
Valencia region government completes switch to LibreOffice - Tsiolkovsky
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/valencia-region-government-completes-switch-libreoffice
======
Spearchucker
These kind of articles are always a little lop-sided. They state, for example,
that " _The migration will save the government some 1.5 million euro per year
on proprietary software licences._ "

License savings. Great. What was the cost of:

\- Re-imaging those 120,000 desktops?

\- Re-training the (I assume) 100,000+ users?

And what are the support costs?

What were they under MS Office? It's laudable, for sure, but I don't believe
that F/OSS is cheaper. I'd like to see a _real_ cost impact analysis that
covers the entire program, from inception through to on-going operational
management. And something that financially compares the as-was state with the
current state.

~~~
valdiorn
Let assume that the 100.000 users all use Office for 2 hours a day on average.

Now let's assume that MS Word will give you a 1% performance increase over
LibreOffice... just one percent, that's 72 seconds a day. 72 seconds spent
wondering "how do I make a pivot table in Calc like I do in Excel"? or "How do
I make a table of contents in LibreOffice Word"?

Now let's assume the average pay for these people is 15 euros/hour. those 72
seconds therefore cost 0.3 euros per employee.

Now multiply that by 100.000 users * 270 working days a year and you have 8.1
million.

Congratulations, you just lost 6.6 million euros.

... Sorry FOSS/Linux evangelists, but apparently none of you can do math.

~~~
vidarh
You are pulling numbers out of your ass and claim we can't do math?

Give us some citations to document performance loss, and further citations do
document that the performance loss is sufficient enough to reduce the amount
of work the staff actually carries out (if they're less productive per unit
time spent working, but still completes the same amount of work, then the cost
is not borne by the government - it is fairly normal for workload to be quite
elastic), and we can talk about your numbers.

You also don't account for another factor: Even _if_ there is a loss, it is
not given that it is a net negative: License payments to Microsoft leave
Valencia, and Spain. Payments to any additional training and support staff or
additional assistance for LibreOffice is likely to stay in the local economy,
and part of it will find its way straight back in in the form of taxes.

It is perfectly possible that they've messed up the numbers, but you've not
presented anything resembling a case for that.

You might also note from the article that this is not Valencias first large
scale migration - they claim to have saved 30 million so far from switching
the regions schools to Linux, so chances are they actually have better numbers
than the ones you've made up.

~~~
valdiorn
I made these stats up in about 30 seconds. I'm guessing they'r e not _that_
far from the norm. Even if the average use was only 1 hour, or 30 minutes, and
the average pay for half of what I assumed, they should still be losing money.

I just wanted to point out, people forget these things when they do a
cost/benefit estimate.

~~~
RobAley
But you've made an assumption that they will be more productive in MS Office,
with nothing to back that up. I've see users (particularly non-technical,
"basic" users) be more productive in LibreOffice. So they may have messed the
numbers up and be saving even more than they thought.

------
opminion
Note that's the 5 million population region (Valencian Community), not the 0.8
million population city.

------
pbjorklund
I wish more people running fullscale installations of Microsoft Office
actually evaluated what the needs of the users are.

Does everyone need cloud sync to SharePoint? Shared calendars? Lync
integration? Meeting room bookings?

The office suite can be really good (yes, I actually think so and use it by
choice for my own company) if used correctly.

But sometimes all people want to do is write a 2 page paper on photosyntesis
for biology, then it might be overkill.

------
Nux
Open source makes a lot of sense, especially under current circumstances when
you can't trust anyone anymore (I mean the USA gov etc).

Even if the savings are exactly zero it's still a good move. I imagine this
created new jobs for people who will install, train and debug LibreOFfice.

The problems they will hit will hopefully have solutions upstream so that
everyone in the world can benefit them.

This is good for Valencia and good for Libreoffice and ultimately good for us,
the rest of the world.

------
orting
It seems to me that Libreoffice is geeting a lot of traction. From an
anecdotal viewpoint alot more people are familiar with Libreoffice/Openoffice
today than a couple of years ago.

Development of Libreoffice after the fork looks healthy, with a big focus on
refactoring and consolidating the codebase in C++.

Because of the many language bindings to UNO, developing applications in
Libreoffice is easier and a lot more interesting than developing for MS
Office. I have only worked with Calc/Excel but Basic is a piece of crap
language in both cases, and writing in Python is a big win. It also makes it
easier to use version control and external editors.

Combine that with no license and support for the valencian language, then its
the right thing to do.

------
skittles
We're getting to a point where most people use at least two distinct operating
systems daily for their tech devices. I think this really opens up the
possibility of ditching pervasive software for cheaper alternatives. So what
if LibreOffice has a few rough edges? If a company can just deploy it and skip
the training, then most people will just pick it up as part of their daily
work. My wife's company does this and nobody has had any trouble getting their
job done.

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JEVLON
It is downright citizen hostile when a government uses non-free software. Want
to fill out this form? Download the doc file which only displays correctly in
Microsoft Office. Have enough money for a computer but not enough for office?
Too bad. Microsoft has done a lot of good, but no company/corp deserves a
monopoly on virtual paper.

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jimktrains2
I made this letter that is open to be edited, translated, &c

[http://jimktrains.github.io/free-software-letter-
city/letter...](http://jimktrains.github.io/free-software-letter-
city/letter.html)

My hope is that others would use it and try to get their governments to switch
to F/OSS.

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philliphaydon
Took a look, no Ribbon UI. Pass.

~~~
AnthonBerg
Hahah :)

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brudgers
1.5 million € is a rounding error.

~~~
RobAley
In large corps maybe, where it's pennies for each share holder. In Government
(particularly local government) that amount, while still a small slice of the
pie, can do real life-changing stuff for e.g. vulnerable people in the local
community.

~~~
brudgers
The Valencian Community Government serves more than 5 million citizens - a
population greater than that found in more than half of the U.S. states. It's
not local politics, and the budget is correspondingly in the billions.

For scale, the Valencian Government had a budget surplus over 300 million in
the first quarter of 2013.

[http://www.catalannewsagency.com/politics/item/the-
catalan-g...](http://www.catalannewsagency.com/politics/item/the-catalan-
government-ended-the-first-quarter-of-2013-with-a-deficit-
of-021?highlight=YTo0OntpOjA7czo2OiJidWRnZXQiO2k6MTtzOjk6InZhbGVuY2lhbiI7aToyO3M6OToiY29tbXVuaXR5IjtpOjM7czoxOToidmFsZW5jaWFuIGNvbW11bml0eSI7fQ==)

I am all in favor of government services to the less fortunate. I am not in
favor of magical thinking and a lack of rigor.

~~~
RobAley
Indeed, as I stated it's still a small slice of the pie, but it doesn't change
the fact that even a few hundred dollars in intervention funds, for instance,
can turn someones life around, and local (or regional, if you prefer, as
opposed to National) Government still struggle for every penny.

To dismiss it as a rounding error is to not understand the impact of that
money in public service.

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mariuolo
Comparing the respective TCOs would have made more sense.

