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German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice
- usr1106 3y agoClickbait headline. Should be German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Neither one of the bigger nor one of the more industrial states.
- egorfine 3y agoThis is of course false. The real government business in Germany is done on paper and on-site. Everybody knows that.
- beefnugs 3y agoMicrosoft is hilarious : We have created codeQL, the perfect solution to search all of source code in the world for known vulnerabilities at a scale very few can even comprehend.... but first it says you dont have candy crush installed, we are going to go ahead and install that for you and even pop up an unskippable ad taking up your entire screen every time mandatory windows updates completes, YOU ARE WELCOME A few of the smartest people in the world get their reputation stomped into nothing by the sleeziest pieces of shit management that has ever existed
- lwde 3y agoWe'll have to see how long it takes, as it did with LiMux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux) when Microsoft Germany headquarters magically moved to Munich and everything got back to running on Windows again.
- wink 3y agoI like this conspiracy theory as much as the next person but in fact they moved only around 10-15km south, to be in Munich proper. Yes, I know, that would be irrelevant regarding possible tax breaks or bribes or whatever. But physically it was not far, same people working there without relocating, etc.pp
- welterde 3y agoThe relevant part is that they moved from another city to Munich, which means that certain company taxes would be paid in Munich instead of Unterschleißheim (the city where the HQ was located previously). This means a increase of tax revenue for the city of Munich of tens of MEUR/yr from this tax alone, without even considering secondary effects. The small physical distance just means that this would be quite cheap for Microsoft to implement, compared to trying to pull the same stunt with another city.
- ozim 3y agoMy question is what the heck? I read that same thing every 2-3 years “German state goes Linux/libre office”. Then it turns out that it is not really true. Some parts yes then some other parts are already on it and some parts move back. I do understand there might be different parts of rather big country doing different stuicf
- NewJazz 3y agoI imagine the tide will lift and fall over the years. Some applications (new and old) will only run on specialized platforms. Exceptions will exist in a large enigh environment.
- lwkl 3y agoIt's a German of Schleswig-Holstein which is like the state of California or the state of Kentucky in the US doing a change like this. And it's only the state government and not the municipalities in the state.
- incompatible 3y agoApparently, it's how one bargains with Microsoft to get a better deal on software or employment in that location or whatever.
- incompatible 3y agoSurely there's a limit to how many German headquarters Microsoft needs though.
- KronisLV 3y agoFrom the link: > The city reported that due to the project, it had gained freedom in software decisions, increased security and saved €11.7 million (US$16 million). That's kind of nice. An org that I worked for gave everyone LibreOffice installs by default and if you needed any of MS offerings you could just ask for a license for those. Most people were just fine with LibreOffice. Depends on what you're doing with said office suite, though.
- mlok 3y agoMunich did it a few times already since 2003. Last one was in 2020 : https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...
- jll29 3y agoMunich reportedly chickened out of Linux a few years later - due to lobbying.
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- pxmpxm 3y agoThis, definitely remember reading about this on slashdot decades ago. Must've gone well...
- AaronFriel 3y agoI've seen this story every few years, perhaps this is just how they Munich negotiates its contract with Microsoft.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- VelesDude 3y agoLike every time North Korea needs more aid it launches a missile into the sea of Japan? At least Munich's bargaining chip seems a bit more friendly.
- perihelions 3y agoDuplicate thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173 ("German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice", 322 comments)
- jokab 3y ago> ...cites cost, security, and digital sovereignty... With the recent XZ Utils backdoor fiasco, I would really think twice with this decision. Might be worth sticking to MS for a little bit longer, who knows if the backdoor code has been reused somewhere else? Besides, wasnt it a MS employee who uncovered this backdoor?
- Alupis 3y agoWhat makes you believe Microsoft Source Code is somehow more immune to bad actors?
- antx 3y agoIt's wasn't just "an MS employee". It was an experienced postgres developer. Someone who understands the benefits of open-source. We simply don't know how many backdoors there are in closed-source software... do you prefer to live with your head in the sand?
- mupuff1234 3y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/03/microsoft-errors-security-chinese-hack https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/03/microsoft...
- adhamsalama 3y agoAs if Microsoft never got hacked before...
- Qem 3y agohttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/edward-snowden-claims-microsoft-collaborated-with-nsa-and-fbi-to-allow-access-to-user-data-8705755.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/edward-snowden-claims-mic...
- redder23 3y agoRidiculously silly to say. Because ONE recent security flaw in open source fucking M$ is better? That is laughable. But yes, open source is used more by private users and even in government the hackers may target it more. BUT Linux is already in use for like 99% of the internet, all datacenters, everything runs on it. Every big company, even M$ is involved in it heavily, they have their own Linux called Azure Linux or something like that. So it makes zero sense to claim using some shitty close source software they want way too much money for is better. M$ 365 bullshit might as well connect to some online services run by M$ ON LINUX that have bugs exactly that you mention that somehow then also make it to users of office that connects to the net for no reason. I think it's some software as a service crap now.
- yayr 3y ago1. Every software needs resources to be maintained and improved. Those resources finally will need to be paid for by someone. 2. Getting Linux and LibreOffice does not get you a functioning productivity environment. You still need mail, calendars, shared document storage, web conferencing, security etc. There are various levels of usability in those and on basic levels you could get those already 30 years ago mostly. But not on a level, where you could reliably have your workforce be flexibly working from home. So, let's see how it plays out, but it is not making life easier for the IT admins I guess...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NekkoDroid 3y agoThere is https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/info https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk/info
- chris_wot 3y agolol the latest Microsoft Outlook removed a ton of features. Like for instance, you can no longer drag and drop emails and attachments! All of the above things you talk about have solutions in the Open Source space.
- HeavyStorm 3y agoWhile I work for msft, I'm all for open source, even more in this space - consumer and office apps - however, my government has tried this and rolled it back a while later in some branches, while others just suffer with it. Office is much superior to any open source and even paid alternatives, and we must remember that most people using the software don't have a degree in CS. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the reverse news a few years later.
- bkor 3y ago> Office is much superior to any open source and even paid alternatives, and we must remember that most people using the software don't have a degree in CS. Germany is investing in improving free software, see https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/ https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/. Though not sure if this is linked to that state switching. I think LibreOffice is riddled with loads of small "paper cuts". Basically loads of small issues that make it annoying to use. I hope that they understand it shouldn't be about cost, it should be about being sovereign. So hopefully the investment (ensuring additional developers, UI/UX people, etc) increases as they use more free software,
- jll29 3y agoThe more people use free software, the more it will become cost effective to improve it using government funding. There can be enormous net savings (zero license fees), which is fantastic for the taxpayer.
- geraldwhen 3y agoWithout an actual design vision, all open source software will flounder and never replace commercial counterparts.
- 000ooo000 3y agoWhat a ridiculous thing to say
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- okasaki 3y ago[flagged]
- wolverine876 3y ago> Europe is poorer than ever Europe is richer than ever.
- okasaki 3y agoWealth only matters in comparison to others, and Europe is poorer than ever compared to other regions.
- pmontra 3y agoIn relative values it's worse than 100 years ago, better than 1000 years ago. Absolute values are also important. It's still much better than 100 years ago. And then so many people migrate to Europe from the Americas, Africa and Asia. It shouldn't be so bad after all.
- wolverine876 3y ago> In relative values it's worse than 100 years ago Relative to what? 1926 was after WWI devestated Europe and I think Germany would have been in very bad shape from the Versailles Treaty.
- pmontra 3y agoJust one example: China has been the wealthiest country in the world except for the 19th and 20th centuries (and maybe the very few centuries before those,) when countries from Europe and the USA colonized it, then Japan. It's still recovering but economically is in the same league as Europe. Post world war Europe and Germany were still better off than China. The proof is that Germany took very few years to recover, arm and start another war.
- duringmath 3y agoThey do that every now and then but eventually they come crawling back
- whstl 3y agoYeah, because of lobbying.
- holografix 3y agoVery hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guaranteed them it had saved, so they had to start from scratch. It did save it. In their fucking cloud and made it so opaque that the user couldn’t possibly understand wtf was happening. It took me, a tech professional a good 5 minutes to snap out of the dark pattern and realise what was going on.
- dirkt 3y ago> Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. You don't want Google to have data that is used to govern a federal German state.
- usr1106 3y agoVery hard for me to understand why as the owner of a computer you want to put precious data on someone else's computer. Especially someone that has no customer service, a history of killing products with no good options for their users and frequently breaking laws.
- vidarh 3y agoTry editing a 200 page document in Google Docs. Last time I tried I had to give up. I detest MS Office too, and Google Docs is perfectly fine for a whole lot of my use cases, but it's not a complete replacement, and that'll be a problem for a lot of places where some subset of users will need other applications anyway if you pick Google. The "lost" MS Office doc is infuriating, though - have had to help my son with several different variants of that for school over the years, including the reverse, where it's insisted there is no document at the location in the cloud drive it is meant to be, but where it turned out this was because it hadn't been synced from the local drive...
- arielcostas 3y ago> Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. Precisely because some of that "bloat" is useful for others. Off the top of my head, I really dislike that Google Docs doesn't support stuff like creating your own styles to apply in the document. My use case, for example, is having a style for inline code, with a monospaced font and a different colour, which I can do in Word creating a new style and applying it, but can't in GDocs. > The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guaranteed them it had saved, so they had to start from scratch. It should appear as a recent file once you open word, no matter if it was saved to OneDrive or locally. And it certainly isn't so hard to choose where to save it, if OneDrive, a SharePoint site or locally. At least nowadays.
- doener 3y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39916133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39916133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173
- Intralexical 3y agoPrevious reporting (from over two years ago): https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/11/18/german-state-planning-to-switch-25000-pcs-to-libreoffice/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/11/18/german-s...
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago..... again? I think it was, what 2005 or so?
- wolverine876 3y agoCan LibreOffice on Linux deliver management solutions? Think of 1,000 workstations, a small to mid-sized network: you need software that automates installation, configuration, security, etc. It's not like at home: Even if everyone is in the same building, you can't manually install, configure, change configuration, upgrade, etc. 1,000 times (think about it; not only the time and quality issues, but you'd spend a total of days just walking around). With Microsoft Office, you click a box in Group Policy and the entire group, or whatever subset you desire, changes configuration. You can automate installs, patches, etc.
- lfkdev 3y agoAnsible could easily do this
- schmichael 3y agoLinux has directories and config/package/fleet management as well. No one in the past 20 years should be walking to every desk in 1,000 desk building installing software.
- jolmg 3y ago> No one in the past 20 years should be walking to every desk in 1,000 desk building installing software. Maybe even 50 years, if one considers that they could've automated the installations through telnet.
- schmichael 3y agoI remember walking to every computer in primary schools to do operations in the 90s, so I figured might as well play it safe with “20 years.” :) There’s definitely been solutions to this problem since the dawn of computing, albeit with uneven availability.
- jolmg 3y agoLinux has multiple options for configuration management: Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, Nix, etc. You can even write a quick loop on the shell of your choice and orchestrate your machines that way if only want to rely on stock software...
- sega_sai 3y agoI have been using Libreoffice/OpenOffice continuously pretty much for last 20 years (mostly Impress/presentation part for teaching/presentations). And the number of bugs, crashes, issues with video etc occasionally gets very annoying. I was hoping over the years things would improve, but I don't quite see that unfortunately. If I could get something to replace LibreOffice that is not online and works on Linux I would pay for it.
- FdbkHb 3y agoThe other parts aren't much better either. Calc is unbearably slow on large spreadsheets. It's always been a janky and stuttery experience and the massive improvements in computer performance (CPU, SSD etc) have never managed to bring it up to par, you can see how much faster Word loads even on a simple document compared to Writer. It's been that way since before it became open source: Star Office made you look at its splash screen for a decent while back in the day.
- chris_wot 3y agoThere has been a lot of work on performance in Calc. Do you have a concrete example of such slowness nowadays, or has it been a while since you last opened a large spreadsheet?
- wrp 3y agoAlso longtime user of OO/LO just because that's what's available on Linux, even though it's clunky. I've been particularly disappointed with things like typesetting control in LO Writer, printing management, and PDF handling. When I'm doing something where the details really matter, I still usually resort to commercial tools on Windows.
- Shorel 3y agoSerious question: Why don't you use LaTeX to prepare the presentations? A few things I could think of: the templates for presentations are less varied, less diverse, could look repetitive. With Office, you can make the most crazy designs. That's it. LaTeX generates PDF presentations that work everywhere and look very nice, they even have navigation buttons on the corner. I wonder if we could teach ChatGPT to create LaTeX presentation designs.
- jrgifford 3y agoWonder what will happen to this… The UK didn’t seem to get that far 10 years ago. I remember this article coming out, but was unable to find any follow up / outcomes: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/uk-government-plans-switch-to-open-source-from-microsoft-office-suite https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/uk-govern...
- davidf18 3y ago[dead]
- analog31 3y agoI've tried LibreOffice, periodically over the years. The same thing always sends me back to MS Office. MS has really sweated the details of their UI in ways that can only be done by maintaining a huge army of coders. When I use LibreOffice, the lack of responsiveness is immediately noticeable, and actually makes the software physically laborious to use. I've also noticed something like a 10x or even 100x difference in the time to recalculate a large spreadsheet.
- HKH2 3y ago> When I use LibreOffice, the lack of responsiveness is immediately noticeable, and actually makes the software physically laborious to use. I say the same thing about Windows. Why is its UI so sluggish?
- bradley13 3y agoOdd comment. The UI has nothing to do with recalculation speed. Anyway, the MS ribbons continually move stuff around - it's a pain for the casual user. Maybe people who use it all day long get used to it? Regarding spreadsheets, yes, that is one area where LibreOffice genuinely has not overtaken MS-Office.
- incompatible 3y agoMaybe you'd be happier with it if you just stuck to LibreOffice and never looked at Microsoft products. It works for me.
- daneel_w 3y agoI feel like I've read this exact story a couple of times in the past 15 or so years.
- trelane 3y agoDup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173
- PicassoCTs 3y agoGuess they realized the Microsoft and Google "Research" centers to build up german software- are nothing more then thinly veiled recruitment pools for competent software developers who then get shipped of to redmond or mountainview. Still amazing that eastern-europe could build up vibrant software companies- and germany just cant. They get wirecard if they try. I really would love to read more about the cultural causes for this. France seems to suffer from the same problem. Italy too.
- akulbe 3y agoDidn't they try this very same thing, many years ago, and ended up coming back to Windows?
- Perenti 3y agoCan anyone tell me what this means: "Other countries, notably China, have proverbs that say they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux." Proverbs? A stitch in time saves nine. Many hands make light work. Please, anyone, show me a proverb that says "they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."
- freefrog334433 3y agoI was trying to remember a Confucius proverb that applied to Linux. Or something from the Art of War?
- freefrog334433 3y ago“The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.” Art of War
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoNo tux, no bucks! Wait, that would be the other way around.
- bakoo 3y agoAll Tux, no bucks?
- prashp 3y agoHere's one: "Switching a Windows user to Linux is like moving mountains with a teaspoon; both demand patience and a miracle."
- mandevil 3y agoI'm sorry, what year is it? Am I posting on Slashdot still? Is this year finally going to be the year where Linux desktops become something for normies? When Munich did this it never got to a majority of their desktops, is my recollection, it maxed out in the 40%s. Now we're going to do it all over again with a different, much poorer, German state?
- smoyer 3y agoCuriously, I was going to bring up that very same slashdot article (and the one describing how it has failed). Howdy old-timer!
- nextos 3y agoSchleswig-Holstein is not poor. It is next to Denmark, and it is really nice and well developed. I think transitioning to a different platform is mostly an organizational and political, rather than technical problem, and the main roadblock is educating users and altering processes to migrate away from MS Office. That said, modern Linux distributions like NixOS or Guix could be great to manage large fleets of computers, keep them up-to-date, and upgrade things without fear. In my experience, that is the main technical issue administrations are experiencing. And of course, running free software is great because it brings freedom to change things.
- maxcoder4 3y agoAs a long time Linux user, I think problems are partially technical. For example: * A lot of software used by them is certainly Windows only (they will have to find alternatives, change their workflows or invest in some windows virtual machines) * Windows tooling for organizations is much more mature. There's a reason virtually everyone uses AD. * Linux is very focused on user freedoms. This is not usually important in the office. But freedom to configure things is a freedom to break thinks, and cause admin headache. The problems are solvable, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. Oh and I love nixos, and I always wonder how realistic would it be to use it in a company for management of thousands of desktop machines. Sounds like it would be perfect for it, but i don't know any stories.
- tredre3 3y agoFrankly I am shocked that they went with LibreOffice over OnlyOffice. OnlyOffice supports online collaboration already, works online and offline, and has a much more familiar interface. Compatibility is also better with MS Office documents. OnlyOffice is developed online-first but they provide an electron app that works fully offline on all OSes: https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx?from=desktop https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx?from=deskto... Yep, an electron app is better than native LibreOffice. That's how low the bar is currently.
- different_base 3y agoUsing OnlyOffice promotes Microsoft Document format even further. Microsoft will again change their spec and OnlyOffice won't know how to render it correctly. For long term, it's better to choose LibreOffice which uses open standards and does not purposefully change specs to break others.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoDoes it not have support for odt? I haven't used it much, but I do generally prefer it to libreoffice if I need to create or edit a document nowadays.
- throwaway74354 3y agoIt doesn't have a file creation dialog (nor global setting for this behavior), hence "promotes". New files are docx/xlsx/pptx. You have to manually use a "Save as" dialog to choose a corresponding LibreOffice format.
- throwaway74354 3y agoOnlyOffice, being Russian and embedded into the same autarky processes there, wasn't an option to begin with.
- Shorel 3y agoThat means LibreOffice is not native but Java?
- ceelee 3y agoGerman state employees must be excited for this move.
- nimbius 3y agoGo Germany go! In the diesel repair shop I work in, I managed to convince the suits to switch out ms office for libre office. 90% of our stuff is now libre by default...only 2 users have full office suites and theyre both in the bean counting department. We print our BOMs, labels, envelopes and invoices using libre. Compared to office it runs like a scalded dog and never crashes.
- sph 3y agoI find it funny that there are suits working in your diesel repair shop.
- rudedogg 3y agoThat’s awesome. What distro did you go with? Do you have to help maintain them, or have they ever broken?
- nimbius 3y agoWindows for the majority of machines (we already own desktop licenses) but i keep 3-4 old laptops with ubuntu we nicknamed "crap outs" in case someone's PC dies, someone needs a laptop ASAP at a jobsite, or the IT gang needs to get fix someone's main PC. Our shops big label maker and 3d printer machine is currently 100% Ubuntu and is a favorite for a Lotta guys on the floor.
- migf 3y ago"it runs like a scalded dog" https://themonticellonews.com/im-fixing-to-run-like-a-scalded-dog-p9993-107.htm https://themonticellonews.com/im-fixing-to-run-like-a-scalde... lol. Glad to hear the solution's working for you.
- Chiba-City 3y ago[dead]
- mjfl 3y agoFor me Linux is so much better a user experience due to the lack of bloat in the operating system. Microsoft seems to be getting more and more intrusive with its data collection, in addition. Furthermore, being a foreign government that has been subject to US espionage in the past, I'm sure it's better for Germany to use an open source OS rather than US-state back software system.
- profsummergig 3y agoI tried using Libre's alt to MS Access (database). It couldn't open an Access file (couldn't create a connection).
- Shorel 3y agoWouldn't an Access alternative be based on SQLite?
- nothrowaways 3y agoBad move. Libre office is awful for an employee coming from MS
- qwerty456127 3y agoI can remember the same or very similar news from Germany appearing every now and then for over a decade. This time I almost believe them as there seems to be no alternative to LibreOffice given the changes Microsoft introduced during the recent years - forcing everyone to log-in with their Microsoft account at best, also moving from a classic desktop app to a web app. Conservative users like me and probably German state institutions consider classic desktop apps and web apps distinct tools for different tasks and don't want their desktop to depend on cloud. It is also worth mentioning that LibreOffice became much better since the time the discussion began.
- MenhirMike 3y agoLiMux (Linux for Munich) was started in 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux Of course, Microsoft did some of their... persuation of politicians and initially killed the project in 2017, but it seems that since 2020 it's back. I do think that LibreOffice could need some more full-time User Interface people to polish some rough edges (please none of the hackjob wanna-be UX people that ruin all modern apps by obnoxious popups), so that could be a good use of some tax money.
- ctrw 3y agoYou just copy office 97 and can't go wrong with it. The problem with having UX people on a team is that they need to jusity their existence which they do by change for changes sake. I've yet to meet anyone who appreciates ms office UX changes that happen every 5 years and move everything around.
- MenhirMike 3y ago> You just copy office 97 and can't go wrong with it. Clippy had its debut in Office 97, so let's please NOT copy that one. Other than that, yeah, I agree. Anything up to and including Office 2003 really, those were all great. (Also includes one of my favorite, underrated Office Apps, InfoPath)
- omnimus 3y ago
- beanjuiceII 3y agoI've seen this one a few times before...good luck.. again
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] Lots of earlier discussion on the official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173
- Ziggy_Zaggy 3y agoI have no idea why ppl don't use tools like LibreOffice and OpenOffice over MS Office and the other cloud (joke) products. If you're working on a file in the cloud instead of a local file then you probably should've already written/bought your own locally hosted server product instead. OpenOffice Calc (and similar products) are a staple for ppl who need applications that work without all the "c-suite needs their bonus" silliness.
- jongjong 3y agoGovernments should use only free software or software that's built in-house IMO. They shouldn't keep giving easy money to big corporations.
- WuxiFingerHold 3y ago> Why? Schleswig-Holstein cites cost, security, and digital sovereignty - though not necessarily in that order. It's been attempted before and costs has always been higher. But it's not a matter of costs. Reason and responsibility should make it mandatory for certain institutions and the government to own their data. Companies would be well advised to keep owning their data as well or try to get it back. We've all seen what happened with the "privat" Github repositories. No access from Github employees, but as they admitted by AI bots. I don't remember and it doesn't matter if it was on purpose or accidentally. If using cloud then at least with true E2E encryption. The cloud should only hold strong E2E encrypted blobs and meta data. There're providers out there that I think can be trusted. My (very large) employer has surrendered to Microsoft. Everything is Office 365 and in Azure. Our IT told us proudly that it's all E2E encrypted and Microsoft can't in any circumstances read our data. But how come I can search for content of Powerpoint and Word docs on Bing for work? A colleague of mine found secret project information this way before the classification levels were on place. Am I missing something about E2E encryption or is our IT that stupid and naive? EDIT: And recently our IT announced proudly that we soon can use Copilot.
- korginator 3y agoMy current and past employers are all-in with Microsoft because (like it or not) managing large corporate fleets is easier. Our Linux and Mac machines are treated as exceptions. This has nothing to do with user experience, it's all about risk management. If we need some software on our Mac, we need to sign a waiver accepting responsibility for any security issues. With the corporate issued windows laptops the IT department is responsible for risks.
- xeornet 3y agoThat’s because their primary setup is Microsoft based. The opposite is true for Apple-first companies.
- hnaccountme 3y agoHopefully they have a plan to contribute to LibreOffice.