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[–] 76 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

Replacing Microsoft 365 with open-source alternatives might be the right approach to solving the sovereignty problem, but plans could eventually change. Replacing traditional software tools on aging IT systems is no easy "plug-and-play" task, as some users have remarked. The German city of Munich even tried to move from Windows to Linux in 2004, but eventually returned to the old operating system in 2017.

Let’s hope the outcome is better this time. And i also hope the result can be leveraged by other nations.

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  • [–] 116 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

    IIRC in Munich the effort "failed" in good part thanks to Microsoft lobbying and bribes.

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  • [–] 49 points 3 weeks ago*

    Yeah, talked to their CTO in 2012 when I wrote an article for heise.de (sadly, never released with his statements, only broad summaries) and he basically said the politicians were intentionally crippling support for Linux so that Microsoft IT support looked better. He specifically mentioned the WollMux form system as a failed software project.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I think it failed because the Mail software they used had a bug that couldn't handle very large E-Mail subjects. Then they were like "See? This linux thing is bad. Go back to Microsoft on everything right now"

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    hilarious when considering that Windows still cannot handle filepaths longer than 256 characters

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    yeah if you try to, say, open a pdf with a filepath that is too long, it just doesn't do anything

    many such cases.

    this is a problem for our SharePoint/OneDrive setup because our own directory gets quite long once you dig down into dpmt folders in projects, then you try to access the contents of an uncompressed customer package that's neatly organized by folders and has filenames that are 50+ characters long by themselves... it's annoying

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    The fact that they made 2004 Linux work untill 2017 was impressive.

    Linux and OSS in 2026 is night and day compared to back then.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    I'm sure they weren't using a distro from 2004 in 2017. But what's weird is that Linux was very mature in 2017. 2009 is my cutoff where I fully dropped windows while still being able to function in a 100% windows environment. If they made it past that point there would have been no reason to go back to windows once they migrated. Without a doubt there were hijinks involved.

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  • [–] 67 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    $11 million dollars is pocket change to a national government. Not ideal, but as a project to end reliance on a US entity, it's an investment in the future.

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  • [–] 53 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

    Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I would be curious to see how much they currently pay and what they expect to pay over a given timeframe for Microsoft software and subscription licensing.

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  • [–] 48 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    It was not in the article, but let me help you. Swiss bureaucracy is my speciality.

    There were two procurements in the past years, where only the minimal amount of data is publicly available. By request, they would release more data, but that’s something that takes multiple weeks. So I can only share what I have found so far.

    1. Years 2020-2024: CHF 161.69m (USD 198.02m)
    2. Years 2025-2027 CHF 139m (USD 170.21m)

    In those contracts it is not known how many licenses and which licenses were bought. So they will also include Operating Systems (client and server), and expensive licenses such as MSSQL Server. I’m sorry that I cannot share anything more useful right now.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    This. The question is always how long it will take to break even. A year? 6 months? The big number is just for shock value.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    With an estimated 38,000 federal staff and a cost of $36 per month each for an enterprise license it looks like 12 million a year roughly.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    So they pay two years this year to not pay anything forever? (I know this is not really how this works and I sure hope they will start/continue sponsoring open-source solutions as many governments seem to do.)

    That's an easy math question if I have ever seen one, even despite it containing infinity and larger/smaller relation!

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    not pay anything forever

    Things aren't that simple, included in the microsoft licensing price are things like customer support - and not just for windows but other products like office, and none of that are part of the 0$ linux license. If you want customer support on linux (redhat, canonical...) it ain't free either.

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  • [–] 29 points 3 weeks ago

    I've met individuals willing to pay $11 million to stop using teams.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago

    That's pretty cheap, TBH.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    A small price to pay for salvation.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    It says how much it costs but how much will be saved in the end?

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  • [–] 14 points 3 weeks ago

    Its only an experiment of the Bundeskanzlei with 3000 real employees. I am very hopeful, I heard an Interview with the one responsible, he seems very eager to really test it and give it a good chance, but also is aware of the everyday Susi in accounting who maybe isnt going to switch easily from Word to LibreOffice

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago

    Shit a decent sized org pays that much in licensing to use it.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TEAMS EMAIL ME BITCH

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Instant messaging is nice, but we could just run an IRC server for that.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Teams does much more than just messaging. The problem is that no one in the world wants to use any of those other features because they're absolute trash. But they're smashed in there and poorly implemented anyway.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 weeks ago*

    A moral and strategic imperative.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago

    Money well spent. It'd be cheaper to go back to receipt books, filing cabinets and snail mail now that the american tech bullshit has continually shown it's true colours.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

    On the plus side, this'll be a reinvestment of tech knowledge because people get lazy with Windows.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    Open-source decentralized alternatives are good for distributing the concentrated power

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Yeah, I can see the point. Moving away from Microsoft sounds good in theory, but actually replacing everything without causing problems is probably the hard part

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  • [–] 18 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    The tech is ready, the training of people is the hard part.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Exactly. The technology itself is probably the easier part. Getting people comfortable with a completely different workflow is where things can get complicated

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Honestly, for Office, Outlook and Teams you can find alternatives. But in the identity field (Entra), it gets more complicated. No all-in-one replacement options out there that cover everything Entra does, so you end up having to stitch together a bunch of stuff.

    I'm all for ditching closed services, especially for governments, but there will be a couple of difficult years before investment in open-source software produce solutions that can match. So, no better time than the present, eh?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Partly. There is a lot of specialized software out there, which links into Microsoft Office in some way. Replacing all of those connections can be really hard.

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  • Switzerland: Crowdfund this project and you'll be inundated with donors desperate to stop using outlook and teams worldwide. Project can fund itself.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    I'd love for them to give some of the saved licensing money to the FOSS projects. After all they're now relying on them.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Good news, it's time to open source

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