LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
This original story has been updated because the quoted source, Politiken, was misinformed about the situation.
The Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs is only testing the possibility of migrating from Office 365 to LibreOffice and is not looking to ditch Windows for Linux.
The original Politiken article now includes the following passage: "Clarification: In an earlier version of this article, it was stated that the Ministry of Digital Affairs would replace the Windows operating system with Linux and be free of Microsoft by the fall. This is not correct. That statement has therefore been removed. The ministry will only replace Office 365 with LibreOffice."
As first reported by Politiken, Denmark is poised to make a major change with regard to the software it uses. The move is happening because Denmark's Minister for Digital Affairs, Caroline Stage Olsen, indicates that Denmark wants to have control over its data and systems.
According to Jan Damsgaard, head of the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School, “Denmark, as the most digitised country in the world, is completely dependent on American tech companies, and that is clearly not a sustainable situation.” He continues, “I think it’s very good that the digitalisation ministry is among those to try out these open source systems."
Copenhagen (Denmark's capital) had already planned on cutting ties with Microsoft, because of concerns that political fallout could lead to the inability to send emails or communicate internally.
Copenhagen isn't the only town planning on making the shift. Aarhus (the second largest city in Denmark) also plans to make the move.
Of course, the Ministry of Digital Affairs does have a backup plan to revert to Microsoft products if the migration proves too complicated.
