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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

The armed forces of Austria have been moving towards open standards via free and open source software [heise.de], specifically from MSO to LibreOffice. Given the politics that have arisen in similar cases around the world, the move has been planned carefully planned since 2020.

"We are not doing this to save money," Hillebrand emphasized to ORF, "We are doing this so that the Armed Forces as an organization, which is there to function when everything else is down, can continue to have products that work within our sphere of influence." At the beginning of September, he and his colleague Nikolaus Stocker recounted the conversion process at the LibreOffice Conference 2025 [documentfoundation.org].

Some of the contributions which Austria has made back to the FOSS community around LibreOffice include:

• A notes pane
• Improved paste format
• Deleting metadata more easily
• Rotating graphics with a click
• ... and much more

Previously:
(2025) Microsoft Bans LibreOffice Developer's Account Without Warning, Rejects Appeal [soylentnews.org]
(2025) German Government Moves Closer to Ditching Microsoft: "We're Done With Teams!" [soylentnews.org]
(2025) LibreOffice Adds Voice To 'Ditch Windows For Linux' Campaign [soylentnews.org]
(2019) Microsoft Office 365 Banned in German Schools after Privacy Violations [soylentnews.org]
(2016) OpenOffice Could be Nearing Retirement [soylentnews.org]
(2015) City Council of Bern Demands Transition to FOSS Before 2019 [soylentnews.org]
(2015) Italian Military is Switching to LibreOffice and ODF [soylentnews.org]
(2014) Another German Town Says It Has Completed Its Switch To FOSS [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission