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A comment on German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice.

Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by cladopa on Thursday April 04, 2024 @06:41AM (#39928638)
They already did that before until Microsoft offered them new conditions and they went back to MS.

So take all those "digital sovereignity" with a grain of salt. It usually means: "We want you to lower your fees".

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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by Isolus on Thursday April 04, 2024 @06:57AM (#39928728)
No, they didn't. That happened for example in Munich. But that is on the other side of Germany. And there is already a joke that MS can't move their german headquarters every time a state or big city want's to move away from MS products. (They did this when Munich changed back to MS producs - but of course this was pure coincidence.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by elygre on Thursday April 04, 2024 @08:22AM (#39929497)
Microsoft started building their new Munich headquarters in 2013/2014. Their old headquarters were already immediately outside Munich. For example, the Munich airport is further away from Munch city than the old headquarters were.

The decision to revert to a Microsoft Platform was taken in November 2017.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by Isolus on Friday April 05, 2024 @04:35PM (#39946888)
Yes, the final decision to revert to Microsoft was taken in 2017. But in 2014, the mayor of Munich began an investigation into how to return to Microsoft products. And he was also the one who negotiated the location of the headquarters with Microsoft in 2013.
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by non-chalad on Thursday April 04, 2024 @08:25AM (#39929512)
Yes, Bavaria is practically an entirely different state, with its' own language, religion, politics, and culture.
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by CRConrad on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @09:02AM (#39990237)
Not just "practically", but actually, factually, and legally: Yes, the state of Bavaria is indeed an entirely different state than the state of Schleswig-Holstein. That's like saying "Virginia is practically an entirely different state than California" -- WTF do you mean, "practically"?!? It IS a different state!
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by lukan on Thursday April 04, 2024 @07:00AM (#39928756)
It was mainly in Munich and more about Linux in general and Bill Gates personally intervened. The next government rolled back to MS.

And no, data sovereignity means more than money, but it might cost more money in the end. There were quite some problems, but those could have been resolved. But not for free.

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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by rchaud on Thursday April 04, 2024 @07:48AM (#39929119)
So you're saying digital sovereignty provides leverage. That itself is valuable.
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by PeterStuer on Thursday April 04, 2024 @07:28AM (#39928961)
Sovereignty might have gotten a bit of a priority boost post Nordstream.
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by schleck8 on Thursday April 04, 2024 @08:04AM (#39929301)
Opposite end of the country.
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Re:German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice by jraph on Thursday April 04, 2024 @10:59AM (#39931274)
> So take all those "digital sovereignty" with a grain of salt

Actually, there's actual money flowing from Germany to open source companies as we speak to build digital sovereign solutions (like openDesk [1]), so it's more than "We want you to lower your fees".

Real concerns have more and more motivated this kind of things in recent years.

[1] https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/info/-/blob/main/REA...

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