Schleswig-Holstein completes migration to open source email
news.itsfoss.com265 points by sebastian_z 6 hours ago
265 points by sebastian_z 6 hours ago
Been saying it for years: the name of the (IT) game through 2030 and beyond won't be AI, so much as it'll be sovereignty. Everyone played the US' game and got relatively burned to varying degrees, so expect more countries utilize homegrown or FOSS products to retain sovereignty over their digital infrastructure going forward.
Population decline and climate change impact may not provide enough surpluses in capital for specific areas to invest in reinventing various solutions unless AI makes the cost extremely low.
Everyone likes to trot out “bUt ThE cApItAl” as an excuse to justify their current thing they’re really into, but the fact is that every single time a cause becomes important enough to fund, we always find the money somehow.
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.
You raise a valid point, the resources we will have to put towards climate mitigation and dealing with extreme events will be a drain on productivity in other areas. However I think that will mostly be the case for “real” technology, I think capacity to produce software will be minimally affected even if there was no AI.
Of course you don't want to wake up one day and you can't access your mails because the US government doesn't like you. . Huawei had to develop an in-house solution after SAP cut them off.
I think we're going to be seeing more and more of this type of thing in Europe. Of course some administrations have already done it before, sometimes sucessfully, like the French gendarmerie and sometimes unsuccesfully like Munich that ended up reverting to Windows (mostly for political rather than technical reasons).
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.
This is just the result of shifting from the uni-polar world to the multi-polar world. Guess this is just one phenomenon of the poles shifting.
Hope this will result in gain for FOSS and the community.
Even though I tend to bash a bit the whole evolution of Linux Desktop, that is more a complaint of where I wish things to be, than being a naysayer.
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.
In short: 30k users, 40k mailboxes, 100M emails and calendar entries migrated. The client is Thunderbird. The server / web side is handled by Open-Xchange, hosted by a local provider with the same name (AFAICT), which also offers commercial licensing for the otherwise-AGPL suite.
Open-Xchange is most likely a more effective name for the combination Cyrus IMAP, postfix, etc.
Instead of guessing it's an easy lookup. OpenXchange is an app suite that's been around for >20 years. It's not some random ad hoc combination of software.
The email server underneath is dovecot btw.
It is really important to not build your national infrastructure around closed-source proprietary software that other nations control.
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.
It used to piss me off now I despise it.
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.
I'm a capitalist but yes when national security is in play "free market" in my book doesn't apply. You can't have health appointments, airline tickets, government services by default on WhatsApp. Most don't even bother with email and just default to WhatsApp.
It was kind of the same but not as pervasive with Facebook Messenger in the Philippines.
Yes. Absolutf*kingeverything is whatsup. That was annoying at the beginning.
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…
If more of this happens, especially in email, maybe Google, Microsoft and friends will be forced to democratize their email blacklisting. When countries start suing because email from government agencies is not getting to their citizens, these lists will hopefully get more decentralized.
France is currently developing La Suite numérique[1], which includes email based on Open-Xchange. The German federal government also proposes Open-Xchange in their openDesk suite[2].
[1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ [2] https://www.opendesk.eu/en/product#email
Indian government announced its decision recently to migrate the IT software of all its government offices and PSUs (public sector units) from Microsoft to Zoho (an India-based IT company, whose affordable products are good alternatives to Microsoft and Google's products).
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...
Being a closed-source stack, their CVE disclosures [0] paints quite a sorry picture, unless, of course, they’ve built such mind-blowing security that it makes Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and Google combined look like amateurs.
Good news but it would be much better if Zoho would be committed to open source its software.
Corporates (even governmental companies/ departments) don't usually go for Open-Source since the code may not be maintained and there may not be any support.
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).
Plenty of server-side FOSS is mainstream. Maintainability of the code is not the problem — there exist commercial support options. On desktop FOSS often has inferior usability for non-tech users due to different incentives for product development. If you ask anyone in the legal or accounting departments of a corporation, they will demand Microsoft (not even Google) not because it’s more expensive or has terms and conditions, but because they just can’t feel themselves productive when using alternatives. LibreOffice is not bad, but it isn’t great too.
Just curious: why is committing to open-source an expectation? Is it a moral standard you hold of businesses or is it because of the govt adoption?
Open-source has many technical advantages over closed-source, in addition to the moral ones (which are quite powerful themselves).
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.
Zoho is interesting in the sense that it is one of the few email providers I know of that lets you use a custom domain with one of their free plans.
Very startup friendly. Also free POP/IMAP, so you are not locked in.
Zoho's plans are very affordable and friendly for startups.
That affordability, quality and service is why Indian government is migrating its IT dependencies from Microsoft to Zoho.
I’m going to float a compromise that works pretty well and helped us get off Office with absolutely minimal effort…
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.
This should be quicker. It is time to end the US hegemony in Europe.
> It is time to end the US hegemony in Europe
That only happens if Europe militarizes. The security guarantee, not Microsoft Office, underwrites the dependence.
I hope we get regular updates. Email deliverability is a frustration outside of the M365/Gmail ecosystems, but it’s not as bad as it’s sometimes made out to be, and I’m optimistic that increased rigour with the implementation of SPF/DMARC/DKIM will lead to better deliverability across the board. I’m curious if they see increases/decreases in spam, missed messages, successful phishing attempts, etc. Lastly, I’d love to know if they have had to change any security policies, and how are they handling identity management across the organization.
> Email deliverability is a frustration outside of the M365/Gmail ecosystems, but it’s not as bad as it’s sometimes made out to be […] I’m curious if they see increases/decreases in spam, missed messages, successful phishing attempts, etc.
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.
To add to this, most emails are likely within the organization and/or between public institution.
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)
As former email admin, it’s not bad if someone is dedicated to it and you have your own block of IP. It’s frustrating for self hosting because lack of your IPs and most people don’t want spend free time on this busy work.
We operate an MSP business for tens of thousands of customers and have our own ASN, but gmail outright refuses all our corporate email. Why? We do not know and gmail refuses to tell us. Their postmaster tools lie, are incomplete, display no data, display errors or contain no useful information. There is no human postmaster to contact, all our attempts have been ignored successfully. It’s downright silly but we have to send our corporate mail via a paid third party relay to be delivered to gmail.
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.
Even if you do ALL the techinical work you can still find yourself banned/ignored as I learned years ago the hard way.. even big providers outside MS/Goog duopoly finds themselves partially unable to deliver business emails at times.. fun times for a small shop (not).
So weird how HN ranking system works. Same article submitted 2 days ago barely got any traction:
Great and I wish they keep at it.
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.
I wonder if they will dedicate resources to help the development of their open source tools?
Props! I hope they keep it and don't use it as a play to get a better deal from a commercial provider. I am jaded after seeing too many "digital transformation" projects running on a 3-5 year cycle of switching from Offie 365 to Google then back to Office 365.
It's a great move. I doubt it will add any substantial security measures, but the fact that more people -either individuals, organizations, or even governments- are disconnecting from the major big tech players is always a good sign and a healthy approach, especially when these few big companies are actively becoming hostile towards their users with different money-grab tactics and invasive technologies. Add to that AI craziness, and you are not a user anymore but a minion or a drone to such companies.
In stark contrast to the dutch taxes division moving fully to office 365 this month.
Interesting. Apparently they are planning to spend €2 million a year just to keep manual backups of critical data in case the US cuts off access.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/10/dutch-tax-office-moves-emai...
The Swedish tax authorities went all in on Azure. Insane. And screw solidarity with the Danes. We rent our digital infra, and now the Don extractive rents. He also threatens us if we want to have our own laws or, god forbid, support our own digital infra.
Ok… that’s odd. Wouldn’t expect anything like this from the Dutch government, since they have a very progressive digital image in Europe.
For the past 15 years being progressive meant moving everything to the (US-owned) cloud
Netherlands is generally very sensitive to price, so if the US cloud (plus the 2 millions for the backup) was cheaper than the alternatives they gladly took it. Also, I would expect Microsoft offered them a big discount...
I vaguely remember this area from my history classes. Was it one of the two areas grabbed from Holland?
There was a war over it in 1864, as the Prussians grew to become Germany taking the land from Denmark.
> Was it one of the two areas grabbed from Holland?
Denmark, but being dutch vs danish is very commonly confused/conflated in the US :D
Ah my bad! Thanks for the clarification. The name is pretty special so it brought forward some memory.
Haha sorry if I came across salty, I just wanted to joke around.
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
You're probably thinking of Denmark. TL;DR:
Saxons => Danes ================> Prussia => Germany
where does open-xchange store its source code? github repos seem to be outdated
Looks like a self-hosted gitlab
Wait so you need an account to view the source code?
Not exactly (site:gitlab.open-xchange.com in a search engine gets you the links to access the projects directly), but the explore page is indeed restricted.
I’m trying to read this but I keep getting popups and redirects. WTF?
Schleswig-Holstein is even harder to pronounce then Massachusetts.
Hmmm. I am not sure.
"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.
If you can read the phonetic alphabet, the pronunciation is given on both the German and English Wikipedia page for Schleswig-Holstein. But the English page gives an English variant, not the original (and correct) German pronunciation.
It's quite easy for English speakers.
Sh-less-wig Hole-stein or Shlayz-wig Hole-stein.
And this my friend is both not correct. :-) I am from Schleswig-Holstein btw..
I don't know why you're getting downvoted
Because they tried to pronounce Schleswig-Holstein in a correct way and now their tongue hurts really bad. :-D
What about Connecticut though?
I just go with The Nutmeg State. Much clearer for everyone.
(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.)
Arkansas takes the crown I think.
For people never hearing an American say that: It is pronounced "Ar-kan-saw". It is written so strangely because it was named by the French and their stupid silent s.