The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source

"Somebody needs to put a lot of $$$$ into the project"

and that's the problem, people wouldn't invest that much into project no one use

I've been using LibreOffice Calc and Writer for years. I've used Microsoft Office Excel and Word, too.

I can't say I've ever suffered from my choices or that I missed any features. As for "polish" - that's subjective, isn't it? I can access all the features I want quickly and efficiently. It's a tool, after all.

There are some minor bugs with Calc that I'd rate 2/10 in importance - annoyances mostly. I haven't used Excel in a while, but it had annoyances, too.

But even if Microsoft Office is more polished and feature-rich, I still think that the trade-off is worth it - we get data and software sovereignty, privacy and cost savings. The workers need to relearn how to access feature X in the menu or how to live without feature Y.

There is probably some (or even much) truth to it but it needs to pointed out that this statement comes from the political opposition and is therefore somewhat biased against this project.

It's 2025, maybe instead we can finally stop trying to emulate letters from the 1980s? If your business process today involves Word, you need to be retired so someone can come in that understands what computers are.

I don't necessarily disagree with "Libreoffice is junk" but that's not actually a problem, or all the problem. As the article has stated, 80% of the licenses were dropped, while 20% of the use cases continue to be supported by Microsoft Office. To me that is already a big win compared to 100% Microsoft Office.

You see, most Office users are not heavy/expert users and they only occasionally need the basic features that exist everywhere and do good enough of a job. I personally have only used Word maybe 3 times over the past few years, because almost all work documents live elsewhere, while Google Docs is good enough for my personal word processing needs (which could probably be done with Libreoffice as well). In the old days I used to install pirated Microsoft Office when I got a new laptop. These days I don't even think about it.

Imagine every company starts to evaluate how many employees actually need Microsoft Office, and then drop licenses for those who would be ok with Libreoffice or nothing at all. Microsoft would be shitting their pants.

It's not ideology. The US has started sanctioning European judges who serve on international courts, causing Microsoft to cut off access to its services.

Given that the US has shown it's willing to wield sanctions as a blunt instrument against anyone and everyone, it's only prudent for European countries to reduce their exposure to US tech.