"Saves 15 million" on license costs, but how much will be wasted on the contractors involved, the lost productivity for state employees (especially the ones who depend on Excel, who will be converted too per the announcement)? And how much do you really save if you keep switching back and forth between M$ and Linux every decade, as state governments seem to enjoy doing?

They should switch to open-source for sovereignty. Not "cost". The fact that they mention "cost" as motivation and to secure buy-in is very worrisome. If you really want to switch to open source permanently and secure your sovereignty, you should invest more (making LibreOffice Calc as good as Excel? One can dream, but it's not cheap). Cost-savings show a lack of seriousness. How long until another government switches back?

How to know when they're serious: when the federal government hires an in-house team of (well-paid) programmers, and sysadmins. Not consultants. Put them in charge of public-facing and internal-use digital infrastructure, serving both the federal and state governments. Make them work to tailor a distro, or LibreOffice, to government needs. Invest in workforce training to keep their productivity up despite the switch.

And then, one day (let's dream for a second), that team could also pick new projects that serve the public interest, like a vulnerability research team (like Google Project Zero), or helping out with all those underfunded core pieces of digital infrastructure out there with only a single maintainer. Creating public goods is the point of a government.

It is better to spend 20milion on German contractors, then spending just 15m on licenses to foreign company.

> Saves 15 million" on license costs, but how much will be wasted on the contractors...

Approximately 9 million, according to the article:

> In contrast, there would be one-time investments of nine million euros in 2026, explained the Ministry of Digitalization to the Kieler Nachrichten. These would have to be made for the conversion of workplaces and the further development of solutions with free software in the next 12 months. Given the annual savings, this sum will pay for itself in less than a year.

True, regardless of the cost, it feels like money spent on open source software is more ethical and a better way to spend tax money. Why pay $15 million to Microsoft that will only benefit their shareholders, when spending the same amount of money on open source software would benefit everybody (the citizens as well).

A not to be easily dismissed factor is privacy and data protection. A company that has 700+ "partners" that they sent who knows what data to from inside their e-mail client is not to be trusted. I don't want my data in the hands of these crooks.

This is the situation. And knowing how inefficient the German administration is, this would en up costing more in taxes and slower processes.