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Great. Just great. This is days after I learned about the new Germany-wide deal with Microsoft for licensing their software and services, so it perfectly fuels

Great. Just great. This is days after I learned about the new Germany-wide deal with Microsoft for licensing their software and services, so it perfectly fuels my fears. Before, it was mostly just a volume license for Windows and Office, but now it's the full arsenal, M365, Teams, and, announced very proudly by our University, we'll be moving our Active Directory to the hybrid cloud. Every Student and Staff will automatically have their personal data deployed to the Azure cloud. Isn't that great? Finally Germany is working on tech incompet^Windependence! What could go wrong? I mean, they assured they'd form a working group with other Universities about remaining concerns regarding privacy issues in Windows 10 and planning to confront Microsoft about them. I guess Microsoft is shivering with fears and busy removing all telemetry right now. Other great changes form this new deal are that Universities now have to pay a full Windows license for every employee, no matter how many hours they work; before you'd pay by how many full-time jobs all the employees would make up for. That means most Universities pay twice as much now. And did you know the new deal explicitly forbids remote access to any Windows machine under this license? You have to pay extra for that. What a strange coincidence regarding the current epidemic. Universities' legal departments are clueless whether this only applies to RDP, or alternative 3rd party tools as well (or rather whether this would hold up in court). This is the first time the deal is made nation-wide, you'd think this puts our Universities in a better position, but we got fucked in every way possible. I realize this is only marginally related with the original post, but 1) sorry, I just had to vent somewhere, this seemed just like the final straw, and 2) am I the weird one for seeing a problem in this trend? Universities were once driving innovation in technology, students were fiddling with emerging and expensive tech, but today we already have some Universities that don't even have their own datacenter anymore, everything is hosted elsewhere and maintained by contractors. Students access SaaS via a Browser. Walled gardens everywhere. This doesn't help.

iso1631 6y ago
> Universities' legal departments are clueless whether this only applies to RDP, or alternative 3rd party tools as well (or rather whether this would hold up in court). How about IP KVMs? How about non-IP KVMs? How about a long usb cable?
Semaphor 6y ago
Do you have a link (German or English)? I couldn’t find anything, and at first glance it doesn’t make any sense. There is no single agency, group or person MS could negotiate with nationwide, universities are pretty independent and education is on the state level.
- fps_doug 6y ago
  Yes, Universities can simply refuse to participate in this deal, but it puts them in a worse position, as previously, the deal was usually made on state level, which afaik no state does anymore. I'm in BaWü and now the choice is either negotiating with MS individually or taking the Bundesvertrag. I think technically they are still considered individual deals per state, but they are effectively the same everywhere ("Campus und School-Rahmenvertrag"). E.g.: https://www.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/de/microsoft-landesvertrag https://www.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/de/microsoft-landesvertrag https://www.rz.uni-freiburg.de/services/beschaffung/software/microsoft2021 https://www.rz.uni-freiburg.de/services/beschaffung/software... https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/software/mslandesvertrag.php https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/software/mslandesvertrag.php
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    I had never heard of this, thanks for the explanation and the links!
rorykoehler 6y ago
Windows 10 home edition doesn’t even offer full disk encryption. That’s how much Microsoft cares about security.
- hulitu 6y ago
  MS full disk encription is like FBI (or MI6) full disk encription. If your wife does not know the key it does not mean it is secure when everybody else knows it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
merb 6y ago
that is a stupid comment. the techies inside unversities are horrendously underfunded. m365 at least will bring consistency and will probably also make your date more secure to third party actors. it also comes with a5 licenses with a special and cheap deal so it's basically ridicolous that all other customers are paying for this. > but today we already have some Universities that don't even have their own datacenter anymore, everything is hosted elsewhere and maintained by contractors. Students access SaaS via a Browser. Walled gardens everywhere tons of software was already from external contractors. I'm not sure but some people like you are living in bubbles. of course it would be possible to have everything open source. BUT with our current governement M365 is the best solution. the cdu sleeped for over 20 years to have a great open source solution. so it would be impossible to have something integrated ready within a short window, it would also blow a huge budget. the only thing you can be mad about is our government, the m365 is the best thing that could happen. btw. I hate the strange bashing against american companies, as if german companies are any better (they are not). btw. I'm german and everytime I see something like that I'm mad, we do everything to even have a SaaS vendor, with ridiculous data privacy (only if you are an american company, for german company's the authoritis are looking away or making special rules) and than our governement fucks every citizen by making rules that don't even work together with the privacy rules. time to relocate. everything starts to be stupid and the wrong questions are asked.
- fps_doug 6y ago
  > the techies inside unversities are horrendously underfunded. m365 at least will bring consistency and will probably also make your date more secure to third party actors. True, but no reason to dig an even deeper hole. > of course it would be possible to have everything open source. BUT with our current governement M365 is the best solution. the cdu sleeped for over 20 years to have a great open source solution. so it would be impossible to have something integrated ready within a short window, it would also blow a huge budget. the only thing you can be mad about is our government, the m365 is the best thing that could happen. You're completely ignoring that I'm complaining about the move to the cloud, and the restrictiveness of the contract. Even just continuing the old contract and staying with offline-Office would have been better. > btw. I hate the strange bashing against american companies, as if german companies are any better (they are not). I never even hinted at this being about Microsoft being American. I don't want my University to upload my PII to "the cloud" so I can use Word in a Browser. You're basically saying we shouldn't even be trying anymore. Why not shut down the CS departments of universities entirely and just hand out accounts to Skillshare et al., so those still interested in CS can learn from there? There's nothing left a University could offer that you can't access from there. Maybe a couple credits for the Azure cloud if you need to do something computationally intensive. Your University surely doesn't have anything left in-house for this anyways.
swiley 6y ago
I'm continually shocked at the popularity of Microsoft software inside organizations like this, especially with its horrible track record. I guess software is weird that way: the market forces are almost completely inverted which is how companies like Microsoft,Oracle, and IBM keep going.
- hulitu 6y ago
  I'm not at all shocked. The popularity of such SW is direct proportional with the bribe money paid to government officials. Remember the trip MS made to Münich ?
  - cambalache 6y ago
    That's why I laugh and laugh about people here,reddit or twitter jerking off about how what a wonderful human philanthropist Bill Gates is, as if among the other awful things MS did is not to have created enforced monopolies in almost all third world countries governments by bribing their officials to accept MS products, and funding FUD campaigns against any movement to open source/free software.
varispeed 6y ago
I find it bizarre that after Stasi and other stuff, German people are not opposed to massive personal data collection. It's the same thing, except that instead of the state your data is owned by private entity that can technically do anything they want with it. It is scary.
- skytreader 6y ago
  Foreigner's two cents: it's not that they don't care---the abysmal availability of Google Street View attests to that among others---but rather a combination of (a) masses (and hence bureaucrats) not having as comprehensive a definition of "personal-data invasive" as those that work in tech and (b) this German trust in any document that can be ratified/made into a legal proclamation. (a) isn't really uniquely German, of course. Most people not in tech, though privacy-conscious, won't really bat an eyelid on Windows 10 telemetry, Instagram's excess of data gathered, etc. With (b), I bet the Universities are satisfied that Microsoft has all clearances/certifications to be GDPR-compatible or whatever else. That pacifies their cynicism. If shit hits the fan, the courts can worry about it. The important thing is they checked all the boxes in the paperwork with sufficient diligence. Again, just my two cents. I'm not even European but it seems to me Switzerland in real-life is what Germany is in most people's imaginations. But again, that's just more of my opinions.
- unixhero 6y ago
  They are. Hence GDPR was invented by the EU and specifically Germany.
- watwut 6y ago
  I mean ... Stasi and Gestapo kept different kind of data. You would have to do a more and different kind of analysis to make it into argument that makes sense. And seems like the people who throw around Stasi dont really know what that organization done. Contemporary Germany has bureaucratic tendencies.

iso1631 6y ago

> Universities' legal departments are clueless whether this only applies to RDP, or alternative 3rd party tools as well (or rather whether this would hold up in court). How about IP KVMs? How about non-IP KVMs? How about a long usb cable?

Semaphor 6y ago

Do you have a link (German or English)? I couldn’t find anything, and at first glance it doesn’t make any sense. There is no single agency, group or person MS could negotiate with nationwide, universities are pretty independent and education is on the state level.

fps_doug 6y ago
Yes, Universities can simply refuse to participate in this deal, but it puts them in a worse position, as previously, the deal was usually made on state level, which afaik no state does anymore. I'm in BaWü and now the choice is either negotiating with MS individually or taking the Bundesvertrag. I think technically they are still considered individual deals per state, but they are effectively the same everywhere ("Campus und School-Rahmenvertrag"). E.g.: https://www.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/de/microsoft-landesvertrag https://www.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/de/microsoft-landesvertrag https://www.rz.uni-freiburg.de/services/beschaffung/software/microsoft2021 https://www.rz.uni-freiburg.de/services/beschaffung/software... https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/software/mslandesvertrag.php https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/software/mslandesvertrag.php
- Semaphor 6y ago
  I had never heard of this, thanks for the explanation and the links!

rorykoehler 6y ago

Windows 10 home edition doesn’t even offer full disk encryption. That’s how much Microsoft cares about security.

hulitu 6y ago
MS full disk encription is like FBI (or MI6) full disk encription. If your wife does not know the key it does not mean it is secure when everybody else knows it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

merb 6y ago

that is a stupid comment. the techies inside unversities are horrendously underfunded. m365 at least will bring consistency and will probably also make your date more secure to third party actors. it also comes with a5 licenses with a special and cheap deal so it's basically ridicolous that all other customers are paying for this. > but today we already have some Universities that don't even have their own datacenter anymore, everything is hosted elsewhere and maintained by contractors. Students access SaaS via a Browser. Walled gardens everywhere tons of software was already from external contractors. I'm not sure but some people like you are living in bubbles. of course it would be possible to have everything open source. BUT with our current governement M365 is the best solution. the cdu sleeped for over 20 years to have a great open source solution. so it would be impossible to have something integrated ready within a short window, it would also blow a huge budget. the only thing you can be mad about is our government, the m365 is the best thing that could happen. btw. I hate the strange bashing against american companies, as if german companies are any better (they are not). btw. I'm german and everytime I see something like that I'm mad, we do everything to even have a SaaS vendor, with ridiculous data privacy (only if you are an american company, for german company's the authoritis are looking away or making special rules) and than our governement fucks every citizen by making rules that don't even work together with the privacy rules. time to relocate. everything starts to be stupid and the wrong questions are asked.

fps_doug 6y ago
> the techies inside unversities are horrendously underfunded. m365 at least will bring consistency and will probably also make your date more secure to third party actors. True, but no reason to dig an even deeper hole. > of course it would be possible to have everything open source. BUT with our current governement M365 is the best solution. the cdu sleeped for over 20 years to have a great open source solution. so it would be impossible to have something integrated ready within a short window, it would also blow a huge budget. the only thing you can be mad about is our government, the m365 is the best thing that could happen. You're completely ignoring that I'm complaining about the move to the cloud, and the restrictiveness of the contract. Even just continuing the old contract and staying with offline-Office would have been better. > btw. I hate the strange bashing against american companies, as if german companies are any better (they are not). I never even hinted at this being about Microsoft being American. I don't want my University to upload my PII to "the cloud" so I can use Word in a Browser. You're basically saying we shouldn't even be trying anymore. Why not shut down the CS departments of universities entirely and just hand out accounts to Skillshare et al., so those still interested in CS can learn from there? There's nothing left a University could offer that you can't access from there. Maybe a couple credits for the Azure cloud if you need to do something computationally intensive. Your University surely doesn't have anything left in-house for this anyways.

swiley 6y ago

I'm continually shocked at the popularity of Microsoft software inside organizations like this, especially with its horrible track record. I guess software is weird that way: the market forces are almost completely inverted which is how companies like Microsoft,Oracle, and IBM keep going.

hulitu 6y ago
I'm not at all shocked. The popularity of such SW is direct proportional with the bribe money paid to government officials. Remember the trip MS made to Münich ?
- cambalache 6y ago
  That's why I laugh and laugh about people here,reddit or twitter jerking off about how what a wonderful human philanthropist Bill Gates is, as if among the other awful things MS did is not to have created enforced monopolies in almost all third world countries governments by bribing their officials to accept MS products, and funding FUD campaigns against any movement to open source/free software.

varispeed 6y ago

I find it bizarre that after Stasi and other stuff, German people are not opposed to massive personal data collection. It's the same thing, except that instead of the state your data is owned by private entity that can technically do anything they want with it. It is scary.

skytreader 6y ago
Foreigner's two cents: it's not that they don't care---the abysmal availability of Google Street View attests to that among others---but rather a combination of (a) masses (and hence bureaucrats) not having as comprehensive a definition of "personal-data invasive" as those that work in tech and (b) this German trust in any document that can be ratified/made into a legal proclamation. (a) isn't really uniquely German, of course. Most people not in tech, though privacy-conscious, won't really bat an eyelid on Windows 10 telemetry, Instagram's excess of data gathered, etc. With (b), I bet the Universities are satisfied that Microsoft has all clearances/certifications to be GDPR-compatible or whatever else. That pacifies their cynicism. If shit hits the fan, the courts can worry about it. The important thing is they checked all the boxes in the paperwork with sufficient diligence. Again, just my two cents. I'm not even European but it seems to me Switzerland in real-life is what Germany is in most people's imaginations. But again, that's just more of my opinions.
unixhero 6y ago
They are. Hence GDPR was invented by the EU and specifically Germany.
watwut 6y ago
I mean ... Stasi and Gestapo kept different kind of data. You would have to do a more and different kind of analysis to make it into argument that makes sense. And seems like the people who throw around Stasi dont really know what that organization done. Contemporary Germany has bureaucratic tendencies.