Frankfurt (Germany) (AFP) – At a time of growing concern over the power of the world's mighty tech companies, one German state is turning its back on US giant Microsoft.
In less than three months' time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft's ubiquitous programs at work.
Instead, the northern state will turn to open-source software to "take back control" over data storage and ensure "digital sovereignty", its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP.
"We're done with Teams!" he said, referring to Microsoft's messaging and collaboration tool and speaking on a video call -- via an open-source German program, of course.
The radical switch-over affects half of Schleswig-Holstein's 60,000 public servants, with 30,000 or so teachers due to follow suit in coming years.
The state's shift towards open-source software began last year.
The current first phase involves ending the use of Word and Excel software, which are being replaced by LibreOffice, while Open-Xchange is taking the place of Outlook for emails and calendars.
Over the next few years, there will also be a switch to the Linux operating system in order to complete the move away from Windows.
The principle of open-source software is to allow users to read the source code and modify it according to their own needs.
The issue of the power wielded by American tech titans has been thrown into sharper relief by Donald Trump's return to the White House and the subsequent rise in US-EU tensions.
In the case of Microsoft, there have long been worries about the dominant position it enjoys thanks to it owning both the Windows operating system and a suite of programs found in offices the world over.
In 2023, the European Union launched an antitrust investigation against Microsoft over the way it tied Teams to its other programs for businesses.
"The geopolitical developments of the past few months have strengthened interest in the path that we've taken," said Schroedter, adding that he had received requests for advice from across the world.
"The war in Ukraine revealed our energy dependencies, and now we see there are also digital dependencies," he said.
The government in Schleswig-Holstein is also planning to shift the storage of its data to a cloud system not under the control of Microsoft, said Schroedter.
He explained that the state wants to rely on publicly owned German digital infrastructure rather than that of an American company.
Experts point to economic incentives for the sort of shift Schleswig-Holstein is making, as investing in open-source alternatives and training staff to use them often costs less than the licences for Microsoft's programs.
This is particularly the case when businesses and public bodies find themselves taken "by the throat" when hit by unexpected extra costs for mandatory updates, said Benjamin Jean from consulting firm Inno3.
Schleswig-Holstein hopes that its move away from Microsoft will eventually save it tens of millions of euros.
But organisations considering this sort of change have to reckon with resistance from staff who fear upheaval.
"If people aren't guided through it, there's an outcry and everyone just wants to go back to how it was before," warned Francois Pellegrini, an IT professor at Bordeaux University.
The potential pitfalls can be seen in the experience of Munich, whose city administration was a pioneer in using open-source programs in the 1990s.
In 2017, the city announced an about-turn, citing a lack of political support and the difficulty of interacting with other systems.
But other public bodies are staying the course: France's gendarmerie, around 100,000 strong, has been using the Linux operating system since the 2000s and India's defence ministry was in 2023 reported to have launched a homegrown system called "Maya OS".
Across the border from Schleswig-Holstein, in Denmark, reports say that the local governments of Copenhagen and Aarhus are also looking into ditching Microsoft.
Another factor that could push the trend is the EU "Interoperable Europe Act", which came into effect last year and encourages the use of open-source software.
According to Jean, "Within the space of two or three years" there could be a number of pioneer administrations who will be able to give feedback on their experiences and inspire others to make the switch.
I've been posting roughly the same response to articles similar to this for over a year now:
'Hahahahha! People still use MSFT software?'
... I get a lot less downvotes the more time progresses.
Oh, how I get you!
I've been calling for degoogling, the need to get rid of Microsoft and supporting FOSS and the need for open protocols in everything for quite some time, I don't even know how long... and people would use the word "paranoid" or synonyms of it. Now? "You had a point" or "You were right." - but I tell them that I don't care about being right. I care about doing what's right for everyone. I'm not a doomsday prepper telling people to go off grid and let civilization fall... I don't want myself or anyone to just survive, I want us to live and in peace. Surviving is not enough to worth living. It is the bare minimum. The basic requirement. And if that is what awakes people, then it's too late. By that point, life is not worth much.
I'm old enough to remember in the 90's people promissing that the internet was going to free the whole world. It was the "true disruptor of centralization"... how far we've come to fail that promise. Here in Lemmy I've found some people again who still remember that promise. I only joined Lemmy this year because I had given up social media a long time ago. But decided to give it a spin after desliking mastodon a while back. The Fediverse is certainly a step in reclaiming that lost promise. With a long uphill battle against the wind for now. But when you see the list of the most downloaded apps or how many iphones have been sold etc... you really see how really dumb most people are. They surrender their sovereignty for the most superfluous of things. Oh, well...
At least, you and I are not amongst them.
I don't know about you, but that statement has never brought me any comfort.
But the article, as small a drop in the ocean as it is, brings me some small measure of hope.
Unfortunately, as always, people only seem to do it for the worst of reasons. And always too late. As the two go hand in hand.
Yep, same here, exactly.
The Cambridge Analytica nonsense was the last straw for me.
These goons have been knowingly making people angier, more stupid, misinformed and emotionally supercharged for over a decade now, and it has literally destroyed society.
I too got called paranoid and overreacting for years, a decade... and now its more or less common knowledge everything I was worried was or could be happening... in fact was, and in fact did.
No apologies though from anyone who was demonstrably wrong and misinformed about all this for a decade though.
Now all the bigger problems enabled by their acquiescence to 'the algorithm' are here, and those are more pressing matters.
People do not understand that you can't unscramble an egg.
It has been wild to watch sci fi dystopia from movies and books of the last 50 ish years just become reality, watch the vast majority of people just sleep walk into it, no matter how much time and energy you devote to explaining what is going on, why it is bad, and how to stop it.
The Cambridge Analytica debacle!!! That was such a low point. I don't know how facebook was allowed to exist after that shitstorm, let alone grow. I mean, I do, the system rewards its consolidating power. But the people?? No class lawsuits? No boycotts?? I never used facebook. But I used to have an instagram account. They bought it and ruined it as expected and I had to leave. The same with whatsapp. I'm anti-social enough for it to be easy for me to quit these things, I suppose... Still, I'm so tired of the techno conglomerates destroying everything like slow moving lava consuming everything as it spreads. As I write this, I have to think of Pompeii. Surely, there must've been people warning them to get out of there for years and years. But some probably used magical thinking and said that the gods would spare them as long as they behaved or something in that line. As others probably in apathy masked as wise skeptcism said that people warned their great grandparents of the same and how they were still there. And then... well... Volcano did what volcanos do.
But yeah, I also have been witnessing the slow fulfillment of our fictional dark dystopias. All being neatly adapted into our daily lifes. While most people just seem to think that shit is normal as usual.
And soon enough... it is... Wielded into existence by a few through the apathy of the many.