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This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built so
by abarwick 4y ago
This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.
- clairity 4y agoah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard. also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.
- Jcowell 4y ago> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. GP never says that you’re naive, but the comment was.
- clairity 4y agoeither way (intent can also be multi-modal), it signals a triggered response and is entirely superfluous and distracting. it's worth setting that aside, even after writing it, and examining the emotional underpinnings that led to the response in the first place. we learn a lot about our own subconsciousness that way.
- ska 4y ago>, ... it signals a triggered response This is, at best, a stretch.
- simonswords82 4y agoI have no idea what it is you're trying to say but I did laugh that your username is clarity! :)
- clairity 4y agoexcellent, my diabolical plan to rule the world via dry humor is working as designed.
- scarface74 4y agoThe average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-saas-apps-yearly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s... I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software. Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- clairity 4y agonot sure that it's relevant and 'large' is subjective, but yes, i stewarded the technology migration of a core product suite for a prior employer, which incidentally had government agencies as a prominent customer segment. i'm not suggesting that governments can only use internally developed or open-source software, i'm saying corporate interests should be firewalled away from goverment. so a locally-installed office suite incorporating no surveillance tech doesn't have the ancillary corporate interests attached to qualify it for being firewalled.
- scarface74 4y agoYou migrated a product. Were you involved in migrating the entire infrastructure of an entire state? Yes, I speak from experience, migrations and modernizations are kind of my job.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quantum_magpie 4y agoAnd if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.
- mmanfrin 4y ago> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument, e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.
- clairity 4y agoarguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.
- lovich 4y agoA car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately
- clairity 4y agoif you look carefully, the 3 sentences are disconnected. they don’t form a line of reasoning. if it had been starter, engine, and transmission, maybe you’d have a point, but instead it’s corroded battery, door handle, and tailpipe.
- lovich 4y agoI looked at it carefully, and I’m not seeing what you’re seeing unfortunately. I interpreted the naive comment as a separate summary of their opinion, and then the rest of the paragraph was the supporting explanation. He didn’t dismiss the idea because it was naive, it’s the reason it is naive is why he was saying it wouldn’t work
- jasonlotito 4y agoAh, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.
- robertlagrant 4y agoNone of it was ad hominem.
- alsetmusic 4y agoI didn’t read it as government can’t use commercial products. Just that the corps couldn’t influence politics. But I’m not the OP, so I can’t speak to what was intended.
- scale8 4y agoMore around the storing of data. This is why Scale8.com is on EU servers...
- itronitron 4y agoMost developed countries have several offices/agencies that already run 'home built' solutions, they just don't get talked about much.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 4y agoThey get talked about incessantly at the local Microsoft HQ.
- einpoklum 4y ago> are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?
- TurningCanadian 4y agoSharing a link to a document that others can edit in the cloud is much more convenient than emailing around a _final_v3(2).docx document.
- einpoklum 4y agoWell... there's Collabora online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo or Box/DropBox/other cloud storage services, which is less convenient than proper collaborative in-pace editing, but you can still get the file at the link, edit it and upload it.
- abarwick 4y agoI obviously can’t speak for all, even most, but back in my consulting days I can say the many US federal and state agencies use Azure AD and a litany of AWS services that are core to vital work streams. Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.
- oska 4y ago> Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department. You've just identified one very good reason that they shouldn't be dependent on a single, proprietary vendor. Really, I was surprised to find your original comment on Hacker News, especially with you ironically fronting it with calling other people naive.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoRussia has that. Just typewriters and stationary.
- jcelerier 4y agoIdk here in France there are cities and state-wide administrations with free/libre stacks based on Linux, LibreOffice, Zimbra and others and things seem to JustWork™. For instance the french Gendarmerie, the cities of Rennes and Arles...
- pyrale 4y agoArles is getting suckered by Microsoft, sadly [1]. Unfortunately all it takes is one idiot to get in office once to kill this kind of successful initiative that has been running for almost two decades. [1]: https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carolis-fait-planter-le-service-informatique https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carol...
- spoonjim 4y agoAre there any high functioning large companies that use Linux/LibreOffice/Zimbra? I suppose governments rarely aspire to be high functioning.
- quadrifoliate 4y agoUsing Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run. In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting. With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.
- hutzlibu 4y ago"Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run." Depends. When odf would be the standard maybe, but it isn't. Standard is microsoft office, and libre office is not 100% compatible. But you will still have to deal with lots of microsoft documents, from all the other agencies, ordinary people, companies, .. Meaning, when Munichs government tried to switch to oss a few years ago, they did indeed lost a lot of time with broken documents, templates, layouts etc. so they ultimately switched back (direct microsoft lobbying with even Bill Gates getting personally involved might have played a role, too). So I am all for an open standard, but this easier said, than done.
- sam0x17 4y agoSounds like it would create jobs too, that's a plus not a minus lol
- tvink 4y ago"Creating jobs" to inefficiently solve a solved task is not a good thing, it is society burning it's tax income. It is only good to create jobs when the output of those jobs is increased value.
- the_other 4y agoSlowing the flow of money out of the public purse and into a very small number of barely accountable global megacorps and private equity funds, whilst improving the employment prospects of the local population, sounds like it's worth the cost of repeat work. Also, nature loves a bit of redundancy. And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago> . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised but if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok).
- tildef 4y ago> Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised By whom? > if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok). By whom?
- the_other 4y ago> > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. > And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. I didn't say shut down the megacorps. Maybe they have use; I don't know. What I do know is they're unaccountable (like the shit bits of government). If government had to use open systems, the quality of those open systems would improve and compete better with the similar commercial ones. The public (and companies and other countries) then have a choice between the tools from the megacorps and the open tools. The public also gains/improves a resource. More competition. Probably better for everyone.
- Terry_Roll 4y agoRubbish, there has been a concertive effort by the US to undermine other countries including so called NATO allies in order to dominate the world, its been going of for decades. I refuse to use the NHS here in the UK because of the widespread use of Microsoft everywhere.
- throw827474737 4y agoless secure? can it get worse than ms, outlook and active directory foo? they incepted their own industry around their unsecurity, lol. terrible and more expensive is also a joke, but not as big, you still could got to ibm or oracle if you want to pay more for less, admitted
- ekianjo 4y agoyour whole argument is based on the assumption that proprietary software is superior in every single metric. thats just patently false.
- PontifexMinimus 4y ago> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source. > and more expensive to the tax payer As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.
- stickfigure 4y ago> As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?
- ehnto 4y agoThe assumption here seems to be that the government would be writing the software, but it would go out to market. This would be a fantastic opportunity for a local software company to put out something in the space. I'm foreseeing more of this kind of thing as data sovereignty becomes a more considered issue by governments. The other undertone I'm getting from this thread is that people think America has a monopoly on building software, and that's simply not the case. It's not hard to find companies doing really good work outside of the US. There is also nothing special about Office 365, it doesn't have a technology moat, it just has a surmountable interoperability moat and a social moat.
- PontifexMinimus 4y agoZero. Start off with using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Then add stuff as needed.
- inopinatus 4y agoThe legal and moral question is one of data sovereignty, not tools vendor. I suggest the GP comment be read with that context in mind.