The German way to free software
German administrations love open-source, but some initiatives could benefit from a more pragmatic approach.
Big kudos to the German state of Schleswig-Holstein!
Another German administration is breaking Microsoft’s glass cage, and at a first read the scope of this initiative seems more ambitious than many I’ve witnessed in the past.
Both the ArsTechnica article and the original announcement don’t include a few details to make better estimate on the possible success of this initiative though.
The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice.
I hope that there’s a Web-based offering somewhere on the horizon. Fewer and fewer employees nowadays run Word/Excel directly on their machines. Most of them run Google Docs or use Microsoft’s office cloud. Giving them a stand-alone app which limits the possibilities for online collaboration may be met with resistance, especially now that many of them are already getting used to online AI assistants. I read that #NextCloud is involved — I hope there’s a plan to run #CollaboraOffice, which is more or less like running the LibreOffice engine as a service, #OnlyOffice or some equivalent…
