From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Mon, 2/16/2026 12:06 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:   
   > On 2/13/2026 4:33 PM, Daniel70 wrote:   
   >>   
   >> Back when I was in the Aust Army (80s/90s), the Army or Defence had a   
   >> deal with, I think, Lotus whereby everybody that wanted it could use the   
   >> Lotus Office Suite gratis!! In the Army Office and/or at home.   
   >>   
   >> Since then, I've used Linux a lot so no MSOffice, so I've switched to   
   >> LibreOffice.   
   >   
   > I barely remember a piece of news about German government trying to switch   
   to Linux and then rolled back to Windows. :)   
   >   
      
   This is a bit better than the summary on Wikipedia right now.   
      
      https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german   
   state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/   
      
   The transition to Linux means more interworking software is needed   
   to patch things together. And some of the transitions were done,   
   before LibreOffice had made as much progress as it claims today.   
      
   It's no different than companies which had legacy applications   
   they were still using, which created a "win32 dependency" on these choices.   
      
   As for the typical employee, they're not IT people, they don't   
   have years of experience bodging things, and while Linux   
   has a browser and Office look-alikes, that's not sufficient for   
   governments who have to share things with the public, and the output   
   has to mesh with a lot of different things.   
      
   Our city for example, is goofing around with taking pictures of   
   streets from moving cars, and from those pictures, extracting   
   maintenance data. This would be in addition to the GEO system,   
   where every pipe and wire is documented in a CAD-like system.   
   That's how, when the water truck went up the street several   
   days ago, they know *exactly* where my water cutoff valve is.   
   Even though it is covered in snow banks, an individual with a shovel   
   can find the valve with relatively little difficulty. They're all   
   the time drawing colored lines on stuff, as part of "call before   
   you dig" and proper labeling of dangerous things, like using   
   a backhoe near a natural gas line. They're going to fiddle the   
   drainage in my neighborhood when spring comes, so I'm to be covered   
   in six colors of muck :-)   
      
   So while cities may appear to be "boring collectors of taxes",   
   they have a fair amount of technology that requires   
   integration of parts. Maybe a city employee holding a cellphone   
   in hand, can be directed to the spot to dig while using   
   the cellphone for the coordinates. And that's all possible   
   because a number of pieces of third-party softwares work   
   together to make it possible.   
      
   And that means there is more than Windows involved. There could be   
   Android apps, and also a lot of web-based content.   
      
   Cities and their IT departments, can also be sources of influence   
   peddling, and the employees profiting from the purchase of equipment.   
   Toronto had a case like that, but I do not recollect the details.   
   A lot of money can be squandered for nothing, with no one understanding   
   why or how the money was spent. Even when cities have plans and   
   focused ideas on execution, the execution can be thwarted by the   
   city employees who are supposed to implement it.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)