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German state moving 30,000 PCs to Linux and LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Blog
(blog.documentfoundation.org)
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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No it doesn't. It smells like Microsoft has a monopoly on office software, and city employees are not tech enthusiasts. Anyone who used Office at home or in another job is going to complain when they have to learn a new software (regardless of which is "better" - for the average person, different is bad)
Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn't 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
Migrating an entire enterprise to FOSS software is not easy, and in government where leadership changes can be more regular, it's not shocking to see the pendulum swing back and forth.
Could be both of those things as well.
Definitely could be both, but I'd posit that it would still happen regardless of corruption, just because they're taking on the ambitious task of trying something new.
For the average person; msoffice and libreoffice function pretty much the same. Even the icons mostly match.
Oh, cool, so I can have multiple people editing a live document at the same time?
No fucking clue! I don't have friends, and my work tends to be pretty solitary. They could add that feature, tho. They wouldn't be starting from scratch like they would've been fifteen years ago?
Only Calc / Spreadsheet
https://help.libreoffice.org/6.1/en-US/text/shared/guide/collab.html?DbPAR=SHARED
That’s not like that with governments. Governments are huge clients, they can and should dictate file formats to suppliers.
If the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, with a GDP of 2/3 of that of Munich, could transition to Open Document Format almost 20 years ago, Munich can.
They definitely can dictate requirements, however that means that you're now making your staff play document format police.
I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's an additional headache. If I were working in that office, I'd die a little inside each time I have to go back to a consultant/contractor/community member and say "can you please resubmit this, the formatting is broken when I open it in Libre Office"
Yes, again, they have the authority to do this, and it is technically feasible, but it's going to be a bad user experience for a long time until everyone is properly "retrained". Especially if you're working with partners outside of Germany who have their own document standards.
I'm not saying this is a bad move, just that I understand why they might be inclined to jump back and forth.
Often the email filter will just convert everything not allowed to PDF.