Schleswig-Holstein [Germany’s most Northern state] started its open source journey early, becoming something of a vanguard in Europe’s move away from proprietary software [by ditching Microsoft and introducing Linux and LibreOffice].
Now, Dirk Schrödter, the Minister for Digital Transformation of the state, has shared some remarkable numbers (link to article in German language) that prove the financial case for implementing open source for government use cases.
…
According to Schrödter’s ministry, Schleswig-Holstein will save over €15 million in license costs in 2026. This is money the state previously paid Microsoft for Office 365 and related services.
The savings come from nearly completing the migration to LibreOffice. Outside the tax administration, almost 80% of workplaces in the state government are said to have made the switch.
The remaining 20% of workplaces still depend on Microsoft programs. Technical dependencies in certain specialized applications keep these systems tied to Word or Excel for now. But converting these remaining computers is the end goal.
There is also a one-time €9 million investment set in motion for 2026, which would be used to complete the migration and further develop the open source solutions for the ministry.
[…]
€15million! That’s not peanuts. And Germany has 16 “states”.
I wonder what fantasy problems the reactionaries will come up with that - in their minds - will also cost 15million.
edit: yep, the old, old, same, same argument:
Meanwhile, the opposition (…) says that there are still problems with the new software (…) “It may be that on paper 80 percent of the jobs have been converted,” says SPD member of the state parliament Kianusch Stender. “However, far fewer than 80 percent of employees can now work properly. Errors in the migration of jobs still exist.”
This is corporate-donations-driven bullshit as we have known since LiMux. Bit sad that the so-called social democrats engage in this.
BTW it’s only 80% because the planners know that some still depend on MS products (esp. Excel). But:
According to Schröder, these jobs will also be converted in the future. “We continue to consistently implement our open source strategy and strengthen the country’s digital sovereignty,” says Schrödter. “In this way, we reduce our technical and therefore economic dependence on individual manufacturers.”
I like the last sentence: switching to open source is more than just using free software.
So wait the guy who actually speaks positively about this is a member of the CDU while an SPD member is complaining? What is going on here?
Politics. If you’re not part of the government it’s kinda your job to complain about the government as a politician.
I was a little surprised myself. But: Opposition. These are the petty games they have been playing forever.
How many euros per citizen would constitute peanuts?
Those developed nations, line Germany, France and Austria, got understood it before most of humankind.
Btw, Europe as a continent is paying 1 BILLION euros every month just for MS Office fees… It’s time to redirect that money to support societal development, including libre software.
I hope they invest some of the saved money into the projects they now use.
Savings on future proofing and security will be even more than that
Do Belgium next! Or at least the city/province I work in.
Would be fun to see our 6 governments debating about wether we should go for Open Source instead of Microsoft. Can’t imagine how all the civil servants would cope with this change, especially our own IT worker (but it’d be worth it for sure). Dude just encouraged everyone to implement Copilot more into our work. And definitely Copilot and not ChatGPT or anything else not from Microsoft because of “safety reasons”
Biggest thing here: I hope they donate 5mio€ to Libreoffice and others instead!
I never read that this is a big step to invest in free software.
Btw: Germany is working on some “tech stack” they wanna use for public projects or something.
It is pretty weak, contains little bullshit on the technical side, but in politics and law you know that everything has to be precisely written out to avoid people fucking it up:
They mention “open source” like twice, and “free software” is mentioned nowhere. In contrary, many requirements are heavily corpo-shaped, like the original idea of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), with audits and compliance and stuff, but no mention of software needing to be
- auditable not only once, but open forever
- free to study, adapt, fork and reuse
- trustworthy by design
The Free Software Foundation Europe made a statement on that recently
