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.
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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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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.