Open source FTW —

Schleswig-Holstein looks to succeed where Munich failed.

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  Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed
  plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to
  Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate
  the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source
  LibreOffice.

  As spotted by [1]The Document Foundation, the government has apparently
  finished its pilot run of LibreOffice and is now announcing plans to
  expand to more open source offerings.

  In 2021, the state government announced plans to move 25,000 computers
  to LibreOffice by 2026. At the time, Schleswig-Holstein [2]said it had
  already been testing LibreOffice for two years.

  As announced on Minister-President Daniel Gunther’s [3]webpage this
  week, the state government confirmed that it's moving all systems to
  the Linux operating system (OS), too. Per a website-provided
  translation:

    With the cabinet decision, the state government has made the
    concrete beginning of the switch away from proprietary software and
    towards free, open-source systems and digitally sovereign IT
    workplaces for the state administration's approximately 30,000
    employees.

  The state government is offering a training program that it said it
  will update as necessary.

  Regarding LibreOffice, the government maintains the possibility that
  some jobs may use software so specialized that they won't be able to
  move to open source software.

  In 2021, Jan Philipp Albrecht, then-minister for Energy, Agriculture,
  the Environment, Nature, and Digitalization of Schleswig-Holstein,
  discussed interest in moving the state government off of Windows.

  "Due to the high hardware requirements of Windows 11, we would have a
  problem with older computers. With Linux we don't have that," Albrecht
  told [4]Heise magazine, per a Google translation.

  This week's announcement also said that the Schleswig-Holstein
  government will ditch Microsoft Sharepoint and Exchange/Outlook in
  favor of open source offerings Nextcloud and Open-Xchange, and Mozilla
  Thunderbird in conjunction with the Univention active directory
  connector.

  Schleswig-Holstein is also developing an open source directory service
  to replace Microsoft's Active Directory and an open source telephony
  offering.

Digital sovereignty dreams

  Explaining the decision, the Schleswig-Holstein government's
  announcement named enhanced IT security, cost efficiencies, and
  collaboration between different systems as its perceived benefits of
  switching to open source software.

  Further, the government is pushing the idea of digital sovereignty,
  with Schleswig-Holstein Digitalization Minister Dirk Schrödter quoted
  in the announcement as comparing the concept's value to that of energy
  sovereignty. The announcement also quoted Schrödter as saying that
  digital sovereignty isn't achievable "with the current standard IT
  workplace products."

  Schrödter pointed to the state government's growing reliance on cloud
  services and said that with related proprietary software, users have no
  influence on data flow and whether that data makes its way to other
  countries.

  Schrödter also claimed that the move would help with the state's budget
  by diverting money from licensing fees to "real programming services
  from our domestic digital economy" that could also create local jobs.

  In 2021, Albrecht said the state was reaching its limits with
  proprietary software contracts because "license fees have continued to
  rise in recent years," per Google's translation.

  "Secondly, regarding our goals for the digitalization of
  administration, open source simply offers us more flexibility," he
  added.

  At the time, Albrecht claimed that 90 percent of video conferences in
  the state government ran on the open source program Jitsi, which was
  advantageous during the COVID-19 pandemic because the state was able to
  quickly increase video conferencing capacity.

  Additionally, he said that because the school portal was based on
  (unnamed) open source software, "we can design the interface flexibly
  and combine services the way we want."

  There are numerous other examples globally of government entities
  switching to Linux in favor of open source technology. Federal
  governments with particular interest in avoiding US-based technologies,
  including [5]North Korea and [6]China, are some examples. The [7]South
  Korean government has also shared plans to move to Linux by 2026, and
  the city of [8]Barcelona shared migration plans in 2018.

  But some government bodies that have made the move regretted it and
  ended up crawling back to Windows. Vienna released the Debian-based
  distribution [9]WIENUX in 2005 but [10]gave up on migration by 2009.

  In 2003, Munich announced it would be moving some 14,000 PCs off
  Windows and to Linux. In 2013, the LiMux project finished, but [11]high
  associated costs and user dissatisfaction resulted in Munich announcing
  in 2017 that it would spend the next three years reverting back to
  Windows.

  Albrecht in 2021 addressed this failure when speaking to Heise, saying,
  per Google's translation:

    The main problem there was that the employees weren't sufficiently
    involved. We do that better. We are planning long transition phases
    with parallel use. And we are introducing open source step by step
    where the departments are ready for it. This also creates the reason
    for further rollout because people see that it works.

References

  1. https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-moving-30000-pcs-to-libreoffice/
  2. https://www.heise.de/news/Schleswig-Holsteins-Digitalminister-Albrecht-ueber-den-Wechsel-zu-Open-Source-6221361.html
  3. https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/_startseite/Artikel2024/II/240403_digitalsouveraene_verwaltung.html
  4. https://www.heise.de/news/Schleswig-Holsteins-Digitalminister-Albrecht-ueber-den-Wechsel-zu-Open-Source-6221361.html
  5. https://www.fastcompany.com/3036046/what-its-like-to-use-north-koreas-red-star-os
  6. https://techhq.com/2022/07/open-source-china-linux-kylin-kernel-desktop-de-microsoft/
  7. https://www.ajunews.com/view/20200206035616981
  8. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/barcelona-dumps-microsoft-windows-linux/
  9. https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=wienux&pkglist=true&version=1.0
 10. http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/vienna_failed_to_migrate_to_linux_why/
 11. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/

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