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gewg_ writes:

The European Union's interoperability site reports:

The German town of Gummersbach, a city of about 50,000 in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, announced that this Summer it has completed its switch to Linux PCs, retiring a decade-old proprietary operating system no longer supported by the IT vendor. The migration has saved the town a five-figure sum, and Gummersbach expects a further reduction of IT costs: a combination of savings on proprietary [licenses] and lower hardware costs.

Using Linux has reduced the need for PC maintenance, freeing 1 full-time equivalent employee (FTE). The IT department now employs three persons.

In August, the city sent a statement to Pro Linux, a German Linux news site, announcing the completion of the migration project and detailing its current desktop PC policy. [October 7], the city made the same statement available to the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR).

The administration now uses 300 thin client PCs, with desktop and applications [retrieved from] a SuSE Linux Terminal Server cluster of six servers. The desktop environment is MATE. The city staffers use the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools and the Open-Xchange suite of email, instant messaging, calendaring, and online collaboration tools.

Some departments use Wollmux, an open source tool for managing forms and document templates developed by the German city of Munich.

The Linux desktops can access a number of business application that depend on a proprietary operating system, by using a combination of proprietary desktop virtualisation solutions. Gummersbach retains 25 PCs running a proprietary operating system, a requirement for applications used by the Civil Service desk, and for computer aided design software in use by the town.

[Update: Corrected spelling of Gummersbach and updated link thereto.]

"gewg_" writes:

The European Union's interoperability page reports

The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the [OpenDocument] Format (ODF). The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations--making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation. The switch was announced on 15 September by the LibreItalia Association.

The migration project will begin in October and is foreseen to be completed at the end of 2016.

It's the law

Italy's Agency for the Digitalization of the Public Sector (AGID) [...] writes that the switch to LibreOffice is a consequence of a June 2012 law, which says that free and open source [software] should be the default option for the country's public administrations.

The Ministry of Defence is the first central government organisation to switch to an open source office productivity suite. However, there are many regions, provinces and city administrations in Italy that use LibreOffice, including the Regione Emilia Romagna, the provinces of Perugia, Cremona, Macerata, Bolzano, and Trento, [as well as] the cities of Bologna, Piacenza, and Reggio Emilia.

[...] The largest European public administration using free software office suites is the French Interior Ministry, with some 240,000 desktops. In France, many ministries use open source office suites such as LibreOffice.

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

The European Union's interoperability page reports:

The council of the Swiss capital of Bern on 12 November ordered the IT department to end its dependence on proprietary software. The council halved the city's request for a six-year [license] contract and insisted on an exit plan. A majority of [councilors] wants the city to replace proprietary software by open source solutions such as Linux and LibreOffice.

The exit plan should be based on pilot projects that consider alternatives, the city council decided. With 53 of the total 67 votes, the council changed the city's desktop software plans. The [councilors] want applications to become independent from PC operating system or office productivity tools. And in late 2018, when desktop operating and office [licenses] expire, Bern has to publish an open call for tender, using vendor-neutral specifications.

"Basically, from now on, the IT department may only procure and implement solutions that are platform-independent", the [councilors] agreed on Thursday.

[...] In a statement on 13 November, the Swiss Parliamentary Group on Digital Sustainability welcomed the change in IT strategy of the capital. The group offered to help the city with its exit plan, pointing to documentation such as a checklist to help public administrations to procure open source software solutions.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

OpenOffice may not last much longer as many of its former developers have jumped ship to LibreOffice:

OpenOffice, once the premier open source alternative to Microsoft Office, could be shut down because there aren't enough developers to update the office suite. Project leaders are particularly worried about their ability to fix security problems.

An e-mail thread titled, "What would OpenOffice retirement involve?" was started yesterday by Dennis Hamilton, vice president of Apache OpenOffice, a volunteer position that reports to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) board. "It is my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together," Hamilton wrote.

No decisions have been made yet, but Hamilton noted that "retirement of the project is a serious possibility," as the Apache board "wants to know what the project's considerations are with respect to retirement."

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Several sites are reporting that Windows 10 telemetry and the invasiveness of Office 365's monitoring mean that schools in the German state of Hesse have been banned from using it. The decision was handed down by the Hesse Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HBDI — Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit.) The ban also applies to many other "cloud" services for the same reasons, so Google Docs and Apple's hosted services are banned as well in the same move.

The issue is not solely with hosted services in and of themselves but with the data collection carried out by the services and the question of consent for that with minors. The issue of coerced consent is not raised yet in that context. For the time being, standalone solutions like LibreOffice or Calligra would solve the problem and, many would say, be significantly better all around.

[There used to be a datacenter in Germany — the Deutschland-Cloud — on which the German student data was stored, but that was closed in August 2018. That data was migrated, and new data is now stored, on a European data center that can be accessed by US officials upon request. --Ed.]

9to5Mac: Office 365 banned from German schools, Google Docs and iWork also ruled out
CNet: Microsoft Office 365 banned in some schools over privacy concerns
The Verge: German state bans Office 365 in schools, citing privacy concerns
The Next Web: German schools ban Microsoft Office 365 amid privacy concerns
Original Decision: Stellungnahme des Hessischen Beauftragten für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit zum Einsatz von Microsoft Office 365 in hessischen Schulen

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The long-running battle of Germany's northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, to make a complete switch from Microsoft software to open-source alternatives looks close to an end. Many government operatives will permanently wave goodbye to the likes of Teams, Word, Excel, and Outlook in the next three months in a move to ensure independence, sustainability, and security.

Plans to go open-source were drawn up by Schleswig-Holstein as far back as 2017. In 2021, the state found another incentive to make the switch: Windows 11's hardware requirements. A move to LibreOffice and other open-source programs had a deadline of 2026 – there was no date set for ditching Windows at the time.

Last year brought news of a plan by the state to replace Windows with Linux and further expansion of LibreOffice, Open-Xchange, Nextcloud, and the Univention Active Directory (AD).

Now, Digitalisation Minister Dirk Schroedter has announced that "We're done with Teams!"

Question! Why should local governments use taxpayers' money to buy proprietary software from a single vendor? And what happens to citizens' data? A solution is to move to free software like Linux and LibreOffice – which is what Schleswig-Holstein is doing: https://t.co/P7cQJwEP7u pic.twitter.com/OuIHPlSteV

– LibreOffice (@LibreOffice)

Of the state's approximately 60,000 public servants, which includes civil servants, judges, and police officers, around half are transitioning away from Microsoft in this initial phase, with 30,000 more – mostly teachers – doing the same over the next few years.

Schroedter highlighted several reasons for the move. Money is obviously a major factor, with Microsoft's enterprise licensing fees reaching into the millions of euros.

[...] Other public bodies across the world are also moving away from Microsoft's products in favor of open-source or home-grown alternatives, from French police to India's defence ministry, writes France 24. Local governments in Denmark are also looking to ditch the firm.

Munich, the capital of the German state Bavaria, switched from Windows to Linux-based LiMux in 2004, though it switched back in 2017 as part of an IT overhaul. Wanting Microsoft to move its headquarters to Munich likely played a part in the return to Windows, too.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The LibreOffice project is preparing to cut some Windows support - and encourages users to switch to Linux.

The Document Foundation, the organization that backs and guides development of LibreOffice since Oracle dropped the ball, has a strong point of view about the future. Some of it is very visible, in a blog post about the looming end of Windows 10, but some is buried in the development notes about the work-in-progress next version, which will be LibreOffice 25.8.

The title of the blog post is self-explanatory. The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice. They're right. The post also links to the KDE-backed End of 10 campaign, which we covered a month ago. That site's list of places to go for help has been improved with a zoomable world map, but we feel it still badly needs some kind of hierarchical organization.

The blog also links to Distro Chooser, which is a noble idea, but with flawed execution. This site leads you through a set of questions and then recommends what Linux distributions might suit you. We found the presentation of the results overwhelming, though. It seems to be a list of all the candidates, color-coded according to how good a match they are. The Reg FOSS desk generally feels that "Less is more," and here, just distilling the results down to, say, a top three would far be more helpful.

We are sure that some people will dismiss any and all Linux distros as being inferior, just as they do of LibreOffice itself. That's not the point. The point is that it is a free alternative. You get the reward of breaking free of paid-for software you don't own.

Oracle washed its hands of OpenOffice and then dumped it on the Apache Foundation more than a decade ago.

OpenOffice does officially still exist but there hasn't been a new release in a couple of years, and we recommend avoiding it. LibreOffice is a direct in-place upgrade and will open the same files.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-bans-libreoffice-developers-account-without-warning-rejects-appeal/

Recently, we reported on LibreOffice, accusing Microsoft of intentionally using complex file formats as a tactic to lock in users to Microsoft Office, hindering open source alternatives like LibreOffice.

Now, Microsoft has banned LibreOffice developer, Mike Kaganski, from using its services, citing an "activity that violates [its] Services Agreement".

According to Mike, this happened last Monday when he tried to send a technical email to the LibreOffice dev mailing list, which is a normal part of his routine, but Thunderbird returned an error saying the message couldn't be sent. His account was blocked upon retry, and he found himself completely logged out of his Microsoft account.

He guessed that his mail and account were getting flagged by a bot or something, since he was quite sure that nothing in the mail violated Microsoft's terms of service.