The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Motivation: Sovereignty and Security

  • Many argue governments should move off Microsoft mainly for digital sovereignty, not cost: fear of sanctions, espionage, and political pressure via cloud services (Exchange, M365, account-based logins).
  • Examples raised include Microsoft cutting off ICC email and broader US surveillance practices; some see the US as an unreliable or even hostile actor.
  • Open source is viewed as reducing structural dependency: states can audit, patch, and self-host instead of relying on opaque US infrastructure.

Practical Migration Challenges

  • Bureaucratic culture and change-aversion are seen as bigger blockers than technology: slow internal processes, compliance constraints, and lack of in-house engineering capacity.
  • Concerns about rushed rollouts, poor UX research, and inadequate user training; some report frustrations with email/calendar migration (e.g. Outlook → Open-Xchange).
  • Others counter that “training” is routinely ignored when switching between proprietary products; resistance appears only when “open source” is mentioned.

Office/Excel Lock‑in and Alternatives

  • Excel is widely acknowledged as the hardest piece to replace (performance, advanced formulas, VBA, deep integration with workflows).
  • Debate over whether LibreOffice/Calc (or OnlyOffice, Collabora, etc.) are “good enough” for most users, with agreement that edge cases (complex workbooks, legal track-changes, Outlook/Exchange workflows) are costly to migrate.
  • Several suggest keeping a small MS footprint for irreducible legacy use, while moving the majority to OSS.

Linux Desktop & Enterprise Management

  • Skeptics highlight immature tooling versus AD/Group Policy/Intune, weaker EDR/DLP ecosystems, and compliance expectations; fear Linux desktop success stories omit 10+ years of TCO data.
  • Others argue Linux is administrator‑friendly by design (immutable system areas, central package repos) and that heavy endpoint tooling is partly a Windows problem.
  • There is a long subthread on whether EDR/AV is essential “defense in depth” or an unnecessary rootkit-like attack surface.

Open Source Governance, Control, and Funding

  • Worry that state-funded OSS could be steered into backdoors or surveillance; counterpoints stress forking, transparency, and existing review processes (e.g. xz backdoor discovery).
  • Strong sentiment that cost-savings should be partially reinvested into upstream projects or local developers; Schleswig-Holstein’s “upstream-only” strategy and German FOSS funding programs are cited positively.
  • Some warn that framing OSS purely as a cheap replacement risks Munich-style reversals under future lobbying and political shifts.