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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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.