Thought I’d share a success story.

France’s National Gendarmerie (military police) rolled out GendBuntu, their own custom Linux OS

• Around 35,000 desktops/laptops deployed by December 2011, and today 97% of 103,000+ PCs run GendBuntu
• They started by replacing Office, IE & Outlook in 2005, then moved to Ubuntu in 2008, achieving a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership
• The switch slashed annual license and maintenance costs by millions of euros (~€2 M per year and ~€50 M total) .

The switch away from big Tech to Open Source alternatives might not be easy, but it’s been successfully done before.