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.
[…]
Btw: Germany is working on some “tech stack” they wanna use for public projects or something.
It is pretty weak, contains little bullshit on the technical side, but in politics and law you know that everything has to be precisely written out to avoid people fucking it up:
They mention “open source” like twice, and “free software” is mentioned nowhere. In contrary, many requirements are heavily corpo-shaped, like the original idea of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), with audits and compliance and stuff, but no mention of software needing to be
The Free Software Foundation Europe made a statement on that recently