That’s pretty cheap, TBH.
Replacing Microsoft 365 with open-source alternatives might be the right approach to solving the sovereignty problem, but plans could eventually change. Replacing traditional software tools on aging IT systems is no easy “plug-and-play” task, as some users have remarked. The German city of Munich even tried to move from Windows to Linux in 2004, but eventually returned to the old operating system in 2017.
Let’s hope the outcome is better this time. And i also hope the result can be leveraged by other nations.
The fact that they made 2004 Linux work untill 2017 was impressive.
Linux and OSS in 2026 is night and day compared to back then.
I’m sure they weren’t using a distro from 2004 in 2017. But what’s weird is that Linux was very mature in 2017. 2009 is my cutoff where I fully dropped windows while still being able to function in a 100% windows environment. If they made it past that point there would have been no reason to go back to windows once they migrated. Without a doubt there were hijinks involved.
What I meant is they went through the rough years of 2000s Linux when hardware support was really problematic and the office suite options were far really behind.
Server side was pretty good by then though.
Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I would be curious to see how much they currently pay and what they expect to pay over a given timeframe for Microsoft software and subscription licensing.
This. The question is always how long it will take to break even. A year? 6 months? The big number is just for shock value.
Big number? It’s 11 million. That’s pocket change for something like that.
That’s probably pocket change compared to the subscription they’d pay to use it.
With an estimated 38,000 federal staff and a cost of $36 per month each for an enterprise license it looks like 12 million a year roughly.
Its only an experiment of the Bundeskanzlei with 3000 real employees. I am very hopeful, I heard an Interview with the one responsible, he seems very eager to really test it and give it a good chance, but also is aware of the everyday Susi in accounting who maybe isnt going to switch easily from Word to LibreOffice
Switzerland: Crowdfund this project and you’ll be inundated with donors desperate to stop using outlook and teams worldwide. Project can fund itself.
I’d love for them to give some of the saved licensing money to the FOSS projects. After all they’re now relying on them.
Money well spent. It’d be cheaper to go back to receipt books, filing cabinets and snail mail now that the american tech bullshit has continually shown it’s true colours.
Open-source decentralized alternatives are good for distributing the concentrated power
It says how much it costs but how much will be saved in the end?
A moral and strategic imperative.
