Schleswig-Holstein reports €15M yearly savings by replacing Microsoft 365 with LibreOffice across most government workplaces 💶

About 80% of offices have migrated, with a €9M one-time investment planned for 2026 to finish the shift and strengthen open-source tools 🧩

@libreoffice

🔗 https://itsfoss.com/news/german-state-ditch-microsoft/

#TechNews #OpenSource #Privacy #Security #Government #EU #Data #Sovereignty #IT #PublicSector #Digital #Microsoft #Office #Software #Tech #Cloud #FOSS #Germany #German #LibreOffice

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent is all about XMPP.

Snikket (https://snikket.org/) is an easy-to-install, and easy-to-administer, XMPP server. It is designed for families and other small groups. The apps for Android and iOS (based on Conversations, I think) are great.

Dino (https://dino.im/) is my desktop XMPP client of choice.

Profanity (https://profanity-im.github.io/) is a terminal / console XMPP client, which is incredibly convenient.

Why not have a fun festive project of setting up an XMPP-based chat server for you and your family and friends?

#XMPP #FOSS #SelfHosting

🥁 About a month ago I asked how is everyone managing their sound effect archive...
🎺 And today I'm sharing SLAMY with the world!

It's a super-simple sound library manager with a built-in mixer for quick edits. It's a great help to me, and maybe to you too?

https://yurisizov.itch.io/slamy

Available for all desktop platforms (macOS builds are coming up shortly!), made with Godot, and fully FOSS itself:

https://codeberg.org/YuriSizov/slamy

PS. If yellow is not your color, I'm truly sorry!

#foss #audio #gamedev

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent is Vaultwarden.

Vaultwarden is a readily self-hosted alternative implementation of Bitwarden, a password / credential manager.

It works with Bitwarden clients, and has its own web client.

Sandra and I use it to share passwords with each other, as well as keeping our own separate vaults in sync across multiple devices.

https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

#Linux #FOSS #selfhosting

@NebulaTide @jkn Unfortunately, switching to alternatives is simply not enough; we also need to be unavailable on SMS, Whatsapp and other proprietary platforms.

Using a data SIM on #LinuxMobile, I have managed to onboard many people, over a hundred, to #FOSS messengers. Before when I preached freedom and #privacy, there'd always be resistance. Now people just accept that WA, SMS, etc are simply not an option and they readily hop on to alternatives if they need to reach me.

#DeltaChat #Matrix #XMPP #SignalMessenger #MobileLinux #Librem5 #digitalprivacy #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #e2ee

I just started using @delta and it's just great!
Quick and straigthforward sign-up process, very cool features, no ads, no AI crap, allows text, image and voice messages, groups, multiple accounts. And free! (based on donations).
Everything is end to end encrypted, can be synced across devices and zero personal data is required whatsoever to create an account (no phone number, no email). Using standard yet powerful chatmail relays.

My daughter needs to communicate with a correspondent in another country, she has no phone but can use a laptop, so this is perfect. Also we can create a family group 😊

Kudos to the team behind this amazing project.
#foss #e2ee

For anyone tracking what's going on with generative AI appearing in the eBook software calibre, the calibre developer seems to be asking us to avoid his software:

In a GitHub issue about adding LLM features:

I definitely think allowing the user to continue the conversation is useful. In my own use of LLMs I tend to often ask followup questions, being able to do so in the same window will be useful.

In other words he likes LLMs and uses them himself; he's probably not adding these features under pressure from users. I can't help but wonder whether there's vibe code in there.


In the bug report:

Wow, really! What is it with you people that think you can dictate what I choose to do with my time and my software? You find AI offensive, dont use it, or even better, dont use calibre, I can certainly do without users like you. Do NOT try to dictate to other people what they can or cannot do.

"You people", also known as paying users. He's dismissive of people's concerns about generative AI, and claims ownership of the software ("my software"). He tells people with concerns to get lost, setting up an antagonistic, us-versus-them scenario. We even get scream caps!

Personally, besides the fact that I have a zero tolerance policy about generative AI, I've had enough of arrogant software developers. Read the room.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #calibre #eBooks #eBookManagers #AISlop #AIPoisoning #InformationOilSpill #dev #tech #FOSS #SoftwareDevelopment

There are a few spots left for the event I'm hosting tomorrow evening in Berlin about the #SovereignTechFellowship. If you're interested in learning about the often unrecognized work of maintainers like @hugovk, @icing, @matk, Sarah, Jan and the other #FOSS folks that goes into maintaining our digital infrastructure and future -- and what we at the @sovtechfund are doing about it -- register here: https://events.sovereign.tech/fellowship/

Ughhhh, et tu calibre?

New features
- Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library. Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI"
- AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu
- AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally

Release: 8.16.1 04 Dec, 2025; or here on their GitHub

Calibre is one of those pieces of software that I use from time to time but don't follow closely. I wasn't aware they'd been sipping from the poisoned chalice.

#calibre #FOSS #OpenSource #books #eBooks #eBookManager #AIPoisoning #InformationOilSpill

Tiens Framasoft heberge un spliiit ! C'est une alternative libre à tricount

https://framacount.org/abc/fr/

Par @Framasoft

#foss #france #fossfr #framasoft

Wishing everyone a great time at EmacsConf by EmacsConf team starting today completely #online on the Internet

Find out more on
https://foss.events/2025/12-06-emacsconf.html

Connect via official hashtag(s): #emacsconf #emacsconf2025

#foss #floss #freesoftware #opensource #events #europe

"All programmers, from hobbyists to those working at Microsoft or Google, use open-source software, which is present in between 70% and 90% of the computer applications we use today"
#FOSS #DigitalSovereignty
https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-11-30/adriana-groh-the-internet-works-thanks-to-a-shared-infrastructure-that-nobody-owns-but-that-we-must-take-care-of.html

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent is a double whammy of shell-based "checking" utilities.

linkchecker (https://linux.die.net/man/1/linkchecker; probably get it from your distro) checks websites (recursively, as you wish) for broken links.

shellcheck (https://www.shellcheck.net/; available in browser or as a terminal tool) checks bash and other shell scripts for bugs.

Very simple, single purpose, very useful, tools.

#FOSS #Linux