public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird)
-
Your subscription price is the source of those dividends. It pays the shareholders, it pays the sales staff's commissions, it pays for management, it pays for executive salaries and bonuses, it pays for legal counsel, it pays for political lobbying. Your subscription price is working hard, for the company, not for you.
Ahhh
-
It's really not though. Most of what you can do with Office can be done with other tools, you just have to learn how to use them.
In libre office I can't get copilot to turn my entire report to slop in 2 clicks.
-
I just checked it out and at first it looked perfectā¦ then I started noticing local features like exports, notebook counts, etc that were paywalled behind a subscription. For an app that is āopen sourceā that really rubs me the wrong way. I may look through the source code later. I have a feeling theyāve tied those features arbitrarily to web services to drive subscriptions, which would be really creepyā¦ though not as creepy as if the code exists locally and is paywalled. sigh
If you self host, all features are free.
-
If you self host, all features are free.
Aha, I didnāt realize that was an option.
I see thereās a notesnook-sync-server project. Thanks for pointing that out or Iād have missed it!
-
Mate, are you sure you didnt confuse my comment with someone else's? I didn't put any numbers in my comment at all, I was just being cheeky and pointing out that M365 licenses come with a Windows license as well. Or at least business basic and above.
I am not German, and I don't know what licenses or how many accounts the German government has. That is irrelevant to my comment.
Yes, I am 100% sure: you responded to my comment where I say that 6 EUR/year/user won't cover even Windows. I wasn't talking about license capabilities (what's included and what's not), purely regarding the cost.
-
I'm guessing it's a really small state with not much IT going on.
As for cheaper to give for free: ABSOLUTELY. But, with free then they don't have their sales guys in there talking with them, they don't have the state "acknowledging the debt" and the legitimacy of their right to charge for their software.
In the 1990s M$ let the world pirate DOS and Windows with wild abandon, they were just happy that people were using their stuff and not others'. After the world was good and hooked, shortly after we all survived Y2K, they started turning the screws - requiring license keys for full functionality, getting serious about demanding payment.
Bill Gates net worth was "only" $30B before they got serious about charging for their software, today I see it's over $200B even after all of Melinda's philanthropy.
I'm guessing it's a really small state with not much IT going on.
A small organization will have higher software license prices per user than a large one.
-
Aha, I didnāt realize that was an option.
I see thereās a notesnook-sync-server project. Thanks for pointing that out or Iād have missed it!
No worries, happy to help.
-
Yes, I am 100% sure: you responded to my comment where I say that 6 EUR/year/user won't cover even Windows. I wasn't talking about license capabilities (what's included and what's not), purely regarding the cost.
Yes, but for $6/user/month you get licensed windows then it seems that $6/user/month does in fact pay for windows...
-
Yes, but for $6/user/month you get licensed windows then it seems that $6/user/month does in fact pay for windows...
wrote on last edited by [email protected]But I am talking about 6 EUR per YEAR, not per month - that's what's written in the original post: EUR per YEAR. I checked, that municipality has about 30000 employees. So 6 EUR per user per YEAR, which is completely unrealistic.
-
Just remember, the license fees mostly don't go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for "sales" which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert "all that money" into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.
There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.
-
The names have changed. I literally had that conversation with "an engineer" 20 years ago wherein he concluded "I don't know, if I have to learn new names for most of the programs I use (Word, Photoshop, maybe two others) I don't think I want to use that other OS." I had to support his position, if you can't retrain to click on "Libre Office Writer" instead of "Office Word", then a move to Linux isn't for you.
Except most people just click a link on their desktop that goes to a thing they have a completely different name for anyways. If you don't tell them anything (or just say it's a new version of Windows) they likely won't notice the actual differences, just complain about missing a specific icon for something without being able to correctly name what it is
-
I'm guessing it's a really small state with not much IT going on.
A small organization will have higher software license prices per user than a large one.
Also true, and at this kind of rate we can assume the state is doing most of its own IT self-support without a lot of M$ hand-holding.
-
There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.
Yes, RedHat has been doing this for decades.
Thing is: RedHat probably can't price match M$ in a bidding war, probably not even close.
-
Except most people just click a link on their desktop that goes to a thing they have a completely different name for anyways. If you don't tell them anything (or just say it's a new version of Windows) they likely won't notice the actual differences, just complain about missing a specific icon for something without being able to correctly name what it is
Icons look different, etc. People are ridiculously inflexible.
-
A small part of Germany, but maybe
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
-
Don't worry. They'll get a big discount on licenses and swap right back again.
I dunno, free's still a lot cheaper, once it's setup, it'll be so much more flexible, it'll hardly be worth going back.
-
Icons look different, etc. People are ridiculously inflexible.
Yet they are fine with using Windows 11, which looks completely different to Windows 7 or XP. They complained in the beginning just as much but then they were fine with it. People get used to change, they just hate it in the beginning.
-
they will save 188,000 ā¬ on Microsoft license fees per year
That's 188k euro that can be used to improve the quality of open source software.
-
LibreOffice is a great alternative for 99% of people, but there is that 1% of people who is gonna be disappointment.
This is a great step though.I use powerpoint all the time. Impress is very far behind in terms of usability and basic functionality. But I'm hopeful it will get better as adoption increases.
