From the link:

> The city reported that due to the project, it had gained freedom in software decisions, increased security and saved €11.7 million (US$16 million).

That's kind of nice. An org that I worked for gave everyone LibreOffice installs by default and if you needed any of MS offerings you could just ask for a license for those. Most people were just fine with LibreOffice. Depends on what you're doing with said office suite, though.

Surely there's a limit to how many German headquarters Microsoft needs though.

My question is what the heck?

I read that same thing every 2-3 years “German state goes Linux/libre office”.

Then it turns out that it is not really true. Some parts yes then some other parts are already on it and some parts move back.

I do understand there might be different parts of rather big country doing different stuicf

It's a German of Schleswig-Holstein which is like the state of California or the state of Kentucky in the US doing a change like this. And it's only the state government and not the municipalities in the state.

Apparently, it's how one bargains with Microsoft to get a better deal on software or employment in that location or whatever.

I imagine the tide will lift and fall over the years. Some applications (new and old) will only run on specialized platforms. Exceptions will exist in a large enigh environment.

I like this conspiracy theory as much as the next person but in fact they moved only around 10-15km south, to be in Munich proper. Yes, I know, that would be irrelevant regarding possible tax breaks or bribes or whatever. But physically it was not far, same people working there without relocating, etc.pp

The relevant part is that they moved from another city to Munich, which means that certain company taxes would be paid in Munich instead of Unterschleißheim (the city where the HQ was located previously). This means a increase of tax revenue for the city of Munich of tens of MEUR/yr from this tax alone, without even considering secondary effects.

The small physical distance just means that this would be quite cheap for Microsoft to implement, compared to trying to pull the same stunt with another city.