The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is making waves with its ambitious plan to ditch Microsoft Office, Exchange, and Windows in favor of Open Source alternatives. This bold move has significant implications for digital sovereignty, public procurement, and the future of the European digital ecosystem. The EuroStack Project unpacks the plan and its broader implications.
Munich tried it - called it project LiMux. It was stopped in 2017.
Maybe this time it will go better, although the reasons for switching back to Microsoft clients were fragmentation, no compatibility with other software and bad interdepartmental communication.
I believe 2 things happened in Munich:
Germans are rather incompetent and a people of leisure habbits (this is so much true), so getting people to accept the alternative was met with: ‘‘Oh, this button does this now? Well, I guess this is not good then.’’. (Yes, I am aware that nation sensible german teenagers will downvote me here… as soon as they are done with their Tik-Tok and 'gram, but truth is brutal here.)
I cannot, for Batman’s sake, imagine that Microsoft had nothing to do with failure of the Munich project. I mean, for one such company, it is literally cheaper to bribe every single employee of Munich administration, than to deal with the loss of contract worth hundreds of millions… and the rise of the movement to stray away from their halfproducts.
But I guess there is moment for everything so… I wish S-H good luck. Getting rid of MS can bring only good things. It’s not like they are gaming during the working hours. For everything else, MS is really not worth the money.
I guess German and Dutch users aren’t very different: I’ve been in (Dutch) IT in several roles for 25 years and have seen “professionals” and govt. employees get completely lost at minor changes in software.
And by ‘lost’ i mean the complete spectrum of responses: lost, angry, frustrated, passive aggressive and violent.
Bribing is not needed, just nudging users to a workflow that is unique to the monopolies.
They said in an interview that they’re obviously looking at tge reasons why Munich didn’t succeed in the end and what they can do to avoid them.