19 ms·

Europe is living under Microsoft’s digital killswitch

322 points by andmarios 9y ago

jagermo 9y ago
I watched Munich trying to change to Linux, they even created a LiMux, a special distribution. In my opinion, the biggest problem was UI and design. LiMux and all its programs just look like something that has been thought up in the 90s. No modern UI, no sleek design. In addition, the interoperability is horrible. Its just not fun to work with something like that, not when you come home to an iPad oder a Windows 10 machine. If there was any chance to roll out something other than Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter), government bodies must invest into the UI. If people have to fight with the OS and its applications every step of the way, it will never be accepted.
Osiris 9y ago
This is a poorly written article. Under the heading "What's the problem": > IT systems of European governments mostly run on Microsoft software and OS [...] that means that almost all of the data of European citizens — tax information, health records, etc. — along with security related data, are in proprietary file format... > The problem with the proprietary file format is that Microsoft’s software is made to be incompatible with open source, which effectively forces all communicating departments within a government to use the company’s products, in order to ensure compatibility of files and ease of communication. The operating system that runs on a system has no bearing on how the data for various applications is stored. As far as I know, Microsoft isn't providing the applications that store "tax information, health records, etc.", unless the governments are using Excel and Word to keep all that information rather than a database. Even so, if they are using Excel/Word, the Office Open XML file formats are ISO/IEC standards, not proprietary. There may be some problem of vendor lock-in here, but this article seems to have no idea what the real problem is.
- kartan 9y ago
  > The problem is lack of control over vital parts of state operations, leaving European countries at the mercy of a foreign company and government. This is a very valid point. > This doesn’t only weaken Europe’s ability to stop the US snooping around, it also leaves security flaws for anyone with the know-how to exploit. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-across-england-hit-by-large-scale-cyber-attack https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-ac... I agree that it is not a very precise technical article. But the main issues hold true.
- alankey 9y ago
  It seems like you are unaware of the spyware called "windows 10" and the works of the NSA.
- nthcolumn 9y ago
  Disagree entirely - for me it hits the nail on the head immediately. And what a timely article given the impact on the NHS today. Are we seeing NSA tools used in the wild? The EU handed Microsoft its biggest fine and still we have this unacceptable state of affairs where we have secret code running public utilities and services, especially of a foreign/extra-judicial entity. Unfortunately getting out of that lock in is going to be tricky.
  - Osiris 9y ago
    You think that if an entire government was running a specific *nix operating system that the NSA couldn't develop an exploit to gain access to the OS? Android phones run Linux and get hacked to get root access. Routers, IoT devices, and lots of other hardware run Linux variants and get hacked all the time. This idea that people hold that if only we didn't run Windows we'd all be more secure is silly and naive.
    - smichel17 9y ago
      It would certainly be harder, since they don't have the political option of compelling Microsoft to add a backdoor.
      - skaplun 9y ago
        you're implying that coercing major companies is easier than few hours researching vulnerabilities?
        sqeaky 9y ago
        I think you are grossly understating the difficulty of penetrating actual defenses. Once a vulnerability is used it is likely to be patched. A group that cannot be coerced to do something for you will close vulnerabilities as it learns of them because they are liabilities. Also, moving away from microsoft will likely lead to the end of software monoculture. You need to research those vulnerabilities for each target. Oh, and it it would be much more than a fewer hours of research.
- Maken 9y ago
  I do see an issue with storing your nation's critical data in a OS with security backdoors enforced by a foreign country.
  - type0 9y ago
    I heard that China got a special treatment from MS on that, Windows 10 without the spyware...
    - type0 9y ago
      http://www.computerworld.com/article/3183664/microsoft-windows/microsoft-completes-windows-10-customized-for-chinas-government.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3183664/microsoft-windo... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/red-flag-windows-microsoft-modifies-windows-os-for-chinese-government/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/red-f...
- scj 9y ago
  I suspect this article is referring to legacy systems written with Microsoft software, that communicate with a server through binary applications that only work on Windows. It is getting harder to remember, but only 10 years ago, having Microsoft as the only supported platform was easily justifiable in most organizations. Even if your software was customer facing!
- gvb 9y ago
  "[T]ax information, health records, etc." would likely be stored in SQL Server databases. It looks like SQL Server import and export file formats are defined, but I am not aware that the native format is standardized.
- Maarten88 9y ago
  > This is a poorly written article. This article seems to originate from the Netherlands, drumming up anti Microsoft rhetoric that was very prevalent a few years ago here. It is important to understand with these types of articles, that Microsoft and their local partner companies (disclosure: such as the one I work for) has competitors who stand to benefit from stories like these. Other companies (like IBM, Oracle working with local ISV's and service companies) want to sell their, also propriety, but non-Microsoft based solutions. They promote independence from Microsoft as a feature of their software, and have budget to hire PR firms and run a lobby too, just like Microsoft. But their solutions often come with a worse type of vendor lock-in. The Oracle type. In the Netherlands, most public backend administrative software is not based on Microsoft technology, and it is completely closed, unable to integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's. The article states that Microsoft makes 2 billion in the EU public sector, I don't know if that is true, but in the Netherlands spending on Microsoft software is somewhere around 1-2% of total public IT spending, and I'd say they provide relatively good value for that.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    > unable to integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's. It's not 1992 - Oracle databases can integrate with all sorts of web APIs and front end systems. You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but it's a little over the top to claim that it can't be done.
    - Maarten88 9y ago
      > Oracle databases can integrate with all sorts of web APIs and front end systems Of course, however the problem is not a technical one. IT suppliers simply use their ownership of the software and support/maintenance contracts as leverage to claim a stake in any project connecting to 'their' software, and make their customers pay through the nose for anything they want.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      " You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but it's a little over the top to claim that it can't be done." It can't be done in a business if the vendor decides it costs too much or will be done in a way unsupported for good reasons. Whereas, with FOSS, they might pay someone to fix that or someone might do it themselves. The arbitrary costs and limitations the proprietary vendors can force on locked-in users is an important risk of their model for users.
- youdontknowtho 9y ago
  Yeah, it's click-bait. There are also lots of non Microsoft systems in use in Europe. It's just as complex of an environment as anywhere else in the world. This was an article for Microsoft haters to upvote each other for saying the same thing they have been saying for years.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > Even so, if they are using Excel/Word, the Office Open XML file formats are ISO/IEC standards, not proprietary. You aren't serious about that, are you?
- confounded 9y ago
  > The operating system that runs on a system has no bearing on how the data for various applications is stored It's not impossible for a motivated user to go against every UI (dark) pattern to keep work on an open format, but it's so unlikely as to be irrelevant. While the file formats may be open, it's widely known that MS keep enough secret sauce in Office so that an MS Excel nightmare won't open correctly in LibreOffice. Being able to decompress and parse the contents of the file (the open part) is not the same as humans being able to interactively retrieve information from it. The user's intuition is to blame LibreOffice, but as technologists we should recognize that if you won't ship a working reference implementation for effective use of your 'open standard', then it's just malicious marketing.
fimdomeio 9y ago
When this news circulated around one month ago in Portugal it was put in more harsh terms as somewhat a form of digital colonialism.
danarmak 9y ago
Although it's not said explicitly in the article, there's an interpretation of the subject that is both literal and true. Microsoft distributes constant opaque silent updates to all modern Windows systems. With Windows 10, some editions cannot even postpone installing those updates for long. An update deliberately bricking Windows computers, targeted to all of Europe, a country, an organization, or an individual's home. That is, quite literally, a digital killswitch. Of course Microsoft the company wouldn't do such a thing as long as it's following its own interests. But, being an non-EU entity, it could conceivably be forced by US authorities. Or, of course, the secure distribution channel could be hacked. It's far more likely that an attacker would distribute an update that merely backdoors all systems; but if done as an act of war (or terrorism), bricking is a somewhat plausible goal. As the article correctly notes, the same problem affects most other software; it's just that Microsoft Windows is both so widely used and so infrastructure-critical (you can't replace it with a different OS and keep running your native Windows applications). OSX and iOS have minority market shares and you can buy competing products. Android phones and Linux distributions don't have a single update channel for all of them. Non-operating-system software generally isn't installed on most computers and has alternatives for most of its users. Windows is in a pretty unique position.
- abandonliberty 9y ago
  You're right! It's rarely about who creates the backdoor/update channel/law but about who can leverage and abuse it (hacker, next president, etc). We are slowly starting to realize how big these issues are. I hope.
  - pepve 9y ago
    Ahem, the next president?
    - rcthompson 9y ago
      That ties into the overall point of the comment that the person using the backdoor may not be the one who created/mandated it, i.e. one president that people trust mandates a backdoor but never uses it improperly, but the next president after them is more unscrupulous and uses that backdoor for nefarious purposes, effectively piggy-backing on the trust of the previous president. The point is that it might not be appropriate to give someone the keys to the castle even if you trust them completely not to abuse that power, because people don't last forever in a position and that power will eventually pass to a successor who may be less trustworthy.
anonymous_3821 9y ago
Can't wait for the ms-paid crowd of anti-FOSS, .net-lover teens on HN which shows up everytime to praise ms while shit on FOSS.
- kevindqc 9y ago
  Did you really create an account just to say that?
- sctb 9y ago
  We've banned these accounts that you created just to violate the guidelines with.
nebabyte 9y ago
Micro "It's not like we can just flip a switch" soft (Though I guess it requires a broader umbrella of 'MS dickery with networks' as the Xbone debacle was you being forced to be online at MS' behest, and this is sort of the opposite)
shmerl 9y ago
Time to ditch Windows for Linux.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  The best time for that was roughly a decade ago, but yes; the second best time is always 'now'.
  - Melk 9y ago
    I remember this being discussed a decade ago. The irony was that in most cases it was abandoned because migrating cost more than the annual IT budget. And since no politician ever plans a decade ahead, here we are.
    - dandelion_lover 9y ago
      Still, there are successful migrations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
      - FireBeyond 9y ago
        All good things come to an end: "February 2017 - Politicians discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client.[42]"
        dandelion_lover 9y ago
        Hopefully, it's far from the end. The fight continues [unfortunately only in German]: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Muenchner-IT-Leiter-zu-LiMux-Es-gibt-keine-groesseren-technischen-Probleme-3644868.html?wt_mc=rss.ho.beitrag.atom https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Muenchner-IT-Leiter-... In short, there are no technical problems whatsoever. It's just a strong lobbying...
  - deleted 9y ago
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faragon 9y ago
TL;DR: clickbait.
idobai 9y ago
The one-vendor theory and the herd mentality did and does a great disservice for tech, humanity and its rights. We should concentrate more on open standards and software freedom to avoid all the trouble.
alphabettsy 9y ago
I would much rather see governments embrace and contribute to Open Source software available to all, they could even pay 3rd parties to maintain and service.
- Osiris 9y ago
  Some have tried and have gone back to Windows[1] [1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-of-munich-now-wants-to-abandon-linux-and-switch-back-to-windows https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-of-...
  - tpalix 9y ago
    The post's author mentioned it - it was an obvious bribery since the major of munich considers itself an ms fanatic.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Here's some previous discussion on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642820
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - vmarsy 9y ago
    Yes, but also others have tried and have not gone back (yet?) like GendBuntu[1]. Munich was about 15,000 computers [2], GendBuntu is 70,000. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu [2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxs-munich-crisis-crunch-vote-locks-city-on-course-for-windows-return/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxs-munich-crisis-crunch-vot...
  - hutzlibu 9y ago
    But there are som hints, that the decision to "go back" might have been politicaly motivated. Like relocating the microsoft central in germany to munich ... But on the other hand, there were many flaws in the system, but many in the OSS-community did not want to acknowledge, because it is easier to shift the blame to evil conspiring microsoft, than to admit, that linux and libre office is not perfect. Which is really, really stupid, because how can it be technically as good and polished as microsoft products, given there is so much more money behind them. And even though the linux kernel might be now even better than microsoft - that is not at all the case for Desktop, Drivers, Stability, Programms, etc.
andmarios 9y ago
Imo the thing with the public sector, is that it is so large that it probably could fund both an OS and a productivity suite easily and that would be a net gain, both from a freedom perspective and for the economy at large. I am all for entrepreneurship and I do think that companies and competition create progress. But when one company reaches the level of Microsoft, where every year we learn how many billions Bill Gates' bank account increased —I do know that he helps with his money but still, his bank account does increase—, it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.
- blackoil 9y ago
  Bill gates money isn't sitting in couches, it is invested back in economy. And given the fact that his total wealth is constantly increasing despite giving away billions, shows it is invested quite efficiently.
- gnode 9y ago
  > it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad. Like anyone with significant wealth, Bill Gates's wealth is mostly in non-cash investments, whereby the capital is used for enterprise. A more sensible argument might be that Microsoft is successful because of anti-competitive practises / exploiting a monopoly, rather than adding value.
  - enugu 9y ago
    Even if it was hoarded as cash, this shouldnt matter. Less meal tickets floating around means that the each ticket gets more food. If Bill Gates is using the money for consuming resources(say making a huge building), this affects the economy as there is an opportunity cost(the consumed resources could have been used elsewhere). One exception is monetary crises where hoarding has a negative impact, but thats not the usual situation. There is a strong case for redistribution of wealth on its own terms and social good.
- scholia 9y ago
  Bill Gates no longer owns a significant amount of Microsoft stock. Ballmer was the largest shareholder the last time I looked. Gates isn't hoarding anything, and in any case, all his wealth is going to charity.
OldBlueBear 9y ago
This shows just shows how stupid the guys who contract for (EU) government IT, and their political masters who are supposed to be directing them. Any software that not built from the ground up to be secure is unlikely to be, it is not something that can be bolted on. Various version of Windows needed to be heavenly hacked to meet even the most basic DoD-CETCS (RedBook) standard back in the 1990s. And I doubt it is any better now. That some public services dumped Microsoft years ago suggest this lock-in problem is almost as old as commercial computing.
- ordu 9y ago
  I cannot believe they are stupid. On the contrary they are clever enough to side with MS.
Theodores 9y ago
I think there is a bigger problem - using Microsoft Office means that an organisation is stuck in 1990's ways of working. The web should replace these tools that were developed for personal computers that came with floppy disk drives instead of ethernet connections. Companies 'stuck' on old-fashioned Microsoft Office also have to present information to customers and internal stakeholders, so they hire a 'web department' that then becomes the new typing pool. Instead of dictated or hand-written things that get typed up on 'Wordperfect' (MS Office killed the typing pool for good), we now have Word documents or Excel spreadsheets that some 'web person' has to then copy onto some CMS or other system powered by a SQL database. I did open a 'legacy spreadsheet' today so I appreciate that there is still some life in having data that way, however I cannot remember the last time I had a use case for a wordprocessor, Microsoft or otherwise. I also know Microsoft do 'sharepoint' and a few other web things but not many 'real' websites have gone for the Redmond solution, 10% according to the survey I just Googled: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-... Although 10% isn't quite into Windows Phone territory of pointlessness, I can't imagine setting out today with a new project and instantly thinking 'Microsoft'. I think the Microsoft problem will cure itself much like how the old typing pool died - people get old, they retire, new people come along and learn how to do stuff with the new tools, the more efficient processes and the demands of the time.
- kpil 9y ago
  I think you vastly underestimate the number of businesses critical processes in huge international companies that uses Microsoft Excel.
  - Theodores 9y ago
    I work with a lot of these 'business critical processes' done in Excel. Too often that information is squirrelled away on some 'business critical spreadsheet' and not shared properly in the organisation. There was also a time when typing pools were totally essential, we don't defend typing pools and insist on having them now though.
amiga-workbench 9y ago
Government systems simply should not be running proprietary software.
- batrat 9y ago
  I agree with you, but... There is a HUGE problem with this statement. 90% of the devices that are bought require windows. Every single microscope, ID reader, card reader, access system, detection system, defence devices, advanced cameras, radars, etc. provide drivers and/or software, that I know, offer drivers/apps only for windows. Even they make a plan to move from windows, it will take years, in this time, every acquisition will be made for windows. A common use for these devices/pc's is more than 5 years. Heck i've seen tools that are used even after 15 years because they worked and no money/desire to replace them. Of course you can negotiate, or request support for other operating systems, but that means extra money, training, etc. Even in the current state it's hard to get good IT people, programmers, sysadmins, etc. It will be harder to get linux admins. Also it will take years to teach people to use another OS. And to end: have you seen custom software made for governments? 50% just slap a program that requires x version of .net, some c++ redistributable and requires to run only as admin or only xp, 40% just slap a java abomination or applet and call it a day, 9% make a nice piece of software but just like everyone else after they deliver the software they forget about the support or patch 1-2 things and they are gone. ALL OF THIS is happening mainly because the state doesn't have trained people and they don't know what to ask from devs & because they don't give a shi*t about they money they spend.
  - amiga-workbench 9y ago
    I've often thought that the British government should have an in-house team of developers to work on services for local authorities and public facing institutions. It seems every time a contractor gets involved the tax-payer gets a good fucking, think of all the accrued billable hours taken up by redundant layers of manglement pontificating, the endless reworks and finally the extortionate support contract to keep the end product limping along.
  - fulafel 9y ago
eksemplar 9y ago
The thing people in technology forget is that the most expensive resource in government is the people who work there. Every person in my IT department is top of their game, everyone of them has been continually honing their skill sets and are following their interests. This has put us a head of a lot of other municipalities and a lot of private companies. We've had to send ADFS and Azure consultants back because our crew was better, as an example. Those people live and breathe Microsoft. Those people are the reason we didn't have to renew our server room, when we decided to go own-cloud in a major hosting center instead, and they are they reason we'll soon be able to move our cloud from rental to Azure. Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce. I'm certain we could retrain our current staff, but a lot of them wouldn't want to, because the truth is, if they wanted to be working with non-Microsoft technologies then they would have been snatched up by our "competition" already. I think open source should play an important role in government, and I think that role should increase steadily going forward, but I also think people and reason should come before an ideology. With 370 different IT-systems of various magnitude we already have some that run on Linux. JBOSS and Wildfly are big in government, but out of our entire system portfolio only a fraction of the systems even have non-Microsoft alternatives. Other systems are on 8 year contracts, making it impossible to swap them out overnight even if we wanted to. Which we don't because we would need to replace every system, and get every employee on board with open source alternatives in order to save the insignificant Microsoft licensing fees which make up less than 1% of our IT budget. Sure, Europe is bound to Microsoft and that can be problematic. What if Trump truly goes apeshit for instance? Then we would be royally fucked. The truth is that there is no viable alternative that won't be ridiculously exoensive and take up to 50 years to fully implement. With everything heading for the cloud it might not even make sense. The only cloud options for a huge part of the European public sector are labeled with Google, Amazaon or Azure - and none of them would make the legislative challenges or licenses any less of an issue. At least with Microsoft, we have a company who has been really open to quickly and efficiently meeting European demands.
- shmerl 9y ago
  > Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce. It's worth doing it, to get rid of the sick MS lock-in. Breaking the catch 22 needs to start from somewhere.
kardianos 9y ago
I have used Linux as my primary desktop system for over ten years. Usability really sucks. I'm not talking about a new UX model, systemd vs sysv, or wayland vs xorg. I'm talking about not needing to know about unix-isms to run a desktop operating system. Gnome and KDE are okay-ish now. Honestly the best desktop system for linux I've seen is Deepin https://www.deepin.org/en/ https://www.deepin.org/en/ , which is produced by a Chinese based group and marketed mainly at Chinese audiences. It installs updates on reboot, which removes many corner cases for desktop users. It has a nice dedicated admin panel that feels like a single interface rather than 20 different panels glued together. It focuses on efficient desktop use rather than some new hotness UI concept which Unity and Gnome3 both got infatuated with. The desktop interface is fast and gets out of your way, but providing useful quick tools to open, close, and switch apps. Why do I think governments haven't used more open source? Because we care more about systemd vs sysv then a single good consistent UI. Because we think writing desktop components in javascript and python will give good (enough) performance that won't feel sluggish; hint, they won't. Because coders (often) care more about how their code looks, using the slow interpreted language they know, or "getting the job done" (as they define it), then they do about concrete performance evaluation, benchmarking, and end user use cases and long term person off the street testing. Sorry, that was kinda a rant. But seriously, checkout the deepin desktop. New users can be really productive in it quickly and maintain it themselves.
- michel-slm 9y ago
  the Gnome desktop (at least on Fedora) also delays updates until shutdown/reboot time. but points taken on Javascript and Python. From what I'm seeing in Gnome Builder updates though, they're really interested in getting to a point where Rust can be used for writing Gnome apps.
  - pmontra 9y ago
    Not on Ubuntu with Gnome flashback. I get an update popup at least any other day with the new versions of some packages or security updates. Reboots are for switching to new versions of the kernel. I confess I sometime postpone reboots for even a couple of months. I suspend my laptop and I have too many open applications (desktop or background) to be willing to close and restart all of them. If it's really like that, no Fedora for me.
amelius 9y ago
For other industries, roles may be reversed. For example, another headline could be: the US is living under ASML's digital killswitch
submeta 9y ago
I tried to migrate to Ubuntu in 2011 and gave up because I was missing apps like Evernote or Visio. - I moved away from MS products in 2015, replaced my Thinkpad + Windows 7 with a Mac, replaced MS Visio with Omnigraffle, abandoned Visual Basic and migrated to web Apps (Django mainly). The only MS product I use is MS Office (via a subscription) on my Mac. This article made me think: Do I really need MS Office? Occasionally I use Word for 1 to 10 page documents. Then there is MS Excel. I used to use it to do data analysis with it, used Pivot Tables extensively. But now I mostly use it for simple tables. Finally there's PowerPoint. I have created many businesses plans with it. (I used MS Access as well, to create quick line of business solutions, but I'm trying to do this in Python + Django now.) Now I'm considering trying to move away from MS Office as well. Because actually all that keeps me using it is a vague feeling that I might miss something if I don't. Or others expecting me to send them Office documents (instead of Libre Office) - Germany is MS Office land.
- Lev1a 9y ago
  Another German here. I have abandoned MS Office in favor of OpenOffice/LibreOffice years ago and when I have to send documents I just send .pdf's but if I REALLY had to send .doc, .xls etc. LibreOffice can im- and export those formats too.
msabalau 9y ago
Amusing that this article is going out as Europe is being hammered by ransomware on unpatched Windows computers. If the US wanted to take out all EU computers, presumably they'd use an airburst nuke, and target all the electronics, not just the Windows boxes. Of course, if things got that bad, presumably the "logical" course of action would be to scour the continent, rather than let a pissed off high skilled population live to join Putin.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  War is not about killing your enemy and breaking his things. That is the job of warriors, but not how you win a war. It would immensely benefit the US in a war with Europe to silently snoop on all those systems and act like we couldn't. Use the information to perform lower cost higher gain military operations. Killing the populace En masse makes nothing but enemies, but leveraging information can make you friends. Imagine if the US used is massive infiltration to find people sympathetic to its cause and gave them guns and bombs with Russian labeling. Those people do most of the damage in the country and we swoop in with targeted precision bombing and cost effective troop deployments to arrest huge amounts of heads of states and legislatures. We could defeat Europe in a year and at least some portions of Europeans would thank us. Then we move on to the part the US sucks at, occupying.
mrtree 9y ago
Day 1 Microsoft uses kill switch. Day 2 we switch to linux. No problem.
cmurf 9y ago
I'm not overly sympathetic, governments should be doing more to support open source software. Public money should be used to make public software. The idea of using public money to support proprietary software and formats really bugs me. If you want to do this for your own personal or business reasons, fine. But public resources should be used to make existing public owned (effectively we all own free open source software) software better.
bradford 9y ago
[disclaimer, MS employee here] Question: If governments could inspect and audit MS source code, would the concerns brought up in the article be addressed? This is a clarifying question, not a loaded one. To avoid any surprises: governments, including the EU can and do audit MS source code (public source, for example: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-governments-inspect-source-code-for-security-issues.2433915/ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-gover...)
- mjevans 9y ago
  There's also the issue of the data. It should always be accessible in a format that anyone is free to inter-operate with (E.G. no patent restrictions), and preferably in one or more protocols/apis/formats that fulfill this criteria. Critically it must be possible to utilize the data without proprietary products. Government records need to stand the test of time. Just like we can read ink on paper today, in the future preserved records need to remain readable. Libre formats ensure that there is a known, implementable solution. However they also make it more likely that someone will already have that solution.
- jlg23 9y ago
  The code review opportunities are joke. The only chance to review a mere million lines of codes thoroughly is to throw a million eyes on it and open communication about findings. The way those are done now, they are Valium for politicians and a cash cow for those doing the "audits".
  - tormeh 9y ago
    >a million eyes on it and open communication about findings That's what the Chinese government does internally. Ba-dum-tssh.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  [disclaimer, read the article] No. The problem is not the existing code, but the potential for forced updates with new code.
lucb1e 9y ago
There is lots of truth in this. I've been saying all of this for years and am trying to raise awareness whenever I get the opportunity, while not trying to be pushy (that just doesn't work, people need to want to). Two highlights of the article: > European children are educated in Microsoft Office, which is given to schools and universities for free, which some call the “crack model” — getting people hooked for free and then start charging them. God this is so true. Every year emails go out "you can get office for free via $ourSchoolName!" What do you mean indoctrination and free advertisement? I wanted to reply to all with a message in a similar tone (about libreoffice being free and not a trial) but never found a good phrasing that would do anything beyond provoke a backlash (also when discussing it with like-minded friends). > Security risk All eggs (not just "all your eggs", no, all eggs) in one basket is a terrible idea for obvious reasons.
nom 9y ago
Hm, what operating systems are used by governments outside of Europe? Doesn't everybody have to rely on Windows?
keth 9y ago
I always wonder why the european countries don't work together to build their own software. Or at least a single country looking at germany, where each city seems to brew it's own stuff.
Taek 9y ago
If I were a country that was not allied with the US, or otherwise feared potential power plays by the US against my nation, I would not use any closed source software originating from the US. Same applies to China, to Russia, and any other nation with a well funded cybersecurity division. A nation could order a software producer under their jurisdiction to write an automatic updater pushing malware to collect: National secrets Credentials Access to critical systems And who knows what else if we are being creative. We use our computers for everything. Coded source software, especially with automatic updates, is systemic risk and it's going to bite a lot of people really badly if a cyber-competent nation ever decides to initiate WW3
ps28 9y ago
i went thru all the comments here and maybe it's a dumb question - but I'd assumed that the situation described applies to all/most governments? Is the situation vastly different e.g. in the U.S.?
booleandilemma 9y ago
Is there any possibility that China has a hardware backdoor in our iPhones? (and whatever other devices they make?)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Xoros 9y ago
Well, regarding today's massive ransomware attack based on a Microsoft security flaw, it's a little bit ironic
partycoder 9y ago
And most countries on Earth are living under Monsanto's food killswitch.
Proven 9y ago
Bullshit socialist article

322 points by andmarios 9y ago

I watched Munich trying to change to Linux, they even created a LiMux, a special distribution. In my opinion, the biggest problem was UI and design. LiMux and all its programs just look like something that has been thought up in the 90s. No modern UI, no sleek design. In addition, the interoperability is horrible. Its just not fun to work with something like that, not when you come home to an iPad oder a Windows 10 machine. If there was any chance to roll out something other than Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter), government bodies must invest into the UI. If people have to fight with the OS and its applications every step of the way, it will never be accepted.

Osiris 9y ago

This is a poorly written article. Under the heading "What's the problem": > IT systems of European governments mostly run on Microsoft software and OS [...] that means that almost all of the data of European citizens — tax information, health records, etc. — along with security related data, are in proprietary file format... > The problem with the proprietary file format is that Microsoft’s software is made to be incompatible with open source, which effectively forces all communicating departments within a government to use the company’s products, in order to ensure compatibility of files and ease of communication. The operating system that runs on a system has no bearing on how the data for various applications is stored. As far as I know, Microsoft isn't providing the applications that store "tax information, health records, etc.", unless the governments are using Excel and Word to keep all that information rather than a database. Even so, if they are using Excel/Word, the Office Open XML file formats are ISO/IEC standards, not proprietary. There may be some problem of vendor lock-in here, but this article seems to have no idea what the real problem is.

kartan 9y ago
> The problem is lack of control over vital parts of state operations, leaving European countries at the mercy of a foreign company and government. This is a very valid point. > This doesn’t only weaken Europe’s ability to stop the US snooping around, it also leaves security flaws for anyone with the know-how to exploit. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-across-england-hit-by-large-scale-cyber-attack https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-ac... I agree that it is not a very precise technical article. But the main issues hold true.
alankey 9y ago
It seems like you are unaware of the spyware called "windows 10" and the works of the NSA.
nthcolumn 9y ago
Disagree entirely - for me it hits the nail on the head immediately. And what a timely article given the impact on the NHS today. Are we seeing NSA tools used in the wild? The EU handed Microsoft its biggest fine and still we have this unacceptable state of affairs where we have secret code running public utilities and services, especially of a foreign/extra-judicial entity. Unfortunately getting out of that lock in is going to be tricky.
- Osiris 9y ago
  You think that if an entire government was running a specific *nix operating system that the NSA couldn't develop an exploit to gain access to the OS? Android phones run Linux and get hacked to get root access. Routers, IoT devices, and lots of other hardware run Linux variants and get hacked all the time. This idea that people hold that if only we didn't run Windows we'd all be more secure is silly and naive.
  - smichel17 9y ago
    It would certainly be harder, since they don't have the political option of compelling Microsoft to add a backdoor.
    - skaplun 9y ago
      you're implying that coercing major companies is easier than few hours researching vulnerabilities?
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        I think you are grossly understating the difficulty of penetrating actual defenses. Once a vulnerability is used it is likely to be patched. A group that cannot be coerced to do something for you will close vulnerabilities as it learns of them because they are liabilities. Also, moving away from microsoft will likely lead to the end of software monoculture. You need to research those vulnerabilities for each target. Oh, and it it would be much more than a fewer hours of research.
Maken 9y ago
I do see an issue with storing your nation's critical data in a OS with security backdoors enforced by a foreign country.
- type0 9y ago
  I heard that China got a special treatment from MS on that, Windows 10 without the spyware...
  - type0 9y ago
    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3183664/microsoft-windows/microsoft-completes-windows-10-customized-for-chinas-government.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3183664/microsoft-windo... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/red-flag-windows-microsoft-modifies-windows-os-for-chinese-government/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/red-f...
scj 9y ago
I suspect this article is referring to legacy systems written with Microsoft software, that communicate with a server through binary applications that only work on Windows. It is getting harder to remember, but only 10 years ago, having Microsoft as the only supported platform was easily justifiable in most organizations. Even if your software was customer facing!
gvb 9y ago
"[T]ax information, health records, etc." would likely be stored in SQL Server databases. It looks like SQL Server import and export file formats are defined, but I am not aware that the native format is standardized.
Maarten88 9y ago
> This is a poorly written article. This article seems to originate from the Netherlands, drumming up anti Microsoft rhetoric that was very prevalent a few years ago here. It is important to understand with these types of articles, that Microsoft and their local partner companies (disclosure: such as the one I work for) has competitors who stand to benefit from stories like these. Other companies (like IBM, Oracle working with local ISV's and service companies) want to sell their, also propriety, but non-Microsoft based solutions. They promote independence from Microsoft as a feature of their software, and have budget to hire PR firms and run a lobby too, just like Microsoft. But their solutions often come with a worse type of vendor lock-in. The Oracle type. In the Netherlands, most public backend administrative software is not based on Microsoft technology, and it is completely closed, unable to integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's. The article states that Microsoft makes 2 billion in the EU public sector, I don't know if that is true, but in the Netherlands spending on Microsoft software is somewhere around 1-2% of total public IT spending, and I'd say they provide relatively good value for that.
- djrogers 9y ago
  > unable to integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's. It's not 1992 - Oracle databases can integrate with all sorts of web APIs and front end systems. You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but it's a little over the top to claim that it can't be done.
  - Maarten88 9y ago
    > Oracle databases can integrate with all sorts of web APIs and front end systems Of course, however the problem is not a technical one. IT suppliers simply use their ownership of the software and support/maintenance contracts as leverage to claim a stake in any project connecting to 'their' software, and make their customers pay through the nose for anything they want.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    " You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but it's a little over the top to claim that it can't be done." It can't be done in a business if the vendor decides it costs too much or will be done in a way unsupported for good reasons. Whereas, with FOSS, they might pay someone to fix that or someone might do it themselves. The arbitrary costs and limitations the proprietary vendors can force on locked-in users is an important risk of their model for users.
youdontknowtho 9y ago
Yeah, it's click-bait. There are also lots of non Microsoft systems in use in Europe. It's just as complex of an environment as anywhere else in the world. This was an article for Microsoft haters to upvote each other for saying the same thing they have been saying for years.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> Even so, if they are using Excel/Word, the Office Open XML file formats are ISO/IEC standards, not proprietary. You aren't serious about that, are you?
confounded 9y ago
> The operating system that runs on a system has no bearing on how the data for various applications is stored It's not impossible for a motivated user to go against every UI (dark) pattern to keep work on an open format, but it's so unlikely as to be irrelevant. While the file formats may be open, it's widely known that MS keep enough secret sauce in Office so that an MS Excel nightmare won't open correctly in LibreOffice. Being able to decompress and parse the contents of the file (the open part) is not the same as humans being able to interactively retrieve information from it. The user's intuition is to blame LibreOffice, but as technologists we should recognize that if you won't ship a working reference implementation for effective use of your 'open standard', then it's just malicious marketing.

fimdomeio 9y ago

When this news circulated around one month ago in Portugal it was put in more harsh terms as somewhat a form of digital colonialism.

danarmak 9y ago

Although it's not said explicitly in the article, there's an interpretation of the subject that is both literal and true. Microsoft distributes constant opaque silent updates to all modern Windows systems. With Windows 10, some editions cannot even postpone installing those updates for long. An update deliberately bricking Windows computers, targeted to all of Europe, a country, an organization, or an individual's home. That is, quite literally, a digital killswitch. Of course Microsoft the company wouldn't do such a thing as long as it's following its own interests. But, being an non-EU entity, it could conceivably be forced by US authorities. Or, of course, the secure distribution channel could be hacked. It's far more likely that an attacker would distribute an update that merely backdoors all systems; but if done as an act of war (or terrorism), bricking is a somewhat plausible goal. As the article correctly notes, the same problem affects most other software; it's just that Microsoft Windows is both so widely used and so infrastructure-critical (you can't replace it with a different OS and keep running your native Windows applications). OSX and iOS have minority market shares and you can buy competing products. Android phones and Linux distributions don't have a single update channel for all of them. Non-operating-system software generally isn't installed on most computers and has alternatives for most of its users. Windows is in a pretty unique position.

abandonliberty 9y ago
You're right! It's rarely about who creates the backdoor/update channel/law but about who can leverage and abuse it (hacker, next president, etc). We are slowly starting to realize how big these issues are. I hope.
- pepve 9y ago
  Ahem, the next president?
  - rcthompson 9y ago
    That ties into the overall point of the comment that the person using the backdoor may not be the one who created/mandated it, i.e. one president that people trust mandates a backdoor but never uses it improperly, but the next president after them is more unscrupulous and uses that backdoor for nefarious purposes, effectively piggy-backing on the trust of the previous president. The point is that it might not be appropriate to give someone the keys to the castle even if you trust them completely not to abuse that power, because people don't last forever in a position and that power will eventually pass to a successor who may be less trustworthy.

anonymous_3821 9y ago

Can't wait for the ms-paid crowd of anti-FOSS, .net-lover teens on HN which shows up everytime to praise ms while shit on FOSS.

kevindqc 9y ago
Did you really create an account just to say that?
sctb 9y ago
We've banned these accounts that you created just to violate the guidelines with.

nebabyte 9y ago

Micro "It's not like we can just flip a switch" soft (Though I guess it requires a broader umbrella of 'MS dickery with networks' as the Xbone debacle was you being forced to be online at MS' behest, and this is sort of the opposite)

shmerl 9y ago

Time to ditch Windows for Linux.

nebabyte 9y ago
The best time for that was roughly a decade ago, but yes; the second best time is always 'now'.
- Melk 9y ago
  I remember this being discussed a decade ago. The irony was that in most cases it was abandoned because migrating cost more than the annual IT budget. And since no politician ever plans a decade ahead, here we are.
  - dandelion_lover 9y ago
    Still, there are successful migrations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
    - FireBeyond 9y ago
      All good things come to an end: "February 2017 - Politicians discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client.[42]"
      - dandelion_lover 9y ago
        Hopefully, it's far from the end. The fight continues [unfortunately only in German]: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Muenchner-IT-Leiter-zu-LiMux-Es-gibt-keine-groesseren-technischen-Probleme-3644868.html?wt_mc=rss.ho.beitrag.atom https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Muenchner-IT-Leiter-... In short, there are no technical problems whatsoever. It's just a strong lobbying...
- deleted 9y ago
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faragon 9y ago

TL;DR: clickbait.

idobai 9y ago

The one-vendor theory and the herd mentality did and does a great disservice for tech, humanity and its rights. We should concentrate more on open standards and software freedom to avoid all the trouble.

alphabettsy 9y ago

I would much rather see governments embrace and contribute to Open Source software available to all, they could even pay 3rd parties to maintain and service.

Osiris 9y ago
Some have tried and have gone back to Windows[1] [1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-of-munich-now-wants-to-abandon-linux-and-switch-back-to-windows https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-of-...
- tpalix 9y ago
  The post's author mentioned it - it was an obvious bribery since the major of munich considers itself an ms fanatic.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Here's some previous discussion on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642820
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vmarsy 9y ago
  Yes, but also others have tried and have not gone back (yet?) like GendBuntu[1]. Munich was about 15,000 computers [2], GendBuntu is 70,000. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu [2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxs-munich-crisis-crunch-vote-locks-city-on-course-for-windows-return/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxs-munich-crisis-crunch-vot...
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  But there are som hints, that the decision to "go back" might have been politicaly motivated. Like relocating the microsoft central in germany to munich ... But on the other hand, there were many flaws in the system, but many in the OSS-community did not want to acknowledge, because it is easier to shift the blame to evil conspiring microsoft, than to admit, that linux and libre office is not perfect. Which is really, really stupid, because how can it be technically as good and polished as microsoft products, given there is so much more money behind them. And even though the linux kernel might be now even better than microsoft - that is not at all the case for Desktop, Drivers, Stability, Programms, etc.

andmarios 9y ago

Imo the thing with the public sector, is that it is so large that it probably could fund both an OS and a productivity suite easily and that would be a net gain, both from a freedom perspective and for the economy at large. I am all for entrepreneurship and I do think that companies and competition create progress. But when one company reaches the level of Microsoft, where every year we learn how many billions Bill Gates' bank account increased —I do know that he helps with his money but still, his bank account does increase—, it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.

blackoil 9y ago
Bill gates money isn't sitting in couches, it is invested back in economy. And given the fact that his total wealth is constantly increasing despite giving away billions, shows it is invested quite efficiently.
gnode 9y ago
> it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad. Like anyone with significant wealth, Bill Gates's wealth is mostly in non-cash investments, whereby the capital is used for enterprise. A more sensible argument might be that Microsoft is successful because of anti-competitive practises / exploiting a monopoly, rather than adding value.
- enugu 9y ago
  Even if it was hoarded as cash, this shouldnt matter. Less meal tickets floating around means that the each ticket gets more food. If Bill Gates is using the money for consuming resources(say making a huge building), this affects the economy as there is an opportunity cost(the consumed resources could have been used elsewhere). One exception is monetary crises where hoarding has a negative impact, but thats not the usual situation. There is a strong case for redistribution of wealth on its own terms and social good.
scholia 9y ago
Bill Gates no longer owns a significant amount of Microsoft stock. Ballmer was the largest shareholder the last time I looked. Gates isn't hoarding anything, and in any case, all his wealth is going to charity.

OldBlueBear 9y ago

This shows just shows how stupid the guys who contract for (EU) government IT, and their political masters who are supposed to be directing them. Any software that not built from the ground up to be secure is unlikely to be, it is not something that can be bolted on. Various version of Windows needed to be heavenly hacked to meet even the most basic DoD-CETCS (RedBook) standard back in the 1990s. And I doubt it is any better now. That some public services dumped Microsoft years ago suggest this lock-in problem is almost as old as commercial computing.

ordu 9y ago
I cannot believe they are stupid. On the contrary they are clever enough to side with MS.

Theodores 9y ago

I think there is a bigger problem - using Microsoft Office means that an organisation is stuck in 1990's ways of working. The web should replace these tools that were developed for personal computers that came with floppy disk drives instead of ethernet connections. Companies 'stuck' on old-fashioned Microsoft Office also have to present information to customers and internal stakeholders, so they hire a 'web department' that then becomes the new typing pool. Instead of dictated or hand-written things that get typed up on 'Wordperfect' (MS Office killed the typing pool for good), we now have Word documents or Excel spreadsheets that some 'web person' has to then copy onto some CMS or other system powered by a SQL database. I did open a 'legacy spreadsheet' today so I appreciate that there is still some life in having data that way, however I cannot remember the last time I had a use case for a wordprocessor, Microsoft or otherwise. I also know Microsoft do 'sharepoint' and a few other web things but not many 'real' websites have gone for the Redmond solution, 10% according to the survey I just Googled: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-... Although 10% isn't quite into Windows Phone territory of pointlessness, I can't imagine setting out today with a new project and instantly thinking 'Microsoft'. I think the Microsoft problem will cure itself much like how the old typing pool died - people get old, they retire, new people come along and learn how to do stuff with the new tools, the more efficient processes and the demands of the time.

kpil 9y ago
I think you vastly underestimate the number of businesses critical processes in huge international companies that uses Microsoft Excel.
- Theodores 9y ago
  I work with a lot of these 'business critical processes' done in Excel. Too often that information is squirrelled away on some 'business critical spreadsheet' and not shared properly in the organisation. There was also a time when typing pools were totally essential, we don't defend typing pools and insist on having them now though.

amiga-workbench 9y ago

Government systems simply should not be running proprietary software.

batrat 9y ago
I agree with you, but... There is a HUGE problem with this statement. 90% of the devices that are bought require windows. Every single microscope, ID reader, card reader, access system, detection system, defence devices, advanced cameras, radars, etc. provide drivers and/or software, that I know, offer drivers/apps only for windows. Even they make a plan to move from windows, it will take years, in this time, every acquisition will be made for windows. A common use for these devices/pc's is more than 5 years. Heck i've seen tools that are used even after 15 years because they worked and no money/desire to replace them. Of course you can negotiate, or request support for other operating systems, but that means extra money, training, etc. Even in the current state it's hard to get good IT people, programmers, sysadmins, etc. It will be harder to get linux admins. Also it will take years to teach people to use another OS. And to end: have you seen custom software made for governments? 50% just slap a program that requires x version of .net, some c++ redistributable and requires to run only as admin or only xp, 40% just slap a java abomination or applet and call it a day, 9% make a nice piece of software but just like everyone else after they deliver the software they forget about the support or patch 1-2 things and they are gone. ALL OF THIS is happening mainly because the state doesn't have trained people and they don't know what to ask from devs & because they don't give a shi*t about they money they spend.
- amiga-workbench 9y ago
  I've often thought that the British government should have an in-house team of developers to work on services for local authorities and public facing institutions. It seems every time a contractor gets involved the tax-payer gets a good fucking, think of all the accrued billable hours taken up by redundant layers of manglement pontificating, the endless reworks and finally the extortionate support contract to keep the end product limping along.
- fulafel 9y ago

eksemplar 9y ago

The thing people in technology forget is that the most expensive resource in government is the people who work there. Every person in my IT department is top of their game, everyone of them has been continually honing their skill sets and are following their interests. This has put us a head of a lot of other municipalities and a lot of private companies. We've had to send ADFS and Azure consultants back because our crew was better, as an example. Those people live and breathe Microsoft. Those people are the reason we didn't have to renew our server room, when we decided to go own-cloud in a major hosting center instead, and they are they reason we'll soon be able to move our cloud from rental to Azure. Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce. I'm certain we could retrain our current staff, but a lot of them wouldn't want to, because the truth is, if they wanted to be working with non-Microsoft technologies then they would have been snatched up by our "competition" already. I think open source should play an important role in government, and I think that role should increase steadily going forward, but I also think people and reason should come before an ideology. With 370 different IT-systems of various magnitude we already have some that run on Linux. JBOSS and Wildfly are big in government, but out of our entire system portfolio only a fraction of the systems even have non-Microsoft alternatives. Other systems are on 8 year contracts, making it impossible to swap them out overnight even if we wanted to. Which we don't because we would need to replace every system, and get every employee on board with open source alternatives in order to save the insignificant Microsoft licensing fees which make up less than 1% of our IT budget. Sure, Europe is bound to Microsoft and that can be problematic. What if Trump truly goes apeshit for instance? Then we would be royally fucked. The truth is that there is no viable alternative that won't be ridiculously exoensive and take up to 50 years to fully implement. With everything heading for the cloud it might not even make sense. The only cloud options for a huge part of the European public sector are labeled with Google, Amazaon or Azure - and none of them would make the legislative challenges or licenses any less of an issue. At least with Microsoft, we have a company who has been really open to quickly and efficiently meeting European demands.

shmerl 9y ago
> Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce. It's worth doing it, to get rid of the sick MS lock-in. Breaking the catch 22 needs to start from somewhere.

kardianos 9y ago

I have used Linux as my primary desktop system for over ten years. Usability really sucks. I'm not talking about a new UX model, systemd vs sysv, or wayland vs xorg. I'm talking about not needing to know about unix-isms to run a desktop operating system. Gnome and KDE are okay-ish now. Honestly the best desktop system for linux I've seen is Deepin https://www.deepin.org/en/ https://www.deepin.org/en/ , which is produced by a Chinese based group and marketed mainly at Chinese audiences. It installs updates on reboot, which removes many corner cases for desktop users. It has a nice dedicated admin panel that feels like a single interface rather than 20 different panels glued together. It focuses on efficient desktop use rather than some new hotness UI concept which Unity and Gnome3 both got infatuated with. The desktop interface is fast and gets out of your way, but providing useful quick tools to open, close, and switch apps. Why do I think governments haven't used more open source? Because we care more about systemd vs sysv then a single good consistent UI. Because we think writing desktop components in javascript and python will give good (enough) performance that won't feel sluggish; hint, they won't. Because coders (often) care more about how their code looks, using the slow interpreted language they know, or "getting the job done" (as they define it), then they do about concrete performance evaluation, benchmarking, and end user use cases and long term person off the street testing. Sorry, that was kinda a rant. But seriously, checkout the deepin desktop. New users can be really productive in it quickly and maintain it themselves.

michel-slm 9y ago
the Gnome desktop (at least on Fedora) also delays updates until shutdown/reboot time. but points taken on Javascript and Python. From what I'm seeing in Gnome Builder updates though, they're really interested in getting to a point where Rust can be used for writing Gnome apps.
- pmontra 9y ago
  Not on Ubuntu with Gnome flashback. I get an update popup at least any other day with the new versions of some packages or security updates. Reboots are for switching to new versions of the kernel. I confess I sometime postpone reboots for even a couple of months. I suspend my laptop and I have too many open applications (desktop or background) to be willing to close and restart all of them. If it's really like that, no Fedora for me.

amelius 9y ago

For other industries, roles may be reversed. For example, another headline could be: the US is living under ASML's digital killswitch

submeta 9y ago

I tried to migrate to Ubuntu in 2011 and gave up because I was missing apps like Evernote or Visio. - I moved away from MS products in 2015, replaced my Thinkpad + Windows 7 with a Mac, replaced MS Visio with Omnigraffle, abandoned Visual Basic and migrated to web Apps (Django mainly). The only MS product I use is MS Office (via a subscription) on my Mac. This article made me think: Do I really need MS Office? Occasionally I use Word for 1 to 10 page documents. Then there is MS Excel. I used to use it to do data analysis with it, used Pivot Tables extensively. But now I mostly use it for simple tables. Finally there's PowerPoint. I have created many businesses plans with it. (I used MS Access as well, to create quick line of business solutions, but I'm trying to do this in Python + Django now.) Now I'm considering trying to move away from MS Office as well. Because actually all that keeps me using it is a vague feeling that I might miss something if I don't. Or others expecting me to send them Office documents (instead of Libre Office) - Germany is MS Office land.

Lev1a 9y ago
Another German here. I have abandoned MS Office in favor of OpenOffice/LibreOffice years ago and when I have to send documents I just send .pdf's but if I REALLY had to send .doc, .xls etc. LibreOffice can im- and export those formats too.

msabalau 9y ago

Amusing that this article is going out as Europe is being hammered by ransomware on unpatched Windows computers. If the US wanted to take out all EU computers, presumably they'd use an airburst nuke, and target all the electronics, not just the Windows boxes. Of course, if things got that bad, presumably the "logical" course of action would be to scour the continent, rather than let a pissed off high skilled population live to join Putin.

sqeaky 9y ago
War is not about killing your enemy and breaking his things. That is the job of warriors, but not how you win a war. It would immensely benefit the US in a war with Europe to silently snoop on all those systems and act like we couldn't. Use the information to perform lower cost higher gain military operations. Killing the populace En masse makes nothing but enemies, but leveraging information can make you friends. Imagine if the US used is massive infiltration to find people sympathetic to its cause and gave them guns and bombs with Russian labeling. Those people do most of the damage in the country and we swoop in with targeted precision bombing and cost effective troop deployments to arrest huge amounts of heads of states and legislatures. We could defeat Europe in a year and at least some portions of Europeans would thank us. Then we move on to the part the US sucks at, occupying.

mrtree 9y ago

Day 1 Microsoft uses kill switch. Day 2 we switch to linux. No problem.

cmurf 9y ago

I'm not overly sympathetic, governments should be doing more to support open source software. Public money should be used to make public software. The idea of using public money to support proprietary software and formats really bugs me. If you want to do this for your own personal or business reasons, fine. But public resources should be used to make existing public owned (effectively we all own free open source software) software better.

bradford 9y ago

[disclaimer, MS employee here] Question: If governments could inspect and audit MS source code, would the concerns brought up in the article be addressed? This is a clarifying question, not a loaded one. To avoid any surprises: governments, including the EU can and do audit MS source code (public source, for example: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-governments-inspect-source-code-for-security-issues.2433915/ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-gover...)

mjevans 9y ago
There's also the issue of the data. It should always be accessible in a format that anyone is free to inter-operate with (E.G. no patent restrictions), and preferably in one or more protocols/apis/formats that fulfill this criteria. Critically it must be possible to utilize the data without proprietary products. Government records need to stand the test of time. Just like we can read ink on paper today, in the future preserved records need to remain readable. Libre formats ensure that there is a known, implementable solution. However they also make it more likely that someone will already have that solution.
jlg23 9y ago
The code review opportunities are joke. The only chance to review a mere million lines of codes thoroughly is to throw a million eyes on it and open communication about findings. The way those are done now, they are Valium for politicians and a cash cow for those doing the "audits".
- tormeh 9y ago
  >a million eyes on it and open communication about findings That's what the Chinese government does internally. Ba-dum-tssh.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
[disclaimer, read the article] No. The problem is not the existing code, but the potential for forced updates with new code.

lucb1e 9y ago

There is lots of truth in this. I've been saying all of this for years and am trying to raise awareness whenever I get the opportunity, while not trying to be pushy (that just doesn't work, people need to want to). Two highlights of the article: > European children are educated in Microsoft Office, which is given to schools and universities for free, which some call the “crack model” — getting people hooked for free and then start charging them. God this is so true. Every year emails go out "you can get office for free via $ourSchoolName!" What do you mean indoctrination and free advertisement? I wanted to reply to all with a message in a similar tone (about libreoffice being free and not a trial) but never found a good phrasing that would do anything beyond provoke a backlash (also when discussing it with like-minded friends). > Security risk All eggs (not just "all your eggs", no, all eggs) in one basket is a terrible idea for obvious reasons.

nom 9y ago

Hm, what operating systems are used by governments outside of Europe? Doesn't everybody have to rely on Windows?

keth 9y ago

I always wonder why the european countries don't work together to build their own software. Or at least a single country looking at germany, where each city seems to brew it's own stuff.

Taek 9y ago

If I were a country that was not allied with the US, or otherwise feared potential power plays by the US against my nation, I would not use any closed source software originating from the US. Same applies to China, to Russia, and any other nation with a well funded cybersecurity division. A nation could order a software producer under their jurisdiction to write an automatic updater pushing malware to collect: National secrets Credentials Access to critical systems And who knows what else if we are being creative. We use our computers for everything. Coded source software, especially with automatic updates, is systemic risk and it's going to bite a lot of people really badly if a cyber-competent nation ever decides to initiate WW3

ps28 9y ago

i went thru all the comments here and maybe it's a dumb question - but I'd assumed that the situation described applies to all/most governments? Is the situation vastly different e.g. in the U.S.?

booleandilemma 9y ago

Is there any possibility that China has a hardware backdoor in our iPhones? (and whatever other devices they make?)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Xoros 9y ago

Well, regarding today's massive ransomware attack based on a Microsoft security flaw, it's a little bit ironic

partycoder 9y ago

And most countries on Earth are living under Monsanto's food killswitch.

Proven 9y ago

Bullshit socialist article