Training employees.
Maintaining the environment by addressing bugs.
Securing the environment.
Plus compatibility with proprietary formats isn’t 100%.
I’d still choose FOSS for many kinds of environments but it’s not free.
Your parent comment is referring to the following model:
1. Microsoft provides free or nearly-free licenses to schools. They don't charge the schools for software now, and they won't charge the schools for software later, because that would defeat the purpose of giving the software away. Renewal fees are not an issue anyone sane would worry about.
2. Incoming government workers already know how to use Microsoft software, because that's what they used at school. They complain if they're supposed to use something else.
Right. The presence of that threat is enough to discourage looking for alternatives. "we hear you've been looking into Linux and teaching Python instead of C#/.Net next year... sure would be a shame..."
Try searching for how to perform an arbitrary function in Word or Excel. Hundreds of hits, and probably 25% will solve your problem. Try the same search for Google Sheets or OpenOffice. Crickets was always my experience.
That's assuming you can't get in touch with the person who wrote it. Which you probably could quite easily do.
When I'm in "accomplish a task using a spreadsheet" or "write a document/prepare a presentation" mode, I'm probably not going to be inclined (nor have time) to go rathole on changing the source to the office application, recompiling, testing, doing my original task, and submitting a patch.
There was a time, many moons ago, when secretaries with zero IT knowledge learnt Wordstar key sequences and got very productive using the software; now keyboard usage is considered a highly technical skill among IT workers and rocket science among casual users.
It's just a market driven untraining; everyone can learn to understand and use FOSS, but it needs strong motivation.
Nowadays, Microsoft's Office suite was, is, and, all indicators suggest, will continue to be a bigger productivity multiplier than any of its competitors. For people who primarily work in office software, choosing something like it is the sensible default for any company whose primary motive is profit. Sure, it costs money, but the cost of the software is tiny compared to a skilled office worker's salary - small enough that I'd estimate it wouldn't have to make someone even 1% more productive to justify the retail price, let alone what it costs if you qualify for any sort of volume discount.
There are other motivating factors that could come into play, sure. But if we're talking places that have to pay for their labor (i.e., not home use) and make heavy use of office software, going with the one with the lowest TCO is a sensible default.
Same as with MS Office. I remember me and my parents doing trainings in MS Office, which wasn't exactly free either.
> Securing the environment.
Same as with MS Office.
> compatibility with proprietary formats isn't 100%.
MS Office' compatibility with open formats isn't 100%.
> Maintaining the environment by addressing bugs.
That is a win for MS Office. Now offset that against the license cost and vendor lock-in risk.
I know we conclude the same, namely choosing FOSS for many kinds of environments, but your post sounds a lot like there are many costs unique to FOSS while in reality there are lots of costs involved with both options.
Sure, you can swap Intel with AMD, but isn't that also foreign?
It's a little different for operating systems and all applications that run on top of it...
But the Azure Cloud itself has a supported on-premises deployment, disconnected if you want - https://youtube.com/watch?v=qLIzMwgY_Cw so maybe there is an O365 in there too?
Free as in "free beer" isn't free. There are many costs beyond the cost of acquisition that are often overlooked.
Usability isn't nearly as good with the FOSS alternatives. Microsoft has a paid team of usability experts designing and testing the usability of features for many different user audiences, including disabled users who rely on special usability features.
People likely have some familiarity with Office applications, so training costs are lower. For the training employees need, there is a large wealth of training resources out there, from free to pricey.
There is also no question about being able to get support in the future, as Office as been around almost 30 years, and is going strong. Office has no real competitors in the marketplace, so as long as there is money to be made in selling word processors, spreadsheets and other office-centric desktop software, those document formats and applications will be supported.
Office has a very flexible plug-in architecture for customization by thousands of software devs who can develop for that.
Microsoft isn't naive to the needs of European governments, they have government editions of their software and cloud services to align their software with government regulations.
The foreign company argument isn't really meaningful these days. No country is an island (except island nations!). Everything in IT is dependent on foreign resources, PC parts from Asia, tech support from India, Software from US companies, cloud services, etc. If you don't want to have to rely on foreign companies, go back to typewriters.
The home country of Microsoft still has big and active military bases in Germany and spies even on Germany's highest politicians. If they wanted they could pulverize Germany withhin minutes. You can't honestly say that the German government is really independent under these circumstances.
"Look, fellow Germans. We are called inudstry leader and powerhouse of Europe. We export lots of goods for money they owe us. So much that we can bankrupt other nations. Our politicians say that yes, we are a souvereign nation. At the same time we cannot protect our own borders. We give control to the EU and other nations. We let other countries fly attacks on countries we are not at war with from our own soil. We host weapons that could instantly pulverize our whole country. We are spied to up to the highest levels of government. Even down to the lowest levels we fail. We use software that we don't have the source to. Here is this little project of providing some sanity and some freedom. They use software that is actually open to look at and we are free to develop it to our needs. We can take these matters into our own hands and share our work with the world to create a part of a free and open society. Yet, we have kill this project. Not because it doesn't work. It works, just not as well as the foreign made closed software. It doesn't look as good. It is killed by some politicians who want to, yet again, give away some of our freedom to foreign corporations. They want to run the government like a company and they succeed as such. Being a company, not a government. Let's not be that stupid. Many countries have the same needs for office software. Let's work together on solutions that mutually benefit us. Let's try again. Maybe not in Munich but in the next city. Maybe not replacing everything at once but step by step creating open formats being able to run more and more open software. One day we will look back at this time as the dark ages where the latin bible (proprietary formats) could only be read by the clergy (closed software)."