Wow, this is full on: https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2017/europes-dire-dependency-on-microsoft/ Gov'ts around Europe (and, I would hope, elsewhere in the world) are realising how dangerous and expensive their dependence on Microsoft is. It's a damning epidemic, and they need to take evasive action.

@lightweight Something the size of a government really can save money and have the productivity boons associated with ditching a MS based workflow. If for no more reason than editing documents in WYSIWYG editors is terrible for productivity.

@LovesTha imagine what it would do for their domestic IT industry if 1/10th of what non-US gov'ts spend on Microsoft was instead spent on local IT companies specifically working to enhance open source tools to better serve that country (e.g. translation, cultural awareness, etc.). Would revolutionise open source computing, I think.

@lightweight I was having trouble finding how much money we are talking about. But $500k/year would do a lot, and I'm suspecting we are talking about a lot more money than that.

Naturally any actual plan would have to be staged in, but it shouldn't take all that long to do and at the end you just stop paying MS anything.

Or it could be done quicker and cost money in the first couple of years, but I hear governments should be spending money on stimulus for the next couple of years............

@LovesTha yup. Also, I find it fascinating that gov'ts have been aiding and abetting proprietary suppliers for decades, by claiming "commercial sensitivity" when ask how much they spend on specific suppliers. To me, that's nothing short of corruption. In a democratic society, that info should be transparent to the people/taxpayer.

@lightweight Yeah, they can still protect commercial sensitivity by leaving out some details. Such as exactly how many computers windows is installed on. But we should know we pay $XM for windows, and $YM for office, etc.