It’s becoming more and more apparent every day that countries around the world are pushing more and more to eliminate vendor bottlenecks and promote open source software.
Just a few months ago, we saw the Indian defense services intend to replace Windows with a homegrown Ubuntu-based Linux distribution called “Maya” in a bid to bolster their security and deter attacks on critical infrastructure.
You can see a similar trend among many European countries, the latest being Germany, where one of its countries is doubling down on its previous commitment to switch from Microsoft’s proprietary products to open source software.
Moving away from Microsoft: a growing trend?
The state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany renewed its de-Microsoft efforts by announcing that will switch the computers of around 30,000 state administration employees to open-source solutions and moves towards “digitally sovereign IT workplaces“.
The state cabinet agreed with this, who decided to replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice as the first of six key pillars that are part of their plan for a digitally sovereign IT workplace.
The next big step is a complete transition from Windows to Linux. However, at the time of writing it was not clear which distribution would be used.
In terms of collaboration, the government will switch to open source services such as Nextcloud, Open-Xchange with Thunderbird and Univention’s Active Directory Connector to replace Microsoft services such as Sharepoint, Exchange and Outlook.
It will also push for an open source directory service to replace Microsoft’s Active Directory, preparing processes to better handle compatibility/interoperability with LibreOffice and Linux, while also moving to an open source phone solution.
But for now, they are focusing on integrating LibreOffice into their workflow, with it become mandatory for communication between ministries and authorities States. In case of any technical difficulties or so-calledprofessional circumstances“, some exceptions may be granted.
For this they have also made available a training program for their employees which should be easy to understand, with updates added as per their needs.
All this talk of digital sovereignty may have made you wonder; What is it?
Well, if you look at the definition of the European Union, it is a movement that aims to neutralize the influence of non-EU technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. on its citizens. They want users to take back control over their personal data, while encouraging EU-based tech companies to take center stage.
For Germany, this is one of many steps they are taking to ensure this. Although they have tried something similar in the past, looking back on the debacle in Munich you might not get your hopes up.
But they have to start somewhere, right? Better late than never, I say. Only time will tell if they can keep this up or if corporate greed wins again.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, you can check out the official post, just note that it’s in German (Deutsch).