The cynic in me says they are very good at burning through such amounts without any notable progress. However since it is open source, my hopes are up that this will lift the veil where otherwise bureaucracy and corruption will waste the money.

Public Money should result in public code.
It can't be, that our public money lands as profits in non European companies.
That should be a given, imho

Go away with your common sense!

Seriously. While I support the change to foss solutions, this is going to go over like a fart in church for the people that were just forced off fax machines and into email a year ago. And there’s a zero percent chance that Germany will use any of those savings for a support infrastructure. The German way is to figure it out, and endure the suffering while you do with the bare minimum of support from people that barely know the shit themselves.

I have a friend who is principal at a high school here in DE and the stories she’s been telling me about the new push to get tablets into the hands of kids is straight fkn Monty Python level absurdity… from the staff!

Germany painted themselves into a corner with their refusal to modernize their tech infrastructure. The “it’s not broken, so don’t fix it” mentality has left them 20 years behind all their neighbors. But, hey, traditions over everything… amirite?

Be nice if Chicago had the same attitude towards our highways ):

Shouldn’t be. Glad the world is waking up to these vile tech companies. US government needs to stop coddling them too.

Gates is already boarding the jet.

Hehe hehe hehe. Yeah no, you overestimate German state governments

From the government that still has branches that accept mail only, I doubt it.

I'm holding out hope that discounts wont work this time, because the motivation is different. It used to be about cost, now it's about digital sovereignty. I won't bet anything of value, but I can hope.

I’ve been trying to find a source but from what I remember the transition was in maybe Munich and it was going fine.

Microsoft opened a new sales or operation center there and got cozy with the government there as quickly as possible to turn them back into a customer.

EDIT: Here is the LiMux endeavor.

Microsoft had announced in 2013 its willingness to move its German headquarters to Munich in 2016, which according to Reiter though, is unrelated to the criticism they've presented against the LiMux project.

Hannah Montana.