I’ve seen Germany states jump into open source software strategies to later “regret” them and revert back to their previous state, many times… I hope this time they do it in a more thoughtful way, to avoid giving excuses to closed-source software lobbyists.
“regret” aka getting bribed by Microsoft. Or alternatively the personel being unwilling to adapt to changes.
Although plausible, and part of it, it’s not just that. The second part is much more important (people unwilling to adapt), but one should think about why.
- How sudden & drastic was the change?
- How well trained were people?
- How much support did they get when something went wrong?
That’s the kind of stuff where companies & public administrations usually suck, “change management”.
In Munich at least the “not invented here” syndrome also played a significant role, with them rolling their own Linux distribution and then not keeping it up to date, thus causing frustrations with users due to outdated software.
And at the same time, Saxon universities coerce students into proprietary solutions, hiding behind university autonomy when members of the parliament criticize this.
Nice to hear another German state is trying open source software.
On a more positive note: Saxony was the only federal state in Germany which, during times of more strict pandemic-related rules, allowed tracking exposure using the government-funded open source software instead of some app used by the other federal states based on stolen code whose only unique selling point was being advertised by a famous rapper…
