this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
260 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
81534 readers
3917 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not even sure there is that much will on politicians side. I hope there is, but they are mostly ignorant (judging from politicians in my country) and wouldn't distinguish between Word and Windows. They might be interested if there are elections and public pushes for it. But once elected then it's another song based on US stick and carrot. Mostly sticks from this administration. But I really do hope we start to move and now is the best time possible. Also recently there was data that German Federal Administration is paying Microsoft something like: 2023: 274.091.361,75 Euro 2024: 347.665.579,71 Euro 2025: 481.369.660,77 Euro The trend is not encouraging, isn't it, and those are insane numbers - imagine what could we have for that amount with OSS. There is another neglected area - computer education in elementary school is practically non-existent and tiny-existent in middle school in my country while MS is subsidizing software for government and specially education sector. And so the circle of is closed.
are those millions? am I reading that right?
yes, german has a very weird way of writing numbers, where . is replaced by , and , is replaced by .
So, in US numbers, that would be EUR 274,091,361.75
It has confused many people already. It should be made more consistent internationally. I propose all use the US format of 274,091,361.75 because that's already used in programming and so it's widespread.
"Very weird way of writing numbers"
You mean like in all of Europe (excluding UK and Ireland) and latin America? It's only english speaking countries and some Asian countries that separate with ,
Your eyesight is 20/20
https://www.heise.de/en/background/Microsoft-Dependency-Federal-Government-Pays-near-500-Million-Euros-in-One-Year-11171050.html