12 ms·

The drive here is to reduce dependencies to locations the state itself have jurisdiction over i.e. things that can be controlled. It's essentially to avoid hav

The drive here is to reduce dependencies to locations the state itself have jurisdiction over i.e. things that can be controlled. It's essentially to avoid having the states data taken hostage when the slowly brewing conflict between America's lack of respect for it's foreign partners data protection regulation and the EU's very popular trend towards less and less tolerance for corporate data abuse comes to an head and we see actual blocks being mandated on high-security networks against US data harvesting companies(of which MS is but one).

Rinzler89 3y ago
And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Companies buy Office 365 subscriptions so they can focus on their main business and don't want to think about their office solution and want something that JustWorks which is already compatible with what everyone else uses. They have a business to run and money to makes, so spending extra time and effort on alternative office solutions with various degrees of compatibility, just to fight a virtual trade war, will slow then down significantly from their main business goal. Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? You think they don't have the technical know-how, or is it because it's not worth the effort and better use what everyone else is already using and focus your resoruces on what really matters?
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  Of course. Same thing will all those environmental laws shenanigans. Companies are better off investing in short-term gains and leave the governments taking care of the environment and digital accountability of its citizens.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? I don't think they will stop, but they will become much more hesitant. Concerning your other points: it is of similar economic importance for the company to invest in precautions to prevent that you are taken hostage of, in this case by Microsoft. Thus such measures are actually often in the company's self-interest in opposite to fighting a virtual trade war for someone else.
- morsch 3y ago
  Governments can take a longer and more strategic outlook than private enterprises. It's not even primarily about nationalistic trade wars: I want my tax euros to fund as little closed-source software as possible. It's crazy how much money even just our schools spend for software that can't be freely redistributed or modified. That said, I'm not holding my breath regarding the success of this most recent move.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - coffeeling 2y ago
    I mean, even aside that? If you spend the money on European developers instead, that's jobs and tax dollars here.
- guappa 3y ago
  You just do it like USA does: if you want to do business with the public sector, you must not rely on a foreign cloud.
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    What are the alternatives. Like, really. I get it: Hetzner and OVH exist. But what are the alternatives to AWS, GCP, Azure?
    - guappa 3y ago
      openstack
      - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        okay
      - LunaSea 3y ago
        No. OpenStack sucks to deploy and maintain with the result being an inferior cloud with a lack in services.
        guappa 3y ago
        The goal is not "superior", the goal is "USA can't kill our infrastructure pressing one button"
        LunaSea 3y ago
        The goal is also to have a usable cloud on which you can efficiently develop software. Otherwise we can simply go back to paper.
        prmoustache 3y ago
        The initial premise is wrong for a start. You don't need a cloud to efficiently develop software. I've worked in companies that were running kubernetes on prem. It was a PITA for kubernetes ops but from a developer perspective it wasn't much different than using the cloud in a large company. Cloud is very flexible for very small orgs that have little processes but once you get into a certain size with lots of processes, privileges separations and nomenclatures, it becomes so bureaucratic all flexibility of a cloud mostly disappear.
- etiennebausson 3y ago
  If the entities you depends on for funding migrate from Words to LibreOffice, then yes, you will consider moving as well. The network effect may be mostly considered in regard to social media, but it is just as powerful when it come to tools and file format. Administrations moving en-mass to open-sourced software would ensure a significant chunk of companies would follow.
  - pydry 3y ago
    This is precisely why Microsoft freaked out when Germany last tried this. It led to them inventing this nebulous "TCO" concept wherein they massively overestimated the costs surrounding moving to FOSS in order to try and convince clueless managerial stakeholders to stick with them.
    - pxc 3y ago
      > It led to them inventing this nebulous "TCO" concept Source? Is that phrase really a Microsoft invention?
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      To be fair in certain cases the cost might be very high and considerably higher than whatever the license/subscription fees paid to MS are. e.g. Libre Office doesn’t really have a drop-in replacement for Excel (for non trivial use cases. To be fair it still might be sufficient for the majority of users, but that would mean that some proportion of your workforce has to stay on Excel/Office which kind of beats the whole purpose).
      - rightbyte 3y ago
        Vendor lockin is no excuse leaking PI to MS though. You could buy some Office 2003 CD and use Excel locally.
        alemanek 3y ago
        Uh using an out of date and unsupported Excel version is a really bad idea. Lots of security vulnerabilities around VB scripting/macros which gives you the very real risk of being compromised by a malicious spreadsheet. Better to just switch where you can and invest resources into improving FOSS offerings to handle the use cases it currently can’t.
- Stranger43 3y ago
  If the alternative is not getting the security certifications required to operate legally in the sectors they depend on for revenue what alternative does an organization really have to seeking/implementation solutions in sync with the mandated regulations. And this is not an private company whose demise is insignificant to the society at large(as all companies must be in an functional capitalist economy) but the government itself instituting policies to protect itself from dependence on a single foreign company. And being told by an court to get off the o365 cloud is not an theoretical prospect for an European governmental organization as the EU commission found out about a month ago(https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/european-commissions-use-microsoft-365-infringes-data-protection-law-eu-institutions-and-bodies_en https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/pre...).
  - Grimeton 3y ago
    There's also this: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11/data-protection-impact-assessment-windows-10-enterprise https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11... from 2019.
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  > And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Well... yes, I think that's exactly the argument being made here. Reliance on foreign cloud infrastructure is a liability, and the US does not hold any of its companies accountable for blatantly unethical and reckless data practices. I'll admit LibreOffice is relatively underpowered and unintuitive, but I've been using it for years and I find the compatibility issues to be overblown. I'd hazard a bet that most employees of companies using MS Office could make the switch and be used to it within a couple weeks. Certainly a much, MUCH easier transition than one between ERPs, for example. > Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? SAP can be hosted entirely onsite, and at Google's scale that's almost certainly what they're doing. The problem is the infrastructure, not the origin of the software itself. Note how the EU never had anything against MS Exchange Servers.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  You don't need everyone switching over. Let's say that by next year, a total of 10% of orgs in the EU are using LibreOffice, and then Redmond is hit by a comet. It'd be painful for the other 90% to switch but there would be some familiarity with the process, whereas if there's an MS monoculture then it would take a whole lot longer and be a lot messier.
- kaliszad 3y ago
  > And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Most workers in most companies probably don't really need an entire Office suite. It is just they use Outlook and from time to time open a Word document that could've been a PDF or HTML form if they had better processes. For the same reason, most people don't really need to use Windows. However people use Windows, because a lot of "professional" software only ships for it and nobody is going to rewrite an app that the enterprise uses for the last 20 years to prevent the use of Windows or some of its particular version. If it was that easy, why would Windows XP or Windows 7 be still so wide-spread? > Companies buy Office 365 subscriptions so they can focus on their main business and don't want to think about their office solution and want something that JustWorks which is already compatible with what everyone else uses. The problem is, many programs in the Office suite don't just work. Being an admin in a larger organization you will face a broken .pst file basically every week. 10+ GB of emails seems to be a problem also considering the search speed etc. The level of engineering incompetence behind Outlook is high. It even has special conditional HTML just so Outlook renders some things correctly, because Microsoft is long term incapable of implementing a web engine to a degree that they had to adopt and adapt a competitors product (Chromium). Similarly for Excel. Most things that are in Excel shouldn't be and instead should be a table + some app in a database or a form + database backend. We have seen that during COVID-19, when essential health data was messed up because of wrong use of Excel but also because Excel just wasn't the right tool for the job frankly. We have been renaming genes or whatever, because Excel has insufficient auto-formatting algorithms and people have to learn how to prevent this - which is proof it doesn't "Just Work" for people. > They have a business to run and money to makes, so spending extra time and effort on alternative office solutions with various degrees of compatibility, just to fight a virtual trade war, will slow then down significantly from their main business goal. Most things in most companies should be formalized in digital forms backed by some processing backend. Most companies just are not very good at management therefore they fill these gaps by using more flexible tools where everybody can unfold their creativity generally making a mess making any kind of formalization much harder later on. No question there are also jobs where you need that flexibility, e.g. where you get data from people precisely in these formats and are expected to produce output in these formats for them too. Because people are generally opposed to change and don't want to learn, if they can avoid it. Much better tools are available for so many activities yet people usually opt for a product out of the Office suite. > Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? You think they don't have the technical know-how, or is it because it's not worth the effort and better use what everyone else is already using and focus your resoruces on what really matters? Because promotions are easier to get if you work on a product that makes money for the company (such as search + ads) or is a big cost center and a needed pre-condition for the business (such as the cloud infrastructure) and you can implement changes that safe the company a lot of money. However, don't underestimate how much SAP was customized for Google. It could be that SAP is just the core of a much bigger system.

Rinzler89 3y ago

And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Companies buy Office 365 subscriptions so they can focus on their main business and don't want to think about their office solution and want something that JustWorks which is already compatible with what everyone else uses. They have a business to run and money to makes, so spending extra time and effort on alternative office solutions with various degrees of compatibility, just to fight a virtual trade war, will slow then down significantly from their main business goal. Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? You think they don't have the technical know-how, or is it because it's not worth the effort and better use what everyone else is already using and focus your resoruces on what really matters?

fifteen1506 3y ago
Of course. Same thing will all those environmental laws shenanigans. Companies are better off investing in short-term gains and leave the governments taking care of the environment and digital accountability of its citizens.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? I don't think they will stop, but they will become much more hesitant. Concerning your other points: it is of similar economic importance for the company to invest in precautions to prevent that you are taken hostage of, in this case by Microsoft. Thus such measures are actually often in the company's self-interest in opposite to fighting a virtual trade war for someone else.
morsch 3y ago
Governments can take a longer and more strategic outlook than private enterprises. It's not even primarily about nationalistic trade wars: I want my tax euros to fund as little closed-source software as possible. It's crazy how much money even just our schools spend for software that can't be freely redistributed or modified. That said, I'm not holding my breath regarding the success of this most recent move.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- coffeeling 2y ago
  I mean, even aside that? If you spend the money on European developers instead, that's jobs and tax dollars here.
guappa 3y ago
You just do it like USA does: if you want to do business with the public sector, you must not rely on a foreign cloud.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago
  What are the alternatives. Like, really. I get it: Hetzner and OVH exist. But what are the alternatives to AWS, GCP, Azure?
  - guappa 3y ago
    openstack
    - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
      okay
    - LunaSea 3y ago
      No. OpenStack sucks to deploy and maintain with the result being an inferior cloud with a lack in services.
      - guappa 3y ago
        The goal is not "superior", the goal is "USA can't kill our infrastructure pressing one button"
        LunaSea 3y ago
        The goal is also to have a usable cloud on which you can efficiently develop software. Otherwise we can simply go back to paper.
        prmoustache 3y ago
        The initial premise is wrong for a start. You don't need a cloud to efficiently develop software. I've worked in companies that were running kubernetes on prem. It was a PITA for kubernetes ops but from a developer perspective it wasn't much different than using the cloud in a large company. Cloud is very flexible for very small orgs that have little processes but once you get into a certain size with lots of processes, privileges separations and nomenclatures, it becomes so bureaucratic all flexibility of a cloud mostly disappear.
etiennebausson 3y ago
If the entities you depends on for funding migrate from Words to LibreOffice, then yes, you will consider moving as well. The network effect may be mostly considered in regard to social media, but it is just as powerful when it come to tools and file format. Administrations moving en-mass to open-sourced software would ensure a significant chunk of companies would follow.
- pydry 3y ago
  This is precisely why Microsoft freaked out when Germany last tried this. It led to them inventing this nebulous "TCO" concept wherein they massively overestimated the costs surrounding moving to FOSS in order to try and convince clueless managerial stakeholders to stick with them.
  - pxc 3y ago
    > It led to them inventing this nebulous "TCO" concept Source? Is that phrase really a Microsoft invention?
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    To be fair in certain cases the cost might be very high and considerably higher than whatever the license/subscription fees paid to MS are. e.g. Libre Office doesn’t really have a drop-in replacement for Excel (for non trivial use cases. To be fair it still might be sufficient for the majority of users, but that would mean that some proportion of your workforce has to stay on Excel/Office which kind of beats the whole purpose).
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Vendor lockin is no excuse leaking PI to MS though. You could buy some Office 2003 CD and use Excel locally.
      - alemanek 3y ago
        Uh using an out of date and unsupported Excel version is a really bad idea. Lots of security vulnerabilities around VB scripting/macros which gives you the very real risk of being compromised by a malicious spreadsheet. Better to just switch where you can and invest resources into improving FOSS offerings to handle the use cases it currently can’t.
Stranger43 3y ago
If the alternative is not getting the security certifications required to operate legally in the sectors they depend on for revenue what alternative does an organization really have to seeking/implementation solutions in sync with the mandated regulations. And this is not an private company whose demise is insignificant to the society at large(as all companies must be in an functional capitalist economy) but the government itself instituting policies to protect itself from dependence on a single foreign company. And being told by an court to get off the o365 cloud is not an theoretical prospect for an European governmental organization as the EU commission found out about a month ago(https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/european-commissions-use-microsoft-365-infringes-data-protection-law-eu-institutions-and-bodies_en https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/pre...).
- Grimeton 3y ago
  There's also this: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11/data-protection-impact-assessment-windows-10-enterprise https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11... from 2019.
ryukoposting 3y ago
> And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Well... yes, I think that's exactly the argument being made here. Reliance on foreign cloud infrastructure is a liability, and the US does not hold any of its companies accountable for blatantly unethical and reckless data practices. I'll admit LibreOffice is relatively underpowered and unintuitive, but I've been using it for years and I find the compatibility issues to be overblown. I'd hazard a bet that most employees of companies using MS Office could make the switch and be used to it within a couple weeks. Certainly a much, MUCH easier transition than one between ERPs, for example. > Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? SAP can be hosted entirely onsite, and at Google's scale that's almost certainly what they're doing. The problem is the infrastructure, not the origin of the software itself. Note how the EU never had anything against MS Exchange Servers.
Qwertious 3y ago
You don't need everyone switching over. Let's say that by next year, a total of 10% of orgs in the EU are using LibreOffice, and then Redmond is hit by a comet. It'd be painful for the other 90% to switch but there would be some familiarity with the process, whereas if there's an MS monoculture then it would take a whole lot longer and be a lot messier.
kaliszad 3y ago
> And how do you do that? You think EU companies will stop buying Office 365 subscriptions to reduce their dependency on the US? Most workers in most companies probably don't really need an entire Office suite. It is just they use Outlook and from time to time open a Word document that could've been a PDF or HTML form if they had better processes. For the same reason, most people don't really need to use Windows. However people use Windows, because a lot of "professional" software only ships for it and nobody is going to rewrite an app that the enterprise uses for the last 20 years to prevent the use of Windows or some of its particular version. If it was that easy, why would Windows XP or Windows 7 be still so wide-spread? > Companies buy Office 365 subscriptions so they can focus on their main business and don't want to think about their office solution and want something that JustWorks which is already compatible with what everyone else uses. The problem is, many programs in the Office suite don't just work. Being an admin in a larger organization you will face a broken .pst file basically every week. 10+ GB of emails seems to be a problem also considering the search speed etc. The level of engineering incompetence behind Outlook is high. It even has special conditional HTML just so Outlook renders some things correctly, because Microsoft is long term incapable of implementing a web engine to a degree that they had to adopt and adapt a competitors product (Chromium). Similarly for Excel. Most things that are in Excel shouldn't be and instead should be a table + some app in a database or a form + database backend. We have seen that during COVID-19, when essential health data was messed up because of wrong use of Excel but also because Excel just wasn't the right tool for the job frankly. We have been renaming genes or whatever, because Excel has insufficient auto-formatting algorithms and people have to learn how to prevent this - which is proof it doesn't "Just Work" for people. > They have a business to run and money to makes, so spending extra time and effort on alternative office solutions with various degrees of compatibility, just to fight a virtual trade war, will slow then down significantly from their main business goal. Most things in most companies should be formalized in digital forms backed by some processing backend. Most companies just are not very good at management therefore they fill these gaps by using more flexible tools where everybody can unfold their creativity generally making a mess making any kind of formalization much harder later on. No question there are also jobs where you need that flexibility, e.g. where you get data from people precisely in these formats and are expected to produce output in these formats for them too. Because people are generally opposed to change and don't want to learn, if they can avoid it. Much better tools are available for so many activities yet people usually opt for a product out of the Office suite. > Why do you think Google uses SAP instead of rolling out their own solution? You think they don't have the technical know-how, or is it because it's not worth the effort and better use what everyone else is already using and focus your resoruces on what really matters? Because promotions are easier to get if you work on a product that makes money for the company (such as search + ads) or is a big cost center and a needed pre-condition for the business (such as the cloud infrastructure) and you can implement changes that safe the company a lot of money. However, don't underestimate how much SAP was customized for Google. It could be that SAP is just the core of a much bigger system.