German State of Schlesiwg-Holstein Migrates To FOSS Groupware. Next Up: Linux OS (heise.de) 34
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: German IT news outlet Heise reports [German-language article] that the northern most state Schleswig-Holstein has, after half a year of frantic data migration work, successfully migrated their MS Outlook mail and groupware setups to a FOSS solution using Open-Xchange and Thunderbird.
Stakeholders consider the move a major success and milestone to digital sovereignty and saving costs. This move makes the state a pioneer in Germany. As a next major step Schleswig-Holstein plans to migrate their authorities and administrations desktop PCs to Linux.
The state has achieved "digital sovereignty by ditching Microsoft for open source solutions," writes the site It's FOSS, adding that European nations "have generally been more progressive in adopting open source solutions for government operations." The migration affected around 30,000 employees across various government departments. This includes the State Chancellery, ministries, judiciary, state police, and other state authorities. Over 40,000 mailboxes containing more than 100 million emails and calendar entries were moved to the new system. The state has adopted Open-Xchange as its email server solution and Thunderbird as the email client....
[Digitization Minister Dirk Schrödter] emphasized that "We are real pioneers. We can't fall back on the experience of others -, there is hardly a comparable project of this magnitude anywhere in the world."
Stakeholders consider the move a major success and milestone to digital sovereignty and saving costs. This move makes the state a pioneer in Germany. As a next major step Schleswig-Holstein plans to migrate their authorities and administrations desktop PCs to Linux.
The state has achieved "digital sovereignty by ditching Microsoft for open source solutions," writes the site It's FOSS, adding that European nations "have generally been more progressive in adopting open source solutions for government operations." The migration affected around 30,000 employees across various government departments. This includes the State Chancellery, ministries, judiciary, state police, and other state authorities. Over 40,000 mailboxes containing more than 100 million emails and calendar entries were moved to the new system. The state has adopted Open-Xchange as its email server solution and Thunderbird as the email client....
[Digitization Minister Dirk Schrödter] emphasized that "We are real pioneers. We can't fall back on the experience of others -, there is hardly a comparable project of this magnitude anywhere in the world."
This is correct. Migrate applications first (Score:5, Insightful)
This is FOSS done right. It's the applications that matter the most for organizations. If you can migrate them first to FOSS solutions then the OS doesn't matter so much and Linux because feasible. If you can break the addiction to MS Office and Exchange, that's 90% of the battle. Good on them. Sounds like they've had success doing that which means any future Linux migration will have a higher chance of succeeding.
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You'll get some nagging about how Azure Arc is defi
Re:This is correct. Migrate applications first (Score:4, Insightful)
In particular, running some official public administration business on Azure, One-Drive, o365 or any other place where MS can get at the data, is frankly illegal with regards to the GDPR. The problem is that public administration has to get and process that data, but if MS (as a non-European company) can get at it, people have a right to object and if they do, that makes the data processing illegal. These two things do not go together. At the moment, this little problem gets mostly ignored all across Europe, but it will not stay that way.
The other thing is that Schleswig-Holstein will not have done this in a vacuum. Many other public administrations all over Europe will watch carefully. And since these organization are _not_ in competition with each other (mostly), information will be shared and even support for planning and doing other migrations will be done. As MS has not managed to sabotage this move, I think they are cocked in the medium-to-longer term for European public administration.
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The other thing is that Schleswig-Holstein will not have done ...
Don't you mean Schlesiwg-Holstein?
(couldn't resist)
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I don't get it ?
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Hahaha, I am so used to German names and words being written wrong, I did not even notice!
This will not end well (Score:2)
I have worked with these finance people a lot.
They are interested in one tool only: Excel. Not 'pretend' Excel.
What they will do: bring their personal laptops to work so that they can do their jobs.
This will be a security nightmare!
I note that TFS only notes mail client migrations. Most people won't care too much, but the really tough work lies far fr ahead.
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I think the future I envision on the MS side is that one installs a Server Core, and one then logs into Azure to do any and all interactions with the OS on that machine, no RSAT, just log onto Azure with some account. At most, it might provide an account and MS Edge. Offline/air-gapped functionality might be done in some extremely limited way.
It is wise to start the move now, while one can still get operating systems up and running without having to contact the mother ship.
I really wish there were some al
Re: This is correct. Migrate applications first (Score:1)
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Correct: applications first. Also accept that you might not get 100%, there may well be a few that only run is MS Windows and you will not be able to find an equivalent that runs on Linux. That is fine, do not let perfect be the enemy of good. Once ISVs that only support MS Windows see a large number of potential clients that run Linux they will put the effort in to support Linux as well.
Migrating file formats to openly documented ones is another important initial goal.
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That's how LiMux [wikipedia.org] did it, and develop custom but open source software in-house to support local workflows.
But you will always have some fraction persistently complaining that it is not the Windows they are used to (being closely familiar from school, home, other jobs). And any issues arising can be blamed on not using Windows.
Then Microsoft comes along and gives you a very, very nice offer with the aim to shut down the initiative.
The costly dependence on Microsoft needs to end (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The costly dependence on Microsoft needs to end (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a Windows enjoyer but I agree with this, all public sector IT systems should be open source but for exceptional circumstances. By law. It would be in my platform if I were running for anything. Hell the government should maintain it's own distro for states and municipalities to use. It should be contributing code back into these projects and supporting critical ones. Legislate everything it puts out is under GPL or something like it.
It's good from a security perspective, it's good from a usability perspective, it's good from a financial perspective.
It's like I when first learned that the NSA was a contributor or developer of SELinux and I thought "that's a way better use of that organization, they should be doing more of that"
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I use both Linux and Windows at home. When I was working we had a Windows domain for all our computers that allowed IT to manage security policies, push patches, remote access individual computers with admin privileges, etc.
Does Linux have a management infrastructure for administration across a small or medium collection of computers? Is there a way to give local users enough privileges to do their work effectively (no sudo) but give IT the proper credentials for the desktops? I've only used Linux in a s
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Yes lack of a competitor to Active Directory and all it entails is something long holding back Linux from a real foothold in the enterprise market. In my ideal world there is development on that front for that specific functionality. It's definitely not easy, AD is the crown jewel of Windows in the business world so I think there would need to be a big player with the resources to develop and maintain it long term.
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It is also a massive global single-provider dependency risk and that is unsustainable. Especially as this provider gets worse and worse and cannot get security to work.
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Exactly, a SPoF.
Here is one scenario that comes to mind. What would happen if Entra gets compromised? Where someone can log into any institution with a bogus Entra account, be handed global admin rights, and if it is connected to AD, their login be mapped to RID 500? Nobody would know, but they could completely compromise and ransomware a company... and maybe leave some breadcrumbs for forensics to chase their tails over for a few years, until statute of limitiations are over.
Or, what happens if someone
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Indeed. And we have had two (!) global full compromises of all MS infrastructure so far (1. Exchange Online 2. Entra ID). That we know of, that is. In both cases, the attackers could have taken down the whole respective infrastructure, with repair times in the months or worse. For (1), the attackers only wanted to spy. For (2) we do not even know whether there were attacks, but if so they managed to stay undetected but would have gotten a ton of data useful for future attacks. Also note that (2) is in the p
Editors could you fix the title please? (Score:2)
A pioneer? (Score:3)
"This move makes the state a pioneer in Germany"
Um https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
Re: A pioneer? (Score:3)
For a state, yes. Munich is a city, not a state...
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If someone "in Germany" has already done something you're just now doing, you are 'not' a pioneer.
It doesn't say "...a pioneer among German States".
Last I checked, Munich as in Germany so no, they aren't pioneering the use of FOSS "in Germany"
Sorry, misspelled "Schleswig-Holstein" (Score:2)
Mixer up the i and w there, sorry.
Avoid Open-Xchange version 8, stay with 7 (Score:1)
Maybe it is time for countries to invest... (Score:2)
This is where countries should take time in F/OSS initiatives that actually produce some results. Either invest, or have some good third parties do the work. Directory services are the #1 thing, but after that comes mail and messaging, then backups [1], then EDR/XDR/MDR scanners, then enterprise tier SIEM tools that can handle petabytes of data flying into the index nodes.
There are some F/OSS services that excel. MinIO comes to mind (although they recently gutted the F/OSS UI), where one could just get a
Countries are investing in digital Sovereignty (Score:3)
France and Germany are doing it! They both have made a lot of software from scratch (FOSS), and in France they're actively aiding their local governments transition (hands on assistance migrating). It's an extensive collection of applications replacing everything from Teams to Office.
France:
https://code.gouv.fr/en/action... [code.gouv.fr]
Germany:
https://www.heise.de/en/news/M... [heise.de]
https://www.opendesk.eu/en [opendesk.eu]
The French and German governments got together to release an open-source Notion alternative called "Docs", which is a co
Another step⦠(Score:2)
Dare to make choices... (Score:3)
Every now and then a new quirk would pop up. It almost seemed like every machine had its own personality and quirks. The IT guy stopped caring as it took way too much time to fix every individual issue.
They switched to linux servers and mac laptops. It has been a while now, but back then, it seemed that linux lagged in driver support due to different priorities from hardware vendors. If it works, it is great, but there is always something...
Linux should do what apple did. Bundle a specific linux distribution with specific hardware. Limit the choices in favor of predictability and reliability. It goes against linux' nature. It limits freedom, but I bet it would skyrocket it's adaptation.
Re:Dare to make choices... Hardware Suppliers (Score:2)
Linux should do what apple did. Bundle a specific linux distribution with specific hardware. Limit the choices in favor of predictability and reliability. It goes against linux' nature. It limits freedom, but I bet it would skyrocket it's adaptation.
Even Apple has issues when their hardware suppliers change things without telling them. Also the ability of PC hardware to be used with most all cards and peripherals would become quite limited. Of course, maybe hardware vendors would be more inclined to release Open Source drivers, rather than a MS Windows Only closed binary driver which then has to reversed engineered to create a driver on Linux.
The hardware would have to be open and could not altered or if it was, always supplied with updated open drive
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I guess it will not come with a USB3 port nor bluetooth in that case
About once every five years... (Score:2)
We see a post about some German government area converting to FOSS... it never seems to last, or at least catch on. The solutions rarely deliver real value causing massive integration issues when people can't just load a Word document used by just about everyone else in the world. They are trumpeted as Pioneers - nobody has ever done this before! You know - that should be a red flag in 2025... We've had these solutions for almost 20 years now. Nobody much is using them. Perhaps it's just time to realize li