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[–] 82 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Kudos to Germany for pulling it off. Was also happy to see them mention

Last year [...] the government began rolling out LibreOffice as the default office suite to replace Microsoft Office.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It's one German state. Nevertheless, better than none. Sadly, for instance, Munich moved away from Linux to Microsoft in 2017 (end of project limux). Did I mention Microsoft has a location there?

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Earlier switches were primarily about cost-savings, so Microsoft would just swoop in with discounts and backroom deal$, or offer discounts to anyone considering copy-catting, isolating the early-adopters.

    This case is not about cost but data sovereignty, and it's also a smaller switch (keeping the Windows OS), so we can have hopes for better success.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Did you know horses were the only way to move around before cars?

    Did you know the US airline industry, and AT&T phone system were a monopoly situation?

    Do you remember when Dropbox, Docker were the only product that filled their niche spot?

    So, no, monopoly does not always win.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Of course I remember. There is no too big to fail, too.

    But that does not mean it's not getting replaced by another one. That's also a pattern. Or maybe the meta game changes, someone else has money and invests and holds a lot of smaller players. Still.

    For docker it would be Kubernetes and that's Google.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Well, we have like 3 decades at most of this kind of tech, and really only a couple of generations modern capitalism, so it's a bit tough to say "always" about anything. It would be more accurate, historically, to say that the monarchy always wins - but especially in that case - past performance does not guarantee future returns.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Hopefully with the political climate governments will be more resilient and care about digital sovereignty

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Unfortunately, it is only 1 out of 16 states.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Future headline:

    Microsoft's Windows update will eliminate "side loading" unauthorized programs.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Lol, I don't know of that's intentional shade but that photo is of my hometown (Lübeck), which is in the state (SH) but not the capital. So they didn't find a photo from capital (Kiel) they that was aesthetically pleasing enough to accompany the article?

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