In peaceful times, people cling to broken systems simply because “that’s how it’s always been done”. Comfort is a prison.
This crisis is a great opportunity to screw Microsoft.
Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.
Canadians should be agressively lobbying their politicians to embrace Linux and the open source ecosystem. Call your representatives. Write to your city council. Contact your town IT department. Do it now.
If even Germany can, so can Canada.
Does Germany actually use Linux and Libreoffice or is it still just one or two states that flip-flop when Microsoft shows key people a bag of money?
A good majority of European countries have switched to Linux or FOSS solutions for governments or militaries.
France’s federal police have been using Linux for over 15 years now.
Well every single time an article is posted about Germany, it turns out it’s a single state and that they reverted a few years later.
And here in Estonia, government departments are actually trying to get their private contractor companies to switch to Teams for “ease of communication”. That’s how bad it is. Yes, the official stance is “we’ll see about using FOSS more”, but that’s not reality.
I suspect a good majority of European countries still use Microsoft on most of their government computers. France and Denmark are making the move, but not sure if anyone else is unfortunately.
You’re thinking of the story about Munich from over a decade ago. And that story is more complicated than the media does it justice for.
But to summarize Munich: they did a pilot switching to Linux. It went very well and started a full rollout. Microsoft jumped in with money under the table and promised to setup a new Microsoft HQ in Munich for switching back to Windows. New government came in and said “uh, no. We’re not ditching Linux and our very successful pilot.” So now it’s mostly a hybrid setup.