtual meetings.

I've yet to see FLOSS that matches that aspect of Outlook and o365/Exchange. I'm fact, IMO, it should have been one of the monetization efforts with Mozilla, which is a server companion for Thunderbird and a now comprehensive integration of calendar and contacts.

In terms of client software stuff that's true, but in terms of services it's not, as other comments here are pointing out.

It's the administration of user accounts, the certified compliance, the backups..

Are we gonna accept being forever locked in to Microsoft because of custom Excel workbook formulas? Forever paying Microsoft a license fee, because we don't want to covert said formulas or invest in open source software to make it reach parity with Excel.

I must agree, unfortunately, and do so due to a reason that's way more mundane than "custom formulas": UI.

Language, form, muscle memory (call it what you will) is difficult to separate from thinking and working. I'm very picky when it comes to desktop UI: I use Linux exclusively, and I can't tolerate most Linux distros' default desktop environments. Someone who's been productive for a decade or more with Windows applications -- well, to the extent we're willing to ascribe "UI stability" to those applications' own updates -- will probably hate Linux with a passion.

I don't think such a transition can be made seamless. They should have thought about becoming Microsoft's hostage two decades ago (I guess).

In that case, keep your MS license where there is a migration problem, simple as that. There is no need for the entire gov sector to pay so you and your team can use custom formulas.

Formulas exist in other software too. LibreOffice has better compatibility with older Excel files than MS Excel itself.

When you migrate anyway you could choose that to use a proper database and SQL if that makes sense instead.

Will you get upset if Microsoft will charge 500000000 USD (because more copilot value added every month) per year? That is way more upsetting imho. And if all fails there is still some SAP solution to everything in life :P

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable?

Russia is waging war on Europe. America is increasingly aligned with Russia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvd01g2kwwo

When the US government has become erratic, unreliable, untrustworthy, and aligned with your enemies then it's necessarily time to de-risk your infrastructure and supply chains by removing America products and services from them.

It's the same reason you don't want Chinese equipment in your telecommunications infrastructure. You can't trust what the Chinese government will do to it or with it.

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable?

Mostly the widespread perception that the USA has betrayed the security guarantees given to Europe, and that the USA isn't a reliable partner anymore.

Recent comments (and by now published strategy) of the US administration have certainly shifted public and political perception. Not necessarily 180° but enough too make such projects/attempts more viable.

In the end, from a European/German perspective, it matters little whether these thoughts/comments/strategies are a negotiation tactic, "trolling", serious threats or something else entirely. And the fact that "Government adjacent" people like Elon Musk behave the way the do certainly doesn't help.

The fear that the United States may use it's tech companies as blunt offensive weapens does now exist (in a semi-abstract form) where it didn't 5 or 10 years ago.

I think at this point in time nobody can say what the end result will be or how things may develop in the future. Either on the political or the technological field.

> What is the political element in Germany that makes these very public walk away from Microsoft viable

Germany has had a fairly active Linux community for decades. A large portion of German local government has had experience using or RFPing FOSS alternatives since the 2000s all the way back to Munich's bake off of Windows vs Linux.

While the geopolitical portion is sexy and fun to look at, in most cases American vendors just don't find much value in supporting DACH customers because their budgets are significantly lower and they tend to be much more on-prem heavy unlike their Scandinavian, CEE, or British peers.

DACH local governments also tend to rely heavily on MSP/MSSPs and for these kinds of businesses, margins really matter and vendors don't like dealing with channel sales because they just don't bring enough money to the table for the amount of money you have to spend wining, dining, and supporting them. And given MSP/MSSP margins, it makes sense for them to adopt FOSS.

Finally, some German local governments have used public proclamations like these to renegotiate vendor deals (I think Munich did something similar).

That said, private sector players in DACH have largely consolidated around American or Israeli vendors, such as Schwarz - despite their proclamation for digital soverignity - using American-Israeli SentinelOne [0].

It's good to have competition though, and I do strongly feel that MSP/MSSPs and organizations dependent on Channel are better suited to using FOSS tooling.

[0] - https://www.sentinelone.com/press/sentinelone-and-schwarz-di...

Here is a concrete example of what other comments are talking about (threat that MS/USA is no longer reliable partner).

Microsoft blocked official email account of Karim Khan (a prosecutor of International Criminal Court). That was due to Executive order by president Trump (Executive Order 14203 - Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court).

Unless you pay for the subscription you can't reject all of it anyway.

* Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling - Consent required for free use

The full page reload after wasting all that time to realise I don't actually have a choice was a nice touch.

> We've been seeing variations of the same article every week.

Time has come. Over the last few years there is more and more interest from goverments and private organizations to have relieable software that does not depend of foreign entities. Software sovereignty is becoming a necesity rather than a nice to have for both nations and enterprises.

> Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years.

Excel, like many other technologies in the past can be disrupted. Like mane other commenters say, it won't come cheap. Saving costs shouldn't be the the goal here.

> Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away.

Challenge accepted!

Arriving first (ye ye Lotus 1-2-3 existed we know) and early extreme lobbyism sure stands strong.