Schleswig-Holstein [Germany’s most Northern state] started its open source journey early, becoming something of a vanguard in Europe’s move away from proprietary software [by ditching Microsoft and introducing Linux and LibreOffice].
Now, Dirk Schrödter, the Minister for Digital Transformation of the state, has shared some remarkable numbers (link to article in German language) that prove the financial case for implementing open source for government use cases.
…
According to Schrödter’s ministry, Schleswig-Holstein will save over €15 million in license costs in 2026. This is money the state previously paid Microsoft for Office 365 and related services.
The savings come from nearly completing the migration to LibreOffice. Outside the tax administration, almost 80% of workplaces in the state government are said to have made the switch.
The remaining 20% of workplaces still depend on Microsoft programs. Technical dependencies in certain specialized applications keep these systems tied to Word or Excel for now. But converting these remaining computers is the end goal.
There is also a one-time €9 million investment set in motion for 2026, which would be used to complete the migration and further develop the open source solutions for the ministry.
[…]
I’m curious if the switch to FOSS software means they’re going to start supporting those projects, at least to some degree? I know quite a few FOSS devs for some very mainstream projects, and none of them make enough money to dedicate all their time to the projects. That lack of support really isn’t what you want in a government system. A lot of the costs from using M$ software is in the service contracts, not the site licenses, especially since it doesn’t sound like they’re moving the data infrastructure (excel integration and SQL server are m$'s other biggest money-makers besides office enterprise and azure). Even shifting a fraction of the savings over to the devs now doing the support work for your digital sovereignty would be awesome.
The software package SH is using, OpenDesk, is a kit developed/maintained/packaged by ZendIs. They will be the ones contributing to the FOSS projects (probably with feedback from the people using it)
Are they? My business german is a bit awful so I very well may have missed it, but I can’t find any mention of their contributions to the source projects on that site, or in their most recent strategy documents. Do you mean they’re actually doing that, or that they should be the ones doing it?
From their “Our Mission” page it seems clear that they develop on top of existing projects to suit the needs of their customers, which is fine:
But while their OpenCode platform lists their developments, I can find no evidence that they have contributed to the sources either collaboratively or monetarily. I could very well have missed it, again mein deutsch ist nicht gut, but I did look pretty hard into this and I can’t find where they’ve stated that’s what they’re doing. Is it referenced elsewhere and I simply did not find it while searching for it?
That snippet that you quoted there is what I would point to. Right below that is a graphic where they explain their interaction with public offices on the left side and the FOSS community on the right side, where they say to support and develop sustainably usable solutions.
I would take that as contributing to development. In that paragraph you quoted, they do mention “professional partners”, so maybe that is outsourced?
I’m not exactly an expert of the project, just know of it’s existence and a fan of the direction it’s taking. There’s a few talks about it on the Chaos Computer Clubs website, they do mention contributions to the projects afaik.
All I’m seeing is this:
Maybe it’s a translation error, I’m sorry I just can’t find where they talk about that. I know this is a bit tedious but I would really like to be wrong about this - I know some of the devs involved, and mostly they are poor poor. I would very much like to know that their effort isn’t being exploited, as it so often is. So far, digging into this far more than I should (this is a cry for help) I still cannot find any actual statement that they do contribute to the source beyond maybe planning to submit pull requests? If you have a concrete example of what they’re doing I would be overjoyed to see it, but so far they’re doing the depressingly common thing of barely even paying lip service to the idea of supporting the core FOSS project devs.
Probably not the ministry of that one state directly (or not much). But country- and EU-wide this is very much the case. More in the form of grants than as ongoing pay. (edit: Tech support for FOSS solutions exists and is completely separate of these grants)
then these costs are not part of the €15million saved.
Hmm. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I have yet to see one of these “digital sovereignty” moves to FOSS software that appears to be anything more than a cost saving measure. It’s good to save money, sure, but shifting your government to rely on an already overbudened volunteer-run system is a recipe for disaster, and without reliable ongoing support (which one-time grants are not) this is not going to end well. By all means kick Microsoft, but where is that €15 million/year going now, and why is some portion of it not going to The Document Foundation?
Why wouldn’t that be enough? But often it’s also much safer.
Tech support for FOSS solutions exists and is completely separate of the grants I mentioned.
You’re being a bit contrary here with no ground to stand on. Maybe just do some web searches first? Like the Gendarmerie using Ubuntu (which is very much professional and not “an already overbudened volunteer-run system”). Honestly I think you don’t really grasp how most of FOSS works these days.
Wow, overly insulting much? I’ll just stick with Libreoffice as the example here since I don’t want to get into “cops using ubuntu”:
The Document Foundation does not provide professional support services for LibreOffice. It does, however, develop and maintain a certification system for professionals of various kinds who deliver and sell services around LibreOffice.
So no, their hypothetical outlay for tech support can’t go to supporting The Document Foundation, that isn’t something offered. Instead it will go to commercial services built around that core piece of FOSS.
Because modern software suites aren’t static products. Security updates alone are a huge outlay of effort, and that is currently being done entirely by free volunteer labor. I know that most modern countries were developed through the exploitation of free labor, but I’m pretty sure we’ve agreed that’s a bad thing to do and in an article about how they’re saving a ridiculous amount of money, there is no mention that any of that money saved will go to supporting the people enabling their espoused ideals of sovereignty and digital independence.
If the goal truly is independence and not just cost saving, why not redirect that budget to allow some of the actual workers to survive off their labor? And why do you think it’s okay for them to take that budget and give it to commercial, non-contributing interests instead?
And why not create, if it doesn’t exist, a team of public servants to do that job? Fixing the problems they encounter and giving those fixes to the community.
If that can be done without (the only phrase I know for it is “Digital colonialism”: where a group takes effective control of another project because they have paid devs to throw at it. Descriptive but a bit dramatic.) that would be a huge help. To a degree that’s what they’re doing, releasing their in-house developments based on the LibreOffice source on their OpenCode platform, but I have yet to see anywhere that shows/says they’re supporting said original developers they’re relying on themselves (though in this process I have had my lacking german skills pushed to their limits).
I laud the effort to oust microsoft, but I have yet to see any of these efforts come to fruition in a “my friends can afford to eat now that their code is running huge parts of the government of the 3rd largest economy in the world” way.
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They have mentioned one time payment for supporting the software. Well, not recurrent, so it does not built stability, but at least something.
Well if they extend that 15mil payment for one extra year and put it towards FOSS instead of Microsoft it’s gonna make quite a dent for most projects.
I am very much aware of that. During last LibreOffice Conference, in Budapest, one developer stated that most actual development work for LibreOffice platform is done by commercial ecosystem partner, and most donations come from individual people. So, we are in a strange situation when volunteer developers and small public donors fund work for commercial companies and governments to profit from 😐 Still better than paying to MS, but something even better is clearly needed.
Don’t know about the monetary side but I read in an interview with someone from the Green-party who’s in charge in SH (ironically with the conservative CDU) that they’ll operate under a “upstream-only” strategy which means they won’t create forks of projects but contribute their changes directly into the original repos, e.g. they’re working on AI solutions with Nextcloud to accelerate buerocratic processes within the public sector (with a focus on the ethical aspect).
… I think I understand what you mean and that’s probably a good approach, but good grief the initial read of "governmental groups committing changes to main that enable AI for greater bureaucratic compatibility " is one of the most stressful things I can think of.
Oh you probably meant the Orwellian undertone, right?
I have quite some faith in them keeping their word regarding the ethical side considering their track-record on their FOSS stance. The Nextcloud “CEO” Frank Karlitschek has a very hard stance regarding privacy and also spares no words regarding the situation in the US. Don’t even know if this specific AI thing will go upstream as it’s very domain specific. I consider the government of the state of SH as one of better ones in Germany though I live in another state. I haven’t lost all faith in the Green party and their minister president seems a bit more progressive than most other CDU politicians.