This is great, But using Microsoft Windows should be illegal for public services in EU.
We can no longer allow ourselves to depend on American IT infrastructure.
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Public Money should result in public code.
It can't be, that our public money lands as profits in non European companies.
That should be a given, imho
I 100% agree, but some would consider that a matter of ideology.
The other point about dependency on USA when they are acting with hostility is more pragmatic.
99% of people don't understand all the reason why open source is better for public services, except if we can say it's cheaper. That's the one point they understand, and the one point Microsoft has been attacking most with their propaganda against open source.
Go away with your common sense!
5 million a year would go a long way towards making their open source solutions meet their needs.
The cynic in me says they are very good at burning through such amounts without any notable progress. However since it is open source, my hopes are up that this will lift the veil where otherwise bureaucracy and corruption will waste the money.
I mean, optionally they could set up a tiny dev shop with that amount and submit the PRs they want to submit. And at worst, they could maintain their own fork.
It'd be a public service in more ways than one.
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(1 replies)
This is so selfish. What about the shareholders?!!!??
I really hope GNU/Linux can run on old Fax machines and the printing-out-emails workflow works smoothly.
Seriously. While I support the change to foss solutions, this is going to go over like a fart in church for the people that were just forced off fax machines and into email a year ago. And there’s a zero percent chance that Germany will use any of those savings for a support infrastructure. The German way is to figure it out, and endure the suffering while you do with the bare minimum of support from people that barely know the shit themselves.
I have a friend who is principal at a high school here in DE and the stories she’s been telling me about the new push to get tablets into the hands of kids is straight fkn Monty Python level absurdity… from the staff!
Germany painted themselves into a corner with their refusal to modernize their tech infrastructure. The “it’s not broken, so don’t fix it” mentality has left them 20 years behind all their neighbors. But, hey, traditions over everything… amirite?
You might want to read this article. Yes, it's in german. Yes, it's behind a paywall. But your analysis is totally wrong here
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I am 99 percent sure they still have these overhead projectors in schools
In before Microsoft break out the FUD tactics and a year or two of cheap licenses.
Gates is already boarding the jet.
Nadella you mean? It's been a while since Gates was CEO of Microsoft.
This is a bit of ancient history, but back when Munich decided to move away from Microsoft (only because MS dropped Windows NT 4.0), it is said that Ballmer tried first dropping license fees down to a whooping 90% for a limited time.
That didn't work, so MS started a campaign of FUD against Linux that lasted ten years (e.g. http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/77174.html).
Then a year later, it was announced that MS would move its DACH headquarters to Munich and almost serendipitously, Munich also declared that it was moving back into Microsoft's arms for.. em.. pure bureaucratic reasons: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3006352/munich-it-chief-slams-citys-surprise-decision-to-dump-linux-for-windows
For the love of Pete I don't remember from whom I heard it first or if I read it somewhere, but at a point Bill Gates was gloating about negotiating with Munich on behalf of Microsoft.
In any case, he never left: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/bill-gates-still-backstage-manages-microsoft
Interesting. I knew the stuff about Munich, and I knew Gates was still a shareholder, but didn't know he was still so actively involved. Based on that last link, it sounds more like he'll be telling Nadella to get on a plane and what to say on arrival rather than get on it himself though.
Another government stops renting key software and instead invests in actuall ownership!
Honestly, if Microsoft said they wanted to own the Autobahn I could only imagine people would tell them to fuck off (in english and deutche). Why would digital infrastructure be any different?
Be nice if Chicago had the same attitude towards our highways ):
Honestly. I think private companies can have a place in public infra, but it's not in the freaking ownership. Rent seeking is the worst and most destructive aspect of private ownership and we've known and can look at countless example of that since Adam Smith!
Private companies should be allowed to build their own infrastructure or rent public infrastructure. But they shouldn't be allowed to purchase public infrastructure. Imo
Shouldn’t be. Glad the world is waking up to these vile tech companies. US government needs to stop coddling them too.
And since thes last update from the USA on how they view the EU, this will not be the last move EU countries will make.
I know, I work for one of them. We are ACTIVELY planning our usexit.
Trump admin shoots the U.S. in the foot every chance it gets
Trust comes on foot and leaves by horse.
It will be decades before some semblance of trust has been earned back by the USA (starting after they act normally again, whenever that may be)
True. It’s not just Trump that feels this way either. Lots of American oligarchs and groups like Claremont and Heritage that support this shit.
It's cause they misunderstood the prefix for foot and got all excited.
In Soviet USsia, USsia exits EU!
Inspiration for many more governments!
I have already contacted my, Slovakian government. I should ping them again 😅
They do this every few years, when the contract is up for negotiation, M$ will make a way cheaper option, and they will switch back
I'm holding out hope that discounts wont work this time, because the motivation is different. It used to be about cost, now it's about digital sovereignty. I won't bet anything of value, but I can hope.
didn't another german state already try this and fail pretty spectacularly?? cost them WAY more money and then they ended up rolling back to m$??
given that, this is fantastic news! it's good to see people learn from past failed implementations, hopefully learn from their mistakes, and try again instead of just blaming it on bad software
You're not thinking about when Microsoft bribed their way into them not switching by opening an office in the area?
This. It was the city of Munich. They had their own linux distro "Munix" and everything. Then the conservative party won the election. You know the rest.
Then the conservative party won the election.
that's the second or third statement in most modern cautionary tales nowadays
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Yeah, it was a political decision, not one based on how well the Linux transition worked.
They used Linux for quite some time productively. It wasn't a failed transition at all.
I’ve been trying to find a source but from what I remember the transition was in maybe Munich and it was going fine.
Microsoft opened a new sales or operation center there and got cozy with the government there as quickly as possible to turn them back into a customer.
EDIT: Here is the LiMux endeavor.
Microsoft had announced in 2013 its willingness to move its German headquarters to Munich in 2016, which according to Reiter though, is unrelated to the criticism they've presented against the LiMux project.
You have to know how to do it right. It can be bad.
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