Could easily fork a distro and pay a government agency or independent entity the same amount as Microsoft is currently being paid to maintain the distro. Or they could put financial backing on any of the current commercial Linux solutions out there. It's far from farfetched.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The problem is dealing with the application side.

Just one feature that's massive - how many systems have automatic import/export using Excel file formats. Converting those processes will be a huge undertaking themselves, let alone how many other things that will require re-engineering. The scope and scale of this is staggering.

A better effort would be to convert a single, small organization in government, then the scope is limited, but you get to build the fundamentals, and gain the experience of interfacing with extant systems.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You realize the office alternatives have been able to save into native excel formats, even in various year varieties, for a long time, right?

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And I suppose they work perfectly every single time?

Including the VBAs and Macros?

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Most of the time they work better than the original.

VBAs and Macros

These are essentially malware vectors so I hope those are not supported.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Aren't most government organizations interlinked?

[–] hellofriend@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Depends where you are. I can't speculate on the EU or its member-states. But here in Canada, your information is basically stuck at an organization unless you give consent to have it sent somewhere else. And it gets even more complicated when it involves a provincial-federal relationship.