German state switches to Linux. What's next?

Will Microsoft give them a big discount after planning this move?

Some days ago folks at the Document Foundation announced that the north-German state of Schleswig-Holstein switches from Windows to GNU/Linux, and from MS Office to LibreOffice. I think this is a right move, because proprietary software doesn't have a place in government, schools and healthcare, except in some really special places where there is no open source alternative.
Why? Because at these places they should save information in a way which is readable even 30 or 50 years later. How can you do this with the undocumented, proprietary M$Word DOC format? Will you use a virtual machine with Windows XP to open it? Ha-ha...

It might be very interesting, that in similar situations, crazy brainstorming starts at the local Microsoft sales team. Will they even pay them to not move away from Microsoft software©®™?

A short list of governments who moved to GNU/Linux is available at this link. Should we work to make this list longer?

Gábor KumGábor Kum
founder of HELLOTUX

 

Comments

John Bolton
Have been using Linux Distro for around 10 years now and would never go back to the Microsoft OS... Microsoft always full of bugs and crashes plus the famous blue screen of death, no more for me !... Microsoft have had their day, times
change !... Also Linux is free open source, so not more of these charges for program keys etc !...

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