Switzerland Tests a FOSS Escape Route From Microsoft 365

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Swiss Army sticks a knife in American cloud apps with its own FOSS push:

Switzerland's Federal Chancellery is preparing to offer a FOSS workplace suite to some 3,000 employees - but the Swiss Armed Forces are pushing ahead faster still.

European interest in digital sovereignty isn't limited to the European Union: the Swiss Federal Chancellery plans to offer selected government employees a FOSS alternative that will run alongside Microsoft 365. The chancellery is launching the programwith an initial 3,000 staff, out of some 47,000 federal employees. The platform is expected to become available to about 3,000 selected employees from the end of 2027, with the first phase forecast to cost CHF 9 million (8.2 million, $11.1 million). For comparison, Swiss Radio reported last year that the federal government had spent CHF 1.1 billion (1 billion, $1.4 billion) on Microsoft licenses.

The program follows the BOSS Proof of Concept feasibility study, which began last year and tested browser-based FOSS tools with 172 users. The English version of the report says: "Functions examined included document editing, email, calendar, contacts, tasks, file storage, audio and video conferencing, chat, and identity and access management."

The study carefully spells out four limits to its scope:

• It would not replace Microsoft 365
• It would not have 1:1 functionality
• It would not have full M365 compatibility
• It would not be permanent infrastructure

It's important to make this stuff plain right at the start. Back in 2022, in a piece whose working title was You can't buy software, this vulture mentioned a member of one of his online communities who wanted to replace Microsoft software with free software - but demanded complete fidelity, including intact imports of all his Outlook files. This kind of exact and perfect match is basically impossible, and the four bullet points above strike us as a good effort at managing users' expectations.

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