they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
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
Holy fuck, that’s the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don’t want the US in their computers.
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
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.
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
A small part of Germany, but maybe
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
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?
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 😅😂
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.
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.
Ofc its Schleswig-Holstein. The only sane state with sane politicians
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the sort of adoption we need to bring Linux into the mainstream
This and software companies openly supporting Linux. For example, if Adobe and AutoCAD among others would build some tars then you could see it.
Ironically, Game Engines are ahead of the curve on this. You could build Unreal Engine from the github page on Linux for many years now and we also have Godot and Blender. I think several PCB design and also architecture tools already exist on Linux as well, so there is definitely room for a lot of industries and businesses to shift away from Windows as long as they can find a competent tech guy to maintain everything with minimal downtime.
Blender got ported to Linux in 1998, to Windows in 1999. The modal interface and key command language is no accident, it literally is a 3d vi.
Linux is generally strong when it comes to 3d graphics workstations, it inherited IRIX’ market share, plenty of artists around, especially in the film industry, who’d go on a strike if you took away dragging windows with alt+LMB. Graphics, that is, CAD is dominated by Windows as CAD started out as 2d sketch software which ran on cheap DOS machines.
Houdini is also Unix-native and Blender’s only surviving competitor (considered by features, not industry inertia), Maya started out as cross-platform IRIX+Windows.
I’m more surprised that a city in Germany didn’t switch to Linux a decade or more ago.
Late to the party is still showing up, good for them.
Too busy faxing each other. Germany is Luddite Land, by choice.
Source: moved here 7 years ago. Germans are a weird bunch. Change is not welcome in just about any form.
Nice to see them adopt the open source apps, though. They can probably get some screaming deals on some US Robotics 56k modems on eBay Local.
🤪😘
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 $4/month ;)
Mate, are you sure you don’t confuse per year and per month numbers? Those 180000 is per YEAR (for 30000 users)
Mate, are you sure you didnt confuse my comment with someone else’s? I didn’t put any numbers in my comment at all, I was just being cheeky and pointing out that M365 licenses come with a Windows license as well. Or at least business basic and above.
I am not German, and I don’t know what licenses or how many accounts the German government has. That is irrelevant to my comment.
A cost worth cutting nonetheless
I think the big money is in support contracts.
Small state.
It’s gonna be a rough few months for the IT department
Actually being able to troubleshoot things yourself instead of waiting for a reply from Microsoft support is a godsend.
Assuming the IT staff isn’t comprised of a bunch of junior techs that only know the Microsoft suite and not the actual inner workings of how email and Linux works.
Conveniently, this could be a path to competence for those juniors in the long term.
You a glass half full type person, huh? Honestly, I admire that attitude. I hope you can keep that.
you’re a “wish you all the best” type person huh? I hope you can keep that
I hope so. I would have loved the opportunity to be in that position, and if I was still working as a sys admin, I’d still live it.
“competency” in IT is more about your skills with the tools your company is using. My current company only has one super minor server running Linux so even if someone so advanced with Linux they make Richard Stallman look like a M$ shill wouldnt be a competent engineer in my infrastructure.
I do get what you’re saying though and I wish more things would move to Linux in general. It’s much nicer to manage.
Or way worse, what you said but senior techs.
Microsoft has been at this long enough that there is an army of old guys whose only - but extremely specialized - skillset is navigating arcane GUIs for group policies and AD administration. But drop them in a bash terminal and they’re like a fish dropped on a tennis court.
Modern MS infra administration is far from “navigating arcane GUIs”: it’s all about PowerShell, IaC, automation etc.
Yeah now it’s all about navigating obscure web pages that mysteriously change every few months haha
true
Ew. I didn’t think of it that way, but your right. Hopefully the seniors are tech smart and not just MS smart.
MS smart
I feel like most of the items aren’t going to be real troubleshooting.
It’s been a good bit since I worked the support desk, but even with generic microsoft updates, most of the ‘questions’ were basically the worst users finding a way to say ‘It used to be this and I want it to be this way, hold my hand for an hour while telling me its not this way anymore until I get tired and then complain to someone else’.
'It used to be this and I want it to be this way, hold my hand for an hour while telling me its not this way anymore
Yeah, but that already happens every time Microsoft does a major version “upgrade”.
And imagine how much more handholding it’ll require when you fundamentally change everything about their computer lmao
Imagine them switching to Linux and suddenly shit works
Lol, I was thinking the same thing. “plug it in, OK, done”. No drivers and none of that shit.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
Let’s hope it sticks when Microsoft backs up the money truck.
