public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird)
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A small part of Germany, but maybe
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
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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.
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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.
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they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
That's 188k euro that can be used to improve the quality of open source software.
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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.
