Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux
Before the Danish government announced its move, Denmark's largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already announced plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services. Here's why.
tl;dr: "digital sovereignty". "EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future."
Fair enough and makes sense. Every country should be trying to be as independant as possible IMO.
I always wondered how any head of state could feel like they were not being spied on if they were using windows.
Can governments really ensure that windows has been secured that well or is there always a possibility that Microsoft is spying for the United States?
We only need that independence because we can't trust each other. There's no problem in some countries being more focused on one thing or another, as long as we are collaborating with each other without taking advantage of anyone. Unfortunately, there are still dangerous players in the world and we have to be prepared to defend against them and this capitalistic view we currently have guarantees that there's always someone taking advantage of someone else.
We need to evolve...
15 years ago this statement would lead to accusations of being anti-globalist, communist, economically illiterate.
15 years ago this made economical (just not political) sense and was the right approach.
Now it still is, but there's an additional quality - I think the incentive is not of public good, it's of strengthening authoritarianism on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Domestic authoritarians always want to play with their toys without foreign authoritarians meddling. But if the domestic environment is not authoritarian, only foreign is, then they are not in conflict, and the other way around too.
So this may mean that both USA and EU are changing for the worse, for now.
Not attacking Linux or LibreOffice.
I would argue that switching to an open-source model for all your tools is more globalist. Open source projects are being maintained by people all over the world, and any group or branch is allowed to modify and redistribute their personal version of any project.
It's the opposite of being subject to an ever growing corporation you can't even put checks on. Every government using the product of a single small group of massively rich corporations is giving said corporation unprecedented power over the world.
Also Microsoft products have become enshitified beyond recognition.
Just earlier this week I created some Sharepoint folders for my father-in-laws business. I created the groups in Outlook and used the ”See files in Sharepoint”-button to access them. Next it required to ask for permission for him to the folder. I granted them using his own account. It was funny because the request was literally John Doe asked John Doe for permission, and the emails were identical too. So I granted him his own access with his own account.
The funniest thing though was that the process was different all of the four times, like different links opening to completely different tools. Now I’m not a Microsoft MVP and probably did it the wrong way, but at least I had fun doing it.
I teach boomers how to use SharePoint. Last week Microsoft updated office.com to be 95% copilot. The only way to find “All Apps” (word, SharePoint, PowerPoint, excel, etc.) is to find the tiny little “apps” button all the way at the bottom of the screen.
Everything else is copilot. Everyone is confused and my job just got 100% harder.
All of the M$ office apps have premium features now too. Pay extra monthly and you can use python in excel. Pay extra monthly and Teams will... I dont even know because I closed that popup so fucking fast. FFS my company must pay M$ at least 7 figures a year - why are they trying to nickel and dime us?
I can't recall a single MS product that ever was good. Maybe I was late to the party (or quit early, as lots of people seam to like vscode for some reason)
Important notice in this regard is that there is agreement on this among both left and right wing politicians.
So this is NOT something that will change with new administrations in either government or local communities.
When this is implemented, I don't see any way for Microsoft to get that business back!
Edit PS:
It's not just office, it's also mail and cloud services.
People complain different, government sees increased costs, and then they switch back
IDK if you read the article, but in 5 years cost of licenses paid to Microsoft increased 72%.
Also even if cost increase temporarily, it creates local jobs skills knowhow and tax revenue. Every "dollar" spend benefits the local community! instead of just sending the money to USA.
Servicing with open source and Linux will rapidly become cheaper than Microsoft, because there will be no artificial disruptions caused by Microsoft planned obsolescence or forced updates or whatever crap Microsoft is pushing.
Local libraries here and there in Copenhagen have already switched to Manjaro. Haven't heard anyone complain about it.
Because they are free and any government getting rid of all Microsoft licensed software will save hundreds of millions per year.
The best thing Europe could do is take those savings and use it to cover the salaries of a couple full time developers per country to help verify code and add new features.
It would be such a boon to the whole world.
And also do away with concerns about data security. As far as I know if you're using the M$ office suite stuff like email gets routes through American based servers. And that gives the US government access.
If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don't only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.
If the EU invests massively in free and open source software, pretty soon all across the world countries will hop on the FOSS-train.
If FOSS catches on, it shows to the world the power of collaboration. A power we have mostly forgotten, thinking that competition is a better idea. But competition alone is shit. To give an example. Here in the Netherlands we're very proud of ASML, a company that makes the machines needed to produce microchips. They're famous because they're unique, in that no other company is able to produce these machines. It's a competitive success, but obviously it's holding us all back. If they'd share their knowledge companies across the world could try to improve on these machines, speeding up innovation. I'm supposed to think China's corporate espionage is a crime, but to be honest I feel like not sharing such crucial information with the world is the actual crime. The power of collaboration is easily underestimated, let's give it a try.
Don't forget that ASML is only possible due to many suppliers which are also unique in being able to supply such high quality parts. Example given Zeiss for Mirrors
Can't happen fast enough.
It's because libre office doesn't spy on you.
I'd think it would be obvious that a country wouldn't want to depend on a foreign country's proprietary product when an open source alternative exists. Even if it's not spying, what if the US forced Microsoft to put some kill switch on their products? Even if it doesn't affect your most secure systems because of air gap, it could still cripple enough to cause huge problems.
There's simply no reason to take the risk.
If I was running a government, I would strongly desire proof that all of my government software is doing only what I want it to. That means not only do I have access to the source code, but I also need it to be simple enough that my government teams can actually audit all of it.
Obviously, that's not going to be feasible in every situation. There might be proprietary software that is protected from competition via IP laws, and some software is so necessarily complex that it would be really hard to audit completely, but overall, I find it shocking that any foreign government would run a Microsoft product when a feature comparable open source alternative exists.
they are also no providing intelligence and ai assistance to the israeli regime rogue state genocide on neighboring city state Palestine
Or sending your position to the migration services so they can send you to Guantanamo.
north germany is doing the same.
anyone remember limux? bill gates attacked german democracy bribing munich to drop limux in favor if windows in exchange for 8000 jobs.
fuck the windows user too though.
The funny thing about that story, and the outset that no one covered after the fact, is that Munich reversed direction again and ultimately did go with Linux and open source stacks.
not really true. so 20(!!!) years later they as the last of the states woke up.
bavaria is pathetic. "LANGSAM" is their word for being backwards and ultra-conservative. i mean Freie Wähler? Aiwanger? What a shit place. And it is just SAD that they just NOW started to civilize. worst of the west.
Libreoffice for the fucking win!
The question is why not?
There are infinite undocumented "things" integrated with Microsoft solutions. Just of the top of my head, here are couple that i've encountered
I’m a Dane and I approve this, massively.
Also good and free: Sumatra You can read any pdf.
Libre office drawer you can sign. No need for acrobat or any of that garbage.
Sumatra? I am going to take note of that.
Including adobe acrobat form pdfs?
Lets go Libreoffice. I hope to see more FOSS projects embraced.
Is it because they're better and free? It's because they're better and free. I bet that's it.
I think if I were any non-US government I'd be very seriously thinking about not using Microsoft software at this time, particularly if it connects to the cloud. And that goes for companies with government contracts, or merely companies who are potential targets of industrial espionage.
That said, LibreOffice needs to tap the EU for funding to broaden its features and also improve the UX because it's not great tbh. It can be extremely frustrating using LibreOffice after using MS Office, in part because the UI is so different, noisy with esoteric actions, and very unrefined compared to its MS counterpart. That needs funding and to get to the point that somebody can pick up LibreOffice for the first time and not be surprised or stuck by the way it behaves.
When it comes to the UI, I guess it depends on what you're used to. The LibreOffice UI is a lot more similar to the UI used by MS Office 2003, so I've always been pretty comfortable with it. But Microsoft's "ribbon" UI which debuted back in 2007 is now old enough to vote, so I can see how there are people out there where that's all they've ever used.
Personally, while I've learned to deal with it in Word and Outlook, even after all of these years the ribbon still pisses me off every time I have to use Excel.
The ribbon was contentious but most people are familiar with it and it has advantages like taskcentricity and less clutter. LibreOffice has an experimental ribbon that I think should be worked on, mainstreamed and set during installation or in the settings.
UX in other areas should be improved. Lots of little annoyances add up for new users and can break their opinions. It's not hard to look over the UI and see things which have no business being there, or should only appear in certain contexts, or could be implemented in better ways. I think the project should get some MS Office volunteers into a lab and ask them to do things and observe their problems. I'd have power Word, Excel, Powerpoint users come in and do non-trivial things they normally do and see where they trip up or even if they can do what they need.
Exactly recently downloaded Libre on my PC and it looks dated and busy, plus not their fault but every Office doc I open in a Libre app looks bad, the formatting and fonts are off and every change I make it says it can't save in the office format and suggests converting the document to ODT format, that alone will scare away casual users who don't understand what an open format is
Good.
LETS GOOOOOOO
I wonder if it creates more inhouse sysadmin jobs? When you buy a license from M$ you also get tech support. But if you have problems with open source, you gotta go get a computer person
But if you have problems with open source, you gotta go get a computer person
Yeah true, but these are more business to business. RHEL support is pretty expensive, and in my experience Oracle support (maybe not really open source) is both terrible and ridiculously expensive. Maybe this will create a market for more consumer like support. Maybe that could even create new business models for open source software.
Not necessarily, lots of open source projects offer enterprise support contracts and in house staff could be retrained. Definitely going to be good for training, consulting, and MSPs though
Hopefully. But I think companies are already starting to realise the value of having your bytes in a place you control
Possibly does. On occasion I read about German cities trying to do similar, but then reverting back to M$.
Most of the issues are around people not wanting to take time to get use to new software (happened at a job where they moved to GSuite) or the FOSS stuff not having a corporation that can be sued for loss of earnings (like crowd strike when they didn't read only friday). Note that these are not technical issues with FOSS.
Still there is political support to not just use this as an angle to get M$ to lower their pricing.
More linux adoption is great. Steam deck and this will help push it forward. Next step would be something like the steam machines
It’s because of that new update where they fucked up the task bar. Look what youve done, Bill
Surely you jest. Gates has almost nothing to do with Microsoft these days, let alone interface design. In fact, he'd probably be the one to roast any stupid design decisions if he was still active there.
Anyone else think that this could lead enough pish for IT independence that a company starts selling micro clouds. Jist a bog ole computer that handles a semi local cloud say at a campus scale. Amd we just swing back to mainframes
I just hear that they move to LibreOffice but not to Linux, ateast not right now.
Everyone in tech did this 10 plus years ago.
