The email server underneath is dovecot btw.
"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.)
Sh-less-wig Hole-stein or Shlayz-wig Hole-stein.
Denmark, but being dutch vs danish is very commonly confused/conflated in the US :D
Saxons => Danes ================> Prussia => Germany
That only happens if Europe militarizes. The security guarantee, not Microsoft Office, underwrites the dependence.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/10/dutch-tax-office-moves-emai...
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 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.
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).
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.
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…
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.
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)
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.
[1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ [2] https://www.opendesk.eu/en/product#email
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.
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