[JustFinishedBSG]

Most of the cost (to the government) for Windows is "support" (in a very general sense) and that cost isn't disappearing with Linux.

Especially since it is easier to find badly underpaid (and not particularly competent) Windows sysadmins than it is to find badly underpaid Linux admins.

[fao_]

Ok but the license fees are, what, 50 quid? times say, 3k or 30k people? A 150k or 1.5m injection into the linux ecosystem to develop those would pay for a _lot_ of developers and a _lot_ of developer time.

[repelsteeltje]

From what I heard about NGI-zero, another government sponsorship project (1), the problem so far is primarily finding the projects that need sponsorship.

(1) https://nlnet.nl/NGI0/

[pabs3]

That doesn't seem correct. Almost all of the projects installed on a standard Linux distro need funding. I just stopped applying to NLnet after getting nothing but rejections.

[skavi]

doesn’t really feel like that much tbh

[dbolgheroni]

I don't think that cost is what is mostly driving the move from Windows nowadays.

[Zetaphor]

Are you implying that need for support would go away?

If anything the demand would be artificially high at the start of a mass migration, and then presumably level out to something similar to what we see today with Windows.

This is basically RHEL's entire business model.

[mixmastamyk]

Not a thing any longer, for the most part. People know how to open a browser on any operating system these days. Go to the menu, run it. Get bored and click the X on the top bar. Source: nearby kids. A few times I've said... "this is Cinnamon, or KDE, or... Windows."

"Ok, whatever," (old man) is the response I get.

And, you don't have to move 100% of their workflow in a single day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47730137