Schleswig-Holstein completes migration to open source email(news.itsfoss.com) |
Schleswig-Holstein completes migration to open source email(news.itsfoss.com) |
But previously the motivations were difficult to understand for many, either being about saving money on licenses with dubious returns once retraining was considered or about software freedom arguments that are difficult to explain to non geeks.
These days the US is increasingly seen as an untrustworthy partner / supplier in Europe and the digital digital sovereignty arguments are well understood, both by politicians and the general public.
Hope this will result in gain for FOSS and the community.
FOSS stacks seem the only way with current geopolitics, but there is a big but.
For proper freedom it would only work out if we got back the whole infrastructure from hardware, software, compiler toolchains, everything like in the cold war days, throughout the 8 and 16 bit home computers as well, however I doubt we would go back that far.
I lived in Latin America for a year. It is shocking how much everything relies on WhatsApp. I got everything from visa appointments, airline tickets, to restaurant bookings in WhatsApp.
Huge national security in my view.
Another massive problem is if Meta has a fit with your organization, they can ban you from using WhatsApp for Business. All these Latam countries should and must pass regulations to avoid this kind of behavior. Free market all you want but if you captured market, it’s the nation’s responsibility to ensure their people can get the best service even if these companies are hating each other.
It was kind of the same but not as pervasive with Facebook Messenger in the Philippines.
But: people there are practical and flexible. It would take days to a month to migrate, what is impossible in first world, just take Germany as an example.
Also whatsapp is e2e encrypted, so not so bad. In Germany many things go over FAX or mail, totally unencrypted…
They client is mainly Open-Xchange AppSuite Web UI, some people use Thunderbird on top. There are also thousands of mobile devices, syncing via IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV.
The email server underneath is dovecot btw.
Zoho has recently (re)launched Ulaa browser (Chromium fork, alternative to Chrome and Firefox) and Arattai (messenger app, alternative to Whatsapp and Singal), which are getting quite popular (Arattai and Ulaa topped Google Play Store recently in messenger and browser category).
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/meet-ulaa-zoho-s-a...
[1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ [2] https://www.opendesk.eu/en/product#email
One of the thing that sets EU apart from most federations is that it kind of enables a lot more regional independence in how things are actually implemented while still guaranteeing the rights of the individual citizens, this lead to a lot of dynamism at the local level despite the failings of the central level, and allow this kind of projects to succeed and create paths for others to follow at their own pace.
On the other hand, the more people are involved, the slower progress is. And It makes sense to accelerate nationally and then combine EU-wide later on.
That only happens if Europe militarizes. The security guarantee, not Microsoft Office, underwrites the dependence.
However we have gotten multiple efforts in Germany that have been rolled back after a new administration takes over.
A few years ago there were a few libraries in NRW using SuSE, and nowadays it is Windows on kiosk mode.
On a nother note: still 1+ year(s) until we get a real email database (enabling gmail like thread view) in TB. [0]
[0] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/video-conversation-view...
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/10/dutch-tax-office-moves-emai...
There’s some Dutch governments organisations which are quite progressive, but others continue digging themselves deeps into MS/AWS.
Exchange Online Plan 1 (the cheapest, no Office)
Apple Mail (Active Sync), Pages, Numbers, Keynote (all free, perpetually, and mobile apps are available)
Since these are packaged as store apps, we still get basic MDM and the ability to deploy/autoconfigure/autoupdate. Active Sync allows us to get email notifications in near real-time to mobile devices (which is otherwise difficult), as well as wipe emails remotely on lost devices if we need to.
We get data sovereignty by using a Synology NAS, which has a Task to encrypt everything and upload it to Cloudflare R2 as a backup. We could really use any NAS solution, but so far Synology is hands free and can sync everyone’s emails from Exchange to the backup.
Will ditch Exchange when someone finally starts an antitrust on Microsoft/Google email hosting.
Denmark, but being dutch vs danish is very commonly confused/conflated in the US :D
Saxons => Danes ================> Prussia => Germany
Sh-less-wig Hole-stein or Shlayz-wig Hole-stein.
If English had proper 'c' (not just fake 'k' or 's') you could simplify it at least to: 'Massačusec'.
Similarly 'Schleswig' can be compressed to 'Šleswig'.
"Hol" is short. Stein is like a beer keg or stein beer.
Schleswig is a bit awkward of a word. But Holstein should be easier, also there is the Holstein cow, black-white fur.
(As a RI/ NH New England lifer, I, as is typical of us, think of Connecticut as New York's attic: a place you hide that which you don't need anymore but it would be gauche to throw out.)
Every organization should be so lucky.
The reason Europe isn't independent is because they like that the US goes through their citizens' data, and are happy for Microsoft (or whoever, I guess Palantir, Crowdstrike, and 18 Israeli military startups) to package it up and send it to them. They love to not spend on tech and talk the future, just like they love to not spend on the military and talk tough.
The reason they talk about US tech domination is to whip up a "nationalism" which is, of course, an EU federalism and a usurpation of the self-determination of the various nations of Europe for the sake of the deep pockets that dogwalk the EU to where they want it to be. It also keeps France and Germany in the center of Europe forever. They don't talk about "tech independence" because they mean anything by it.
They've had 30 years to grab FOSS and run with it, and infinite cash. Instead, you got cookie banners, social media monitoring, and in a minute, chat control.
The only people who are seriously working on digital sovereignty are the Chinese.
edit: I'd like to add that I'm all for Europe going all-in on FOSS, or (less-so) even coming up with a full proprietary ecosystem completely independent of US tech overlords. This would be nothing but a benefit to me. It will just never, ever happen. Any European who would be expected to pay for it is already heavily invested with US tech overlords, because billionaires aren't nationalists, they're narcissists.
This time will be no different. If your choices are sovereignty or subjugation, most organizations will fight for sovereignty when pressed beyond a breaking point or the math adds up in their favor. It might mean pulling funds from highly speculative fields or investments (y’know, like AI) in favor of more immediate benefits and gains, and everyone’s calculus is different, but to those for whom sovereignty is more important the capital will inevitably be found.
This is why FOSS systems like Linux and OpenOffice are still not mainstream in the corporate world (though Linux rightfully dominates in the backend server market), whereas Microsoft rules the corporate world with its expensive software (Windows and MS-Office).
And to top it off you add Microsoft into your mentions, that just had a disastrous security bug, that was just mind blowing?
I get what you are saying but the FANG evangelism gotta stop. They are just like other huge companies. When was the last time your bank got hacked?
As of October 2025, Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company) has a market capitalization of approximately $2.999 trillion. This figure represents the total market value of its outstanding shares.
Very startup friendly. Also free POP/IMAP, so you are not locked in.
That affordability, quality and service is why Indian government is migrating its IT dependencies from Microsoft to Zoho.
It's probably not much of an issue in this specific case. If someone doesn't get your email, that's your (the sender's) problem; but if someone doesn't get the government's email, then that's their (the recipient's) problem.
E-Mail was (last time I checked) not an approved medium for delivery of important documents as it does not (per design) have a mandatory receipt of the message being delivered. So a citizens does not need to worry a lot about this for important documents/mail.
(Fax was so popular for public institutions in Germany because it satisfied this standard. It meant it usually was the lowest barrier option and you could rely on it for all (un)important documents)
These gmail postmaster tools seems to exist to make antitrust cases difficult, not to enable other MSPs to deal with deliverability issues.
At the same time gmail is emerging as the number one source of spam for our customers. If our spam fighting is too tight we falsely flag important mail as spam, and this is absolutely unacceptable to customers. As a consequence we have to relax our spam classification for gmail senders, which manifests itself in false negatives from the perspective of our customer.
But to the customers this reflects on us, not on gmail.
It’s just gmails best interests to make other MSPs miserable to operate. It drives our users to them.
And?
Isn't this an argument in favor of open source? Zoho may not be around forever, but open source code is, and you could just pay someone to work on it.
Being able to inspect the software you use makes you able to trust house it works, and fix it at points where it's not working; those were the first motivators for creating the FLOSS movement.
There's also the advantage that in the long term you don't depend on the company developing the software; if the company goes under, or simply stops supporting the software, you can hire a different batch of developers to carry on maintaining it. That's the reason why many big contracts require that the software vendor puts the source code under escrow.
In reality, closing the source of software only benefits the seller; everybody else benefits from having it available. With FLOSS, you get that for free.
It is true though. Can’t count how many times I’ve had this exchange “Oh danish huh? I love Amsterdam!” (the dutch capital)
Europe is full of tiny countries and I absolutely can’t name all 50 US states or place even half on the map. No intention of shaming
Regardless of why and how it’s happening, it seems extremely risky at best because all concentration of power and control tends to beget more abusive power and control.
There are other open options for hosting git FOSS projects.
The security guarantee is from Washington. Europe is de facto de-militarised when it comes to protecting its geopolitical position. Dumping America as a security partner would require materially reducing standards of living across the Continent, something Europeans are reluctant to do.
What an absolutely ridiculous statement.
We as in America, the richest country on the planet? Yes. We as in various countries that went bankrupt, collapsed or got invaded over the centuries because they broke their piggy bank over a boondoggle? No.
So did every empire in history.
> Richest nation? Probably china already
If you’re not guessing, the answer is a clear no. (The best source on this might be the CCP. They don’t claim parity because Beijing isn’t delusional.)
More fundamentally, the question was on budget constraints. Credit and cash buy the same infrastructure, healthcare and open-source software.
44.000 mailboxes is not really big from Dovecot Pro point of view, there are dozens of other service provider customers running six to eight digit mailbox numbers on it. Biggest European installation serves 40M mailboxes although these are consumer / SMB mailboxes which lower load provide and size compared to Schleswig-Holstein.
Btw, cyrus and postfix are far from random.
There's a reason South Korea has laws requiring all data on its citizens and geography to be stored in Korea. Even Google Maps doesn't quite work in Korea.
Issues that threaten national security are issues that threaten a nation’s sovereignty, put it at risk of war, or compromise the security of high ranking politicians, members of a nation’s intelligence service, military assets, and other issues of that caliber. The potential to miss flights or health care appointments does not rise to that level, but if it’s an actual problem, then it’s something solvable without reaching for the anti-monopoly gun or national security gun and a good start would be governments not using WhatsApp as an exclusive mechanism for obtaining government services. The second step is governments mandating that businesses in healthcare or transportation and other such critical industries have alternative mechanisms for customers to reach them other than WhatsApp.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20251009/rec...
The pernicious thing that neutralizes many people like yourself, is that you cannot understand that meta/Facebook/WhatsApp is not just innocuous private business somehow magically different than the government in which at least you have a theoretical level of control over in a democracy.
Every place that an “American” company controls aspects of a technology inside a society is effectively to that degree conquered by the “USA”. One’s own country simply does not exist anymore to the same qualitative degree that it is controlled by foreign technologies/companies. That is also the revealing argument the system made when it threw its fit about the Chinese control of TikTok! So at least the “American” system believes it… “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I get exactly how people view private American companies abroad and that’s irrelevant to what I actually said.
Why are governments running all their communications and services through a private American app? Even in America, we’re not doing that, and there is always a fallback in some form of the telephone system, email, the postal service, the web or just showing up in person for anything that is absolutely essential. If I’m doing anything through a 3rd party app like WhatsApp instead, it’s either not that essential, or I’m doing it as a convenience but the fallbacks are always there.
So when people are talking about utterly essential services being run through WhatsApp and only WhatsApp, that seems like the obvious problem, because if that’s true, that’s also very stupid, and also a very stupid choice. Facebook profits from the situation, you could even say America profits from the situation, but you can’t say it isn’t without mutual engagement and compliance on the part of the supposedly aggrieved parties here.
"During the early days of statehood, Arkansas’ two U.S. Senators were divided on the spelling and pronunciation. One was always introduced as the senator from “ARkanSAW” and the other as the senator from “Ar-KANSAS”. "
https://www.sos.arkansas.gov/education/arkansas-history/how-...
>In 1881, the state’s General Assembly passed resolution 1-4-105 declaring that the state’s name should be spelled “Arkansas” but pronounced “Arkansaw”.
The pronunciation preserves the memory of the Indians who were the original inhabitants of our state, while the spelling clearly dictates the nationality of French adventurers who first explored this area.
Explains everything…