6 ms·

It's... an admirable goal, but it pretty much remains to be seen if "France"[1] follows through. Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well.

It's... an admirable goal, but it pretty much remains to be seen if "France"[1] follows through. Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well. Munich in 2003, the entire Federal German government in 2009, Munich again in 2013, Munich again in 2021, and so on. Most common end-result: back to Windows. Breaking points are typically the lack of an "Office 2016" compatible suite, lack of "Adobe PDF" tooling, and a mishmash of legacy apps. The latter seems trivially addressable by a "Remote Desktop/RemoteApps" environment, but there are definitely issues, mostly surrounding printing and clipboard handling. All of that can be solved, but definitely requires more funding and, crucially, coordination, beyond "Open Source Cures All." [1] Oh, I just love it when an entire culturally-diverse region gets lumped in together, or, when, as in this case, ~6M French government employees are treated as a homogeneous group.

mixmastamyk 5mo ago
If they only diverted 10% of the budget from MS to solving issues they’d have had a solution a decade or two ago.
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  I'm... not so sure? The French government has, widely seen, 6M employees. Given retail pricing of EUR200/seat/year (and they definitely have a better arrangement), that's 1.2B, and I'm not sure that's enough to provide an identity management plus office apps plus file storage solution? And at 10% of that? Absolutely forget it...
  - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
    All of that came about without them spending anything. So the extra is just to fix bugs and do integration work. StarOffice (LibreOffice ancestor) existed in the 90s—I used it and it was fine for government work. File storage? Cheap by Y2K as well.
    - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
        It's really cheap to run FOSS on commodity PCs in the twenty first century. Hetzner is very reasonable in the cloud more recently. It's not a binary switch either, you build the platform bit by bit every year and roll it out to more and more workers. Four dimensional thinking, that could have succeeded already, a decade plus ago. Sure a few components would have to be written in the meantime. Just a few million a year would be a huge boost to gaps in FOSS.
      - dang 5mo ago
        You posted this text in 5 separate places. Worse, you edited 7 previous comments by gutting their original text and replacing them with this same tantrum. That's abusive. I'm not going to ban you for this because everyone goes on tilt sometimes, but please don't pull a trick like that on HN again. I've restored the text of the 7 edited comments to what it was before you vandalized them. I've also canceled the downvotes on those posts because I agree with you that the downvotes were unfair. (At least I think I do - I didn't read them closely and don't know the context.) I hope the latter feels at least a little bit like a good faith gesture, because that's how I'm intending it. (The 5 comments that only ever said "[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}" remain downvoted and flagged since obviously they were against the site guidelines.)
  - danny_codes 5mo ago
    You’re saying a government couldn’t take open source building blocks and run.. office apps with basic security and.. file storage? For $100M a year? This could be done with a 30 person team
    - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
      Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, If your mythical 30-person teams were achievable, a lot of major US 'cyber'security firms would be in major trouble. Pop-quiz, hotshot: what does Citrix (market valuation: USD 16.5B), technically, have over your team (market valuation: USD 0B)?
    - 2000UltraDeluxe 5mo ago
      30 people managing the hardware? Sure, if you get good deals on the hardware itself, the employees stay healthy, and you have everything so centralised you don't need multiple people on call. Centralising things to that level and supporting the users of the entire government structure of a country the size of France -- one of the countries the sun _never_ sets on -- while it's transitioning from decades of Microsoft dependency to an open source ecosystem? Heh, no.
      - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
        Hetzner exists. The claim above of 30 is not particularly important, the point is to lean on the community. Millions a year would get you incredibly far. Many are already helping for free. 24/7 linux webservers existed already by the late nineties.
        2000UltraDeluxe 5mo ago
        "Helping for free" doesn't cut it when dealing with governments. Even if everyone had gone the Linux route 20 years ago we'd still have an entire ecosystem of commercial businesses selling and operating it; imagine what Red Hat would look like with Microsoft actually out of the picture. We'd have just as many consultancy firms and layers of beuraucracy without Microsoft, and France wouldn't be operating their entire government IT stack, all the way down to individual workstations, that much cheaper than it is now.
Akronymus 5mo ago
Werent the munich government employees quite happy with linux, but microsofts lobbying with their headquarters got them to switch back?
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  I'm not aware of Microsoft's economic footprint in the Munich region, but I doubt it's significant. The complaints that lead to the several-reversions-to-Windows at the time, as I recall, were all around "citizen sent me X, can't open X" And those are all addressable issues, but not without significant know-how and funding.
  - LtWorf 5mo ago
    > I'm not aware of Microsoft's economic footprint in the Munich region, but I doubt it's significant. Perhaps be aware before explaining everyone how things really are?
    - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - earthnail 5mo ago
        I've never seen a user replace all their comments with "[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}" making it impossible for others to read their original comments. If this now becomes a trend I feel like there may be a need to change the rules around editing.
        atherton94027 5mo ago
        @dang is it something on your radar? Lots of people do this on Reddit and it makes some threads unusable.
bornfreddy 5mo ago
Motivation matters.
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  [flagged]
samsk 5mo ago
Earlier attempts were mostly about money and ideology. Now its a question of security, thanks to one 'clever' 'businessman'. So thanks to his _great_ efforts, it might actually work out this time.
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  [flagged]
ricw 5mo ago
Munich is a bad example - they were effectively „bought out“ by Microsoft by investing hugely into the local economy in the form of offices and employees. It was also two parties that kept flip flopping with different priorities. Linux itself had some hiccups but was fine from what I recall.
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  > they were effectively "bought out" by Microsoft Yeah, let me dispute that. They were, at least on three occasions, forced to roll back due to "citizen sent me X and can't open it" and/or "sent Y to citizen and they can't open it" concerns. Mind you: these issues still persist in a fully Microsoft/Adobe "solution environment", but less so than in the "disregard all and move to Linux" situation. And to be perfectly clear: that's all unacceptable. But it adds another, say, EUR 2B to the equation.
  - gus_ 5mo ago
    https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ It doesn't matter if this or that doesn't work. Or if Microslop pressures to continue using Winslop. Now the reasons are geopolitical.
    - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
      [flagged]
fxtentacle 5mo ago
Munich led to "all of Schleswig-Holstein" in Germany. 44,000 Exchange mailboxes replaced with Open-Xchange. 25,000 Windows+Office desktops replaced with Linux+OpenOffice.
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  Nope. That was rolled back: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... And, again, I'd very much like Microsoft to lose here, but, there are real issues here
  - fxtentacle 5mo ago
    Munich was rolled back but inspired SH to do it instead of them.
atherton94027 5mo ago
You must be German — the French state is a lot more top down than Germany with its regions, so generally these kinds of mandates get applied broadly
- WaryByDesign 5mo ago
  > You must be German Oof, that's just offensive! Anyway, most German Linux 'mandates' were indeed regional, and (for good reasons!) failed to migrate 'upstream'. Whether the French mandate takes hold remains to be seen. "We're not Germany" is not the end-all argument it might seem to be to you.
  - atherton94027 5mo ago
    Sorry I didn't see your reply, what was it about?

mixmastamyk 5mo ago

If they only diverted 10% of the budget from MS to solving issues they’d have had a solution a decade or two ago.

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
I'm... not so sure? The French government has, widely seen, 6M employees. Given retail pricing of EUR200/seat/year (and they definitely have a better arrangement), that's 1.2B, and I'm not sure that's enough to provide an identity management plus office apps plus file storage solution? And at 10% of that? Absolutely forget it...
- mixmastamyk 5mo ago
  All of that came about without them spending anything. So the extra is just to fix bugs and do integration work. StarOffice (LibreOffice ancestor) existed in the 90s—I used it and it was fine for government work. File storage? Cheap by Y2K as well.
  - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      It's really cheap to run FOSS on commodity PCs in the twenty first century. Hetzner is very reasonable in the cloud more recently. It's not a binary switch either, you build the platform bit by bit every year and roll it out to more and more workers. Four dimensional thinking, that could have succeeded already, a decade plus ago. Sure a few components would have to be written in the meantime. Just a few million a year would be a huge boost to gaps in FOSS.
    - dang 5mo ago
      You posted this text in 5 separate places. Worse, you edited 7 previous comments by gutting their original text and replacing them with this same tantrum. That's abusive. I'm not going to ban you for this because everyone goes on tilt sometimes, but please don't pull a trick like that on HN again. I've restored the text of the 7 edited comments to what it was before you vandalized them. I've also canceled the downvotes on those posts because I agree with you that the downvotes were unfair. (At least I think I do - I didn't read them closely and don't know the context.) I hope the latter feels at least a little bit like a good faith gesture, because that's how I'm intending it. (The 5 comments that only ever said "[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}" remain downvoted and flagged since obviously they were against the site guidelines.)
- danny_codes 5mo ago
  You’re saying a government couldn’t take open source building blocks and run.. office apps with basic security and.. file storage? For $100M a year? This could be done with a 30 person team
  - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
    Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, If your mythical 30-person teams were achievable, a lot of major US 'cyber'security firms would be in major trouble. Pop-quiz, hotshot: what does Citrix (market valuation: USD 16.5B), technically, have over your team (market valuation: USD 0B)?
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 5mo ago
    30 people managing the hardware? Sure, if you get good deals on the hardware itself, the employees stay healthy, and you have everything so centralised you don't need multiple people on call. Centralising things to that level and supporting the users of the entire government structure of a country the size of France -- one of the countries the sun _never_ sets on -- while it's transitioning from decades of Microsoft dependency to an open source ecosystem? Heh, no.
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      Hetzner exists. The claim above of 30 is not particularly important, the point is to lean on the community. Millions a year would get you incredibly far. Many are already helping for free. 24/7 linux webservers existed already by the late nineties.
      - 2000UltraDeluxe 5mo ago
        "Helping for free" doesn't cut it when dealing with governments. Even if everyone had gone the Linux route 20 years ago we'd still have an entire ecosystem of commercial businesses selling and operating it; imagine what Red Hat would look like with Microsoft actually out of the picture. We'd have just as many consultancy firms and layers of beuraucracy without Microsoft, and France wouldn't be operating their entire government IT stack, all the way down to individual workstations, that much cheaper than it is now.

Akronymus 5mo ago

Werent the munich government employees quite happy with linux, but microsofts lobbying with their headquarters got them to switch back?

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
I'm not aware of Microsoft's economic footprint in the Munich region, but I doubt it's significant. The complaints that lead to the several-reversions-to-Windows at the time, as I recall, were all around "citizen sent me X, can't open X" And those are all addressable issues, but not without significant know-how and funding.
- LtWorf 5mo ago
  > I'm not aware of Microsoft's economic footprint in the Munich region, but I doubt it's significant. Perhaps be aware before explaining everyone how things really are?
  - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - earthnail 5mo ago
      I've never seen a user replace all their comments with "[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}" making it impossible for others to read their original comments. If this now becomes a trend I feel like there may be a need to change the rules around editing.
      - atherton94027 5mo ago
        @dang is it something on your radar? Lots of people do this on Reddit and it makes some threads unusable.

bornfreddy 5mo ago

Motivation matters.

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
[flagged]

samsk 5mo ago

Earlier attempts were mostly about money and ideology. Now its a question of security, thanks to one 'clever' 'businessman'. So thanks to his _great_ efforts, it might actually work out this time.

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
[flagged]

ricw 5mo ago

Munich is a bad example - they were effectively „bought out“ by Microsoft by investing hugely into the local economy in the form of offices and employees. It was also two parties that kept flip flopping with different priorities. Linux itself had some hiccups but was fine from what I recall.

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
> they were effectively "bought out" by Microsoft Yeah, let me dispute that. They were, at least on three occasions, forced to roll back due to "citizen sent me X and can't open it" and/or "sent Y to citizen and they can't open it" concerns. Mind you: these issues still persist in a fully Microsoft/Adobe "solution environment", but less so than in the "disregard all and move to Linux" situation. And to be perfectly clear: that's all unacceptable. But it adds another, say, EUR 2B to the equation.
- gus_ 5mo ago
  https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ It doesn't matter if this or that doesn't work. Or if Microslop pressures to continue using Winslop. Now the reasons are geopolitical.
  - WaryByDesign 5mo ago
    [flagged]

fxtentacle 5mo ago

Munich led to "all of Schleswig-Holstein" in Germany. 44,000 Exchange mailboxes replaced with Open-Xchange. 25,000 Windows+Office desktops replaced with Linux+OpenOffice.

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
Nope. That was rolled back: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... And, again, I'd very much like Microsoft to lose here, but, there are real issues here
- fxtentacle 5mo ago
  Munich was rolled back but inspired SH to do it instead of them.

atherton94027 5mo ago

You must be German — the French state is a lot more top down than Germany with its regions, so generally these kinds of mandates get applied broadly

WaryByDesign 5mo ago
> You must be German Oof, that's just offensive! Anyway, most German Linux 'mandates' were indeed regional, and (for good reasons!) failed to migrate 'upstream'. Whether the French mandate takes hold remains to be seen. "We're not Germany" is not the end-all argument it might seem to be to you.
- atherton94027 5mo ago
  Sorry I didn't see your reply, what was it about?