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Switching From Microsoft Office To LibreOffice Saves Toulouse 1 Million Euros

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-napoleans dept.

jrepin sends this EU report: The French city of Toulouse saved 1 million euro by migrating all its desktops from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. This project was rooted in a global digital policy which positions free software as a driver of local economic development and employment. Former IT policy-maker Erwane Monthubert said, "Software licenses for productivity suites cost Toulouse 1.8 million euro every three years. Migration cost us about 800,000 euro, due partly to some developments. One million euro has actually been saved in the first three years. It is a compelling proof in the actual context of local public finance. ... France has a high value in free software at the international level. Every decision-maker should know this."

12 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. As We Speak by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As we speak, Microsoft is instructing its European "business partners" to give a certain French city a shitload of really cheap Office licenses.

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    1. Re:As We Speak by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Either your name is on the volume licensing agreement... or your brains."

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      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:As We Speak by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think we'll see more and more international organizations/companies migrating from US company products.

      The problem is not using US products, the problem is having to use the expensive MS Office suite specifically.

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  2. sure, works for France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Try installing LibreOffice in America, and the users will whine, "why it not Microsoft????" They'll complain to your boss, you'll be fired and ostracized, and you'll have to learn French and relocate to France if you ever want to work again.

    1. Re:sure, works for France by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I could get a job in France, I think I'd move. I'd have more vacation time and I can drink wine at lunch.

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    2. Re:sure, works for France by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can have all the vacation time you want anywhere you live

      Which is why every American takes 6 weeks in the summer.

      In my experience, most permanent job employers don't like to negotiate on vacation time. Sometimes they'll give on a day or two, but usually they're not crazy about vacation time that deviates from whatever the position qualifies for. The only explanation ever given to me was that because salary is "secret" it's easier to compensate employees differentially; vacation is visible to other employees at the same level and differential compensation creates tension.

      In a contract employment situation you can negotiate anything, but I've found in shorter term contracts there's usually some kind of deadline that's non-negotiable, making free-lance vacationing a little bit challenging.

    3. Re:sure, works for France by AnOnyxMouseCoward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In a theoretical world you would be correct, but in practice you're wrong. It's very hard to negotiate something out of the norm, which in the US, is vacation time. For example, try negotiating a role as an associate in investment banking while saying "hey cut down 5 weeks of my salary I'll take extra time off." It can't work, because the culture doesn't allow it. You either accept the role with no vacation and high pay, or you don't get hired. I can easily negotiate a couple grands on a salary, but getting an extra week off? Rough.

      Also the "market wage" (or "market total compensation package") is highly dependent on the laws regulating it. If every single company in the US was paying you a pittance, with some paying less or more of a pittance, you would technically be "forced" to work for close to nothing because you won't have the choice to do otherwise. That's exactly what's happening with the minimum wage and people with no education. They can't work for themselves because they lack that capacity, and are stuck accepting $7/h because that's the only thing they can have (that, or crime, I guess). It would take extraordinary courage to pay your employees more than "you have to", even if sometimes that's the right thing to do for the company and the country (notice how Seattle isn't dying off right now, and how Ford helped bring a middle-class to America).

  3. Put some of the money back in... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The exemptions were given because some Word macros and sophisticated Excel files could not be reproduced in LibreOffice or other open source productivity suites. These are examples of what Serp calls “some less mature features” in free software: “When it comes to making some kinds of presentations, for example, there is often a little extra to do [compared to the same process in PowerPoint]. So for some people the process is not so clear, and this can cause adaptability problems in everyday work.”

    How about they use some of the saved money to either donate or contribute code to make the software work better?

    Instead we have companies and other organizations making and saving tens of billions of dollars off Open Source(like Google, Yahoo, Red Hat, Facebook, Twitter, Apple etc.) and then we end up with catastrophic security nightmares like HeartBleed because no one could be bothered to send a couple of bucks over to the overburdened couple of folks that everyone relies on for security. And then we have asshats on message boards like this one who likely never contributed to OpenSSL or looked at the code for bugs but feel entitled to call the coders stupid for the bugs after the fact.

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    1. Re:Put some of the money back in... by vadim_t · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, FOSS is about freedom, not being free of charge.

      The Free Software movement was started when Richard Stallman got annoyed because he couldn't make his own modifications to a printer driver.

  4. Re:And... by just_another_sean · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, if you read TFA (no, I'm not new here) they have a sidebar call out that answers your question...

    "Software licenses for productivity suites cost Toulouse 1.8 million euro every three years. Migration cost us about 800,000 euro, due partly to some developments. One million euro has actually been saved in the first three years. It is a compelling proof in the actual context of local public finance," says Monthubert.

    So about 8K in migration costs vs. 18K in licensing. Assuming another 2-3K of unforeseen support over training issues or missing features that haven't been caught yet it should be a significant savings. And if you factor in the migration cost as a one time payment and assume support costs go down over time as people get used to the new system than the savings become very large indeed after the three years cited in the article.

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  5. Can't fix limited functionality in MS. $1M / year by raymorris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > or you're functionality is limited, or the feature plain sucks

    Our experience is the cost of limited functionality in off-the-shelf software is a significantly higher cost than the license cost.
    With the old proprietary system, an employee would spend 4 hours each Friday copying and pasting from one program to another.
    With the new modular open source software, I spent an hour authoring a module to completely automate the data transfer, and have it happen in real time.

    For just that one little function alone, this year we saved 4 hours X 52 weeks X ~$40/hr = $8,320 per year.
    I do one of those every week. A little change to the software for a big change in the process. I'd be surprised if we haven't saved at least $1 million / year total, from all the little tweaks, correction, and additions we've done to the open source software to make our process better, faster, more efficient, and more accurate. I know the P/L from the from the program using the open source stuff sure has improved, but it's hard to quantify how much of that is due to the software. I could easily prove it's saved at least as much as my salary though, and my salary was being paid when we had the proprietary software too, for a specialist who was paid to admin the system and figure out hacks to get the proprietary system to almost meet our needs using duct tape and bubble gum.

  6. Re:And... by dskoll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In my small company, we all use Linux on the desktop. Here are our answers:

    Time to learn a new system: It took my employees maybe a day to learn LibreOffice (they already new MS Office). Anyone who needs more than a day to come up to speed with casual use of LibreOffice is too stupid to be employable, IMO.

    Reintegrating mail onto a new client platform: Well, I just said "Here's your email program" and gave them Claws Mail. They were up and running in about 30 minutes. Again, anyone who cannot learn a simple graphical mail client in a day or so is too stupid to be employable.

    Keeping patches up-to-date: One word for you: apt-get