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.
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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.