Denmark’s digital affairs ministry says it plans to switch to the open source LibreOffice software and away from Microsoft products as part of an effort to make the government more digitally independent.
I really hope this spreads through Europe. The mentality in Finland is too often “Let’s wait and see what others do. Maybe if Sweden does it first…”
Kind reminder to finns: https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/16691
Already signed it, but good reminder!
I’m not surprised Denmark would be the first European nation to ditch American software, and I applaud the decision.
Yet, what I’m missing any mention of in the article is a commitment by Denmark to give back to the project(s) through either financial or code contributions. The degree of sophistication FOSS projects have reached based on donations and volunteer work alone is staggering. Think what they could become if states were to invest even a fraction of the money they used to give to MS into these projects - maybe in the form of “feature bounties” to incentivise development of features needed in public administration. (A man is allowed to dream, right?)
Hope that goes well. Hope they push something that we can self host. Hope they tell all the self hosters about it and we can benefit from it. :)
