German State of Schlesiwg-Holstein Migrates To FOSS Groupware. Next Up: Linux OS (heise.de)
- Reference: 0179757982
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/10/11/2254200/german-state-of-schlesiwg-holstein-migrates-to-foss-groupware-next-up-linux-os
- Source link: https://www.heise.de/news/Schleswig-Holsteins-E-Mail-Systeme-auf-Open-Source-umgestellt-10733720.html
> German IT news outlet Heise reports [German-language article] that the northern most state Schleswig-Holstein has, after half a year of frantic data migration work, successfully [2]migrated their MS Outlook mail and groupware setups to a FOSS solution using Open-Xchange and Thunderbird.
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> Stakeholders consider the move a major success and milestone to digital sovereignty and saving costs. This move makes the state a pioneer in Germany. As a next major step Schleswig-Holstein plans to migrate their authorities and administrations desktop PCs to Linux.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Qbertino
[2] https://www.heise.de/news/Schleswig-Holsteins-E-Mail-Systeme-auf-Open-Source-umgestellt-10733720.html
The costly dependence on Microsoft needs to end (Score:4, Insightful)
... for so many reasons beyond just its abhorrent price. Keeping sensitive data away from the epicenter of data brokers and espionage. Avoiding extortion and sabotage. Closing floodgates on adverts and malware. Allowing to get interoperability with software from other sources, where the customer wants it, not where one monopolist allows it. I for one would be happy to work on FOSS solutions if my local government started an earnest attempt to introduce it - instead of just mentioning the possibility from time to time to keep the bribes coming.
Re:The costly dependence on Microsoft needs to end (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a Windows enjoyer but I agree with this, all public sector IT systems should be open source but for exceptional circumstances. By law. It would be in my platform if I were running for anything. Hell the government should maintain it's own distro for states and municipalities to use. It should be contributing code back into these projects and supporting critical ones. Legislate everything it puts out is under GPL or something like it.
It's good from a security perspective, it's good from a usability perspective, it's good from a financial perspective.
It's like I when first learned that the NSA was a contributor or developer of SELinux and I thought "that's a way better use of that organization, they should be doing more of that"
Re: (Score:3)
It is also a massive global single-provider dependency risk and that is unsustainable. Especially as this provider gets worse and worse and cannot get security to work.
Editors could you fix the title please? (Score:2)
It's making my brain hurt and I'm not even German.
A pioneer? (Score:3)
"This move makes the state a pioneer in Germany"
Um [1]https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
Re: A pioneer? (Score:2)
For a state, yes. Munich is a city, not a state...
Sorry, misspelled "Schleswig-Holstein" (Score:2)
Mixer up the i and w there, sorry.
This is correct. Migrate applications first (Score:5, Insightful)
This is FOSS done right. It's the applications that matter the most for organizations. If you can migrate them first to FOSS solutions then the OS doesn't matter so much and Linux because feasible. If you can break the addiction to MS Office and Exchange, that's 90% of the battle. Good on them. Sounds like they've had success doing that which means any future Linux migration will have a higher chance of succeeding.
Re: (Score:1)
this is illegal in germany
Re: (Score:2)
In the MS case; it wouldn't be too surprising if that order is also the one that urgency dictates. Neither is totally unavailable on-prem only; or entirely without more-chatty-than-one-would-like behavior; but if your concern is about your dependence and Redmond's potential direct control their groupware stuff is moving faster than their OSes(at least if you have enterprise licenses and someone to handle keeping them quiet) in the direction of pure SaaS.
You'll get some nagging about how Azure Arc is defi
Re: (Score:3)
In particular, running some official public administration business on Azure, One-Drive, o365 or any other place where MS can get at the data, is frankly illegal with regards to the GDPR. The problem is that public administration has to get and process that data, but if MS (as a non-European company) can get at it, people have a right to object and if they do, that makes the data processing illegal. These two things do not go together. At the moment, this little problem gets mostly ignored all across Europe
Re: (Score:2)
> The other thing is that Schleswig-Holstein will not have done ...
Don't you mean Schlesiwg-Holstein?
(couldn't resist)