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Italian Military To Save Up To 29 Million Euro By Migrating To LibreOffice (softpedia.com)

Posted by msmash on from the affinity-for-open-source-software dept.

Reader prisoninmate writes: Following on last year's bold announcement that they will attempt to migrate from proprietary Microsoft Office products to an open-source alternative like LibreOffice, Italy's Ministry of Defense now expects to save up to 29 million Euro with this move. We said it before, and we'll say it again, this is the smartest choice a government institution can do. And to back up this statement, the Italian Ministry of Defense announced that they expect to save between 26 and 29 million Euro over the next few years by migrating to the LibreOffice open-source software for productivity and adopting the Open Document Format (ODF).

4 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome by NeoGeo64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Italy is officially smarter than the US.

    1. Re:Awesome by chipschap · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I published a 500+ page book using LO, and had no problem managing and using multiple styles. I had to put a little effort into learning how to do it but in the end it all worked well.

  2. Free is not by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the most overlooked items in these discussions is that Libre Office does not make it "free". "Free license cost" is the correct framing, but that is not what I read.

    Don't misunderstand my point, I'm anti-MS and want people to succeed in migrating away from their products. Many Governments have gone back to MS after people point out what I start with. "See, that Free software cost money so it failed to be free and we need MS again!" The expectations have to be correct or projects, especially Government projects, end up failing for the wrong reasons.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Free is not by loonycyborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Both kinds of office are extremely inefficient and require a lot of training to use effectively. But even if they can't even afford the costs of training with libreoffice then ms office is even more likely to be a failure. Many people think that ms office is obvious and known to everyone, but going, say, from ms office xp to ms office 2003 will take as much training as going to libreoffice. And, naturally, MS will always expect them to use latest and greatest things with greatest retraining costs. So, you could as well go with libreoffice in any case. If you fail with it then you would fail with office 2016 either.