The German federal government currently pays €481 million in licensing fees to #Microsoft every year.

[ilumium@eupolicy.social]

Source: https://www.golem.de/news/digitale-souveraenitaet-bund-zahlt-481-millionen-euro-fuer-microsoft-lizenzen-2602-205252.html

[txtx@mastodon.social]

@ilumium @zendis and this is just the German federal government? So it doesn't include regional governments, cities, etc?

Now imagine how much money all the EU states give to Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Amazon...

It's absolutely mind bending, the jobs we could be supporting here in Europe.

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

@ilumium Or Nextcloud. Or The Document Foundation. Or the people behind Jitsi. Or any of a number of others!

*Solutions exist!* They might not ship with built-in remote code execution vulnerabilities from opening a text file in a text editor, but maybe that's not a required feature for most use cases.

#DigitalSovereignity

[ulrichkelber@bonn.social]

@txtx @zendis @ilumium Just the federal government and some financially subsidized projects

[ulrichkelber@bonn.social]

@mkj @ilumium ZENDIS is a Institution inside the federal government developing a “souvereign client” bases on OSS-Tools you mentioned. ZENDIS focusses on integration and extensions

[iris@neuromatch.social]

@ilumium @zendis Schleswig-Holstein is ahead of the game! https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/themen/digitalisierung/linux-plus1

[decebal07@mastodon.social]

@ilumium @zendis Sounds like the "German federal government" are a bunch of pigeon-brains.

[naturemc@mastodon.online]

@txtx Some Federal Governments leave these dependencies. Best example is Schleswig-Holstein with Linux and the Fediverse. https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/_startseite/Artikel2026/I/260210_mastodon
The EU is also preparing more independence, f.e. with Qant and Ecosia cooperating for a European search machine. Other countries are introducing Linux (in France even for parts of the military).
@ilumium @zendis

[jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu]

@Jan Penfrat and that is only the federal bill for m$. there are 16 länder with m$ bills, practically all municipalities ....

m$ get much more than only than 500mio € from german administrations ...

[proteus@troet.cafe]

@ilumium
Gibt bestimmt Kickback Zahlungen ...

[frederik@ohai.social]

@ilumium @zendis already did build something to use and share: #openDesk. It incorporates #Nextcloud, #Jitsi, nubus+#Keycloak (Identity Management), openExchange and more.

It's not that there is no viable alternative. It's that there is too little will to use it.

[ilumium@eupolicy.social]

@frederik Yes, I know. Do you know what their annual budget is? Hint: it's below €481 million.

[frederik@ohai.social]

@ilumium From what I found it's actually 0€. Which is probably why they (have to) charge a whoppin' 20.000€ per year for the cheapest support plan (hosted on your own servers). Infeasible for anything below 100+ users.

[ftranschel@norden.social]

@ilumium @zendis Not only @zendis ...

[ftranschel@norden.social]

@decebal07 @ilumium @zendis While I appreciate your clear language, I think the list can be extended quite a bit... and then it doesn't seem quite as simple as your statement implies.

(Disclaimer: I sure would appreciate these tax funds being appropriated... more sensibly.)

[donhawkins@mastodon.social]

@ilumium @bmacDonald94 @zendis Seems an obvious, quick & easy way to improve “gubbermint” budgeting. #DumpMicrosoft

[jwcph@helvede.net]

@ilumium @zendis Denmark just renewed a Microsoft + cloud deal (MS, AWS, Google) of about 150 million per year over the next 5 years - notably, in a country with less than 1/10th the population of Germany.

Pretty sure we can also afford building something better if it can save us that kind of money...