[lnsru]

You can see how it worked it Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work well. The world is not perfect and decision makers are greedy.

Edit: I see I am being downvoted. Is there an objective reason for moving back to Microsoft? Is there any objective reason to ditch implemented and working open source software project? As Wikipedia tells most of city computers were successfully migrated. And users were giving positive feedback.

[0xDEADFED5]

Seems like it wasn't so terrible. Munich has still decided that "Where it is technologically and financially possible", the city will emphasize use on open standards and free open-source licensed software. Which seems reasonable.

from [1]:

In 2018, journalistic group Investigate Europe released a video documentary via German public television network ARD that claimed that the majority of city workers were satisfied with the operating system, with council members insinuating that the reversal was a personally motivated decision by lord mayor Dieter Reiter. Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for Microsoft moving its German headquarters from Unterschleißheim back to Munich.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

[Barrin92]

>and decision makers are greedy

local decision makers in particular. Doesn't take that much to get some administrators in Munich to flip and to run into compatibility issues when every city does it independently.

Make it a five or ten year EU plan with some serious cash behind it, it's basically at this point an investment into security and autonomy of the continent.

[Rinzler89]

Of course Microsoft et-al won't sit around with their disks in their hands watching their market cap get obliterated by Europeans moving to FOSS, so they'll wine and dine politicians, open an office here and there, offer generous kickbacks and discounts for volume purchases, bribe Ursula v.d. Leyen and have her delete her emails after doing deals under the table, you know, the usual EU drill, making the decisions to move to FOSS seem very expensive to the bean counters running the show compared to staying locked in to the Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc ecosystems, so I don't think such a transition will even happen EU wide besides a few small municipalities here and there.