6 ms·

Lack of features is not an excuse for a government to adopt proprietary software. Surely, the Danish government can figure out how to support real-time collabo

Lack of features is not an excuse for a government to adopt proprietary software. Surely, the Danish government can figure out how to support real-time collaboration in LibreOffice.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
I believe the Danish gov is roughly spending 50M EUR/year to MS, certainly you can get the features needed paying for dev time for an open source project with some of that spend.
- kube-system 1y ago
  Not that it is insurmountable -- but the difficulty with adopting open source more broadly often isn't a financial issue, but organizational. A successful enterprise software deployment consists of a lot more than simply paying developers. You need the correct management in place to ensure the developers are building the right features, to ensure they meet your organizations needs in terms of compliance, deployment, support, ensure your users understand how to use the product, etc. Organizations that are familiar with software development can often do this, but these types of projects are sometimes beyond the reach of the expertise of other organizations.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Absolutely, management and maturity are key to success in this regard.
bigstrat2003 1y ago
It doesn't need an excuse; it's a fully valid reason. Using proprietary software is a perfectly valid choice to make.
- louiskottmann 1y ago
  Chosing to pay millions when it is not necessary is definitely not a valid choice. It is at best stupidity, at worse corruption. In my experience in the public sector in France, I have seen these decisions taken to advance someone's career. For example, a first year free means a purchase person will get their promotion on incredible YoY progress.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Deploying a free tool that doesn't solve an organizations problems isn't a valid choice. I'm tired of open source advocates hand-waving away the reasons people choose other software. For most organizations, software is not a big cost, labor is. It often makes sense to throw a million dollars at a piece of software to make people's job easier, because that can translate to tens of millions in labor.
    - dismalaf 1y ago
      Let's be real... Tons of governments employ people just to boost employment numbers. Government staff are almost always simply a cost, governments don't need to be profitable. They extract taxes and then spend it. And I think a lot of countries would prefer to spend more on salaries than on software licenses going to a different country...
    - louiskottmann 1y ago
      That is stretching the subject beyond reasonable. Proprietary software as a general endeavor is not an invalid business and nobody is saying that here. LibreOffice is close enough to Microsoft's offering that surely it makes sense accross the many EU states to stop spending millions on it, and spend a few to close the gap, saving even more millions in the future.
      - kube-system 1y ago
        Respectfully, I think it's a bit of a Dunning–Kruger effect for random internet commenters to presume they know what is "close enough" to meet the requirements for the many thousands of different day jobs that people have across the different governments of dozens of different countries. Certainly the people buying software know best what their requirements are.
- mistrial9 1y ago
  In English the word "free" is apparently another difficulty. The technical Four Freedoms are not at all about the money. Money can be exchanged between willing partners of course. That includes government. The means and methods of closed source, and the means and methods of "corruption" are real.

Lack of features is not an excuse for a government to adopt proprietary software. Surely, the Danish government can figure out how to support real-time collaboration in LibreOffice.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

I believe the Danish gov is roughly spending 50M EUR/year to MS, certainly you can get the features needed paying for dev time for an open source project with some of that spend.

kube-system 1y ago
Not that it is insurmountable -- but the difficulty with adopting open source more broadly often isn't a financial issue, but organizational. A successful enterprise software deployment consists of a lot more than simply paying developers. You need the correct management in place to ensure the developers are building the right features, to ensure they meet your organizations needs in terms of compliance, deployment, support, ensure your users understand how to use the product, etc. Organizations that are familiar with software development can often do this, but these types of projects are sometimes beyond the reach of the expertise of other organizations.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Absolutely, management and maturity are key to success in this regard.

bigstrat2003 1y ago

It doesn't need an excuse; it's a fully valid reason. Using proprietary software is a perfectly valid choice to make.

louiskottmann 1y ago
Chosing to pay millions when it is not necessary is definitely not a valid choice. It is at best stupidity, at worse corruption. In my experience in the public sector in France, I have seen these decisions taken to advance someone's career. For example, a first year free means a purchase person will get their promotion on incredible YoY progress.
- kube-system 1y ago
  Deploying a free tool that doesn't solve an organizations problems isn't a valid choice. I'm tired of open source advocates hand-waving away the reasons people choose other software. For most organizations, software is not a big cost, labor is. It often makes sense to throw a million dollars at a piece of software to make people's job easier, because that can translate to tens of millions in labor.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    Let's be real... Tons of governments employ people just to boost employment numbers. Government staff are almost always simply a cost, governments don't need to be profitable. They extract taxes and then spend it. And I think a lot of countries would prefer to spend more on salaries than on software licenses going to a different country...
  - louiskottmann 1y ago
    That is stretching the subject beyond reasonable. Proprietary software as a general endeavor is not an invalid business and nobody is saying that here. LibreOffice is close enough to Microsoft's offering that surely it makes sense accross the many EU states to stop spending millions on it, and spend a few to close the gap, saving even more millions in the future.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      Respectfully, I think it's a bit of a Dunning–Kruger effect for random internet commenters to presume they know what is "close enough" to meet the requirements for the many thousands of different day jobs that people have across the different governments of dozens of different countries. Certainly the people buying software know best what their requirements are.
mistrial9 1y ago
In English the word "free" is apparently another difficulty. The technical Four Freedoms are not at all about the money. Money can be exchanged between willing partners of course. That includes government. The means and methods of closed source, and the means and methods of "corruption" are real.