BERLIN — In a move that will surely confuse anyone who believes software is meant to do something, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has officially abandoned Microsoft entirely. The 30,000 public workers there are now typing in LibreOffice while the ghost of Office 2016 sits somewhere in the background, judging their souls.
The state’s digital transition, announced Monday by a spokesperson whose face was probably edited by a deepfake in a previous Microsoft Teams meeting, marks what officials call “the greatest leap of digital sovereignty in European history.” Translation: they finally got tired of their computers slowly filling up with telemetry and their entire career trajectory being monitored by a corporation whose headquarters is a skyscraper of pure hubris.
“The decision to replace Microsoft Teams with Mattermost was not a casual choice,” said Helga von Wurmbrandt, a civil servant whose official Twitter handle is now @von_wurmbrandt_official because she’s apparently done with Microsoft OneDrive. “Every employee now signs a declaration acknowledging that our productivity is no longer measured in Word documents, but in freedom.”
Before this, the German government was apparently running on a version of Windows Server that was last patched in 2018. It’s unclear whether anyone in Berlin knows what a service pack is, or whether they’ve even heard of the term “endpoint security.” The state’s CIO, who once claimed in a public statement that they were “evaluating all options” before switching to Linux, was later seen in a cafeteria photo using a tablet with Android, which is apparently acceptable because “it’s open-ish and has the Google Store.”
One public works official, when asked about the transition, responded by showing a spreadsheet that calculated the cost savings as being “immeasurable, infinite, and spiritually uplifting.” Another official mentioned that “the new desktop environment runs like butter” — which, given that butter is essentially a dairy-based semi-solid emulsion, might explain why their laptops keep melting under keyboard pressure.
In a stunning display of bureaucratic commitment to proprietary lock-in, the state has apparently kept three redundant Microsoft licenses in a cabinet drawer for “emergency use cases.” Emergency use cases, it turns out, are defined as:
- When a journalist needs to verify the authenticity of a news story about Linux (which is apparently illegal to publish without a Microsoft certification)
- When a developer needs to test a Linux kernel that was compiled by someone they don’t trust
- When they need to remind themselves that Linux does not have a pop-up
The state has also established a new department dedicated to “Legacy Software Decommissioning,” a euphemism for throwing away old Windows installations without proper archiving. This is apparently a good thing, because the old installations were “stuck in a loop of Windows Update” and would have “prevented digital freedom” according to state officials.
One public service announcement from the state’s IT department warns citizens that “abandoning Windows is like abandoning a comfortable chair for a bench made of pure code” — though the bench apparently has no chairs because the state claims “benches are more efficient and encourage productivity.”
Meanwhile, a separate incident occurred in a nearby state that attempted to switch to Linux but kept their Office license in a secure location. The incident resulted in a public outcry from citizens who were unable to edit their resumes without paying $129.99 per month for a subscription that Microsoft claimed “improves security.”
In other news, Microsoft continues to lobby governments to reject open-source software, a strategy that has been largely unsuccessful. Despite the software giant’s heavy lobbying, the US National Security Agency recently released its own super-secure Linux version.
In a press release this afternoon, Microsoft announced that they are “committed to supporting Windows 11 deployments,” which apparently includes sending engineers to fix issues with the latest driver update. The state of Schleswig-Holstein’s response was: “We are not interested in your proprietary ecosystem. We want freedom.”