A German State Is Saying Goodbye Windows, Hello Linux
fossforce.com
fossforce.com
https://slashdot.org/story/06/10/28/226211/munich-migrating-...
https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-germany-moves-into-a-new-h...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...
My biggest fear is that this time it might be Microsoft themselves to offer a Linux solution: their Linux of course, with lots of strings attached (blobs, proprietary libraries, Microsoft-only services, etc)
Of course, the IT department made it work.
What is needed is employee acceptance and blessing.
Hopefully, they will have workshops and focus groups to ensure that the staff of 26.000 (*) likes the change and welcomes it.
Ideally the employees would be allowed to vote on the change. after being given a chance to get familiar with it.
I am 90% sure that vote would be against the change.
This is a major inconvenience for nearly all of them.
You get together a gang of 65 year old civil servants who have learned how to do their job one way and have done it one way, to suddenly figure out.
Then the migration the 100s or more templates that they have carefully formatted and laid out to ensure consistent communication with the public and everyone else.
And for them to be as productive as they are today, after the change.
I help my grandpa and some of his friends with "computers". For most of them if an icon on the desktop, or a button in an application moves they give up.
"Why do we need to adopt machine guns? They are so much more complicated than our bolt action rifles. Everyone has been trained how to do their job using a bolt action rifle. We will have to totally rethink our doctrine. The Lewis gun doesn't even have a bayonet lug. In my experience, the average private will just give up when he experiences a malfunction."
I never saw any 55+ on the sharp end of the army.
2) A gun you give to the soldiers will be simple.
When you are given a new weapon, you will be drilled on it.
You will learn to fire, aim, reload, disassemble, reassemble (With strict time requirements).
Then you will be drilled more.
The hierarchy and command system of the US Army is extremely different from what an office civil servant union member can expect. You will not have an officer yelling at you to do something or face what could be severe consequences if you dont obey.
It's not like LibreOffice produces 10 pages for every 1 page I write in Word.
> This is a major inconvenience for nearly all of them.
I agree it’ll be an (arguably worth it) inconvenience. Whether it’ll be major will be determined by the migration effort. The migration of a local association’s administration from Windows to Linux went mostly unnoticed by the users.
I'm not sure about the salary of a public employee in Germany, but can I guess ~$50000 annual.
So if you give the $250 to each employee instead of Microsoft, it's a raise of 0.5%.
Edit: The Windows license is ~$200, but I don't expect it to be renewed annually.
Hmm.
Install with the snap:
sudo snap install onlyoffice-desktopeditors
sudo apt-get snap
sudo rpm-install snap¹
___
1: Or however it goes.
They would be able to handle the features they need entirely in house, and if multiple companies need the same or similar features this allows more resources to be put towards that thing
FOSS software would be actively maintained but a massive network of the companies that use the software, instead of relying on the small teams or individuals for whom its a pet project
I think this system would generate far more robust software and the ecosystem to support it
Those resources can be geared towards supporting and contributing to open source (that they use internally) instead of giving money to these corporations for shit support and "maybe we'll add the feature you want (but probably not, and we're increasing the cost BTW ^^)"
And there's the additional challenge of actually getting contributions landed upsream, which requires work from other maintainers.
One of them is 4x the compensation of the other one...
If everyone is supporting FOSS with their own developers, which they can pay more wages to because they aren't shelling out to Microsoft and apple, then Microsoft won't have as much income with which to pay exorbitant salaries.
Multiple parts of the system interact, dont assume nothing else changes with this massive shift (I'm not only talking about the German gov doing this, but all companies)
That would require a huge coordination effort. There's going to be several companies that want different features and have their own devs on payroll (at different rates). VS Microsoft that can just organize a meeting with the leads for Office and plan out the roadmap.
Also, exorbitant is one way of seeing it, but does it hold when you consider the insane added value these devs bring to millions of businesses?
> I'm not only talking about the German gov doing this, but all companies
The other issue, specifically with government, is that salaries are capped to public servant scales. There's no way they can hire Microsoft or Google talent at these rates.
Windows is about the cost of a single support call to IT, so if it's just that much easier to maintain, it's worth it. Maybe it is, maybe it's not, but the cost threshold is right there.
It's the cost of a nice keyboard or mouse for gosh sakes.
The cost really shouldn't be hugely part of the equation, I mean, you want to negotiate for it of course, but beyond that it's mostly not the cost.
this says "In 2018, the central government had spent €73m ($80m) on Microsoft licenses, around €25m ($27.5m) over the forecast budget – and that was without the cost of providing German state governments with Microsoft software.
As opposition politicians pointed out, the total amounts to hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money."
Red-Hat is hardly cheaper when playing at this level.
Also, imagine when their IT bill goes up by $100M because of additional support calls due to Linux oddities.
75M is not a lot for important productivity software that people use all day.
Instead let's make a one time hardware purchase, with warranty for parts, and handle the software in house with FOSS.
It doesn't matter that much.
And cost is less of an issue either: the cost of an OS per person is about the cost of a single support call to IT, so if an OS can make things 'just that much easier' it's worth it.
I think the most important issue aside from the direct comparables is switching costs. If you get tied into an OS, then there's too much leverage.
But that doesn’t matter that much because this decision has been made on the state level.