5 ms·

Talking to my Danish friends, and I have a fair few in tech, the country is owned by Microsoft. A lot of code jobs are c# on Azure, and all the office people us

Talking to my Danish friends, and I have a fair few in tech, the country is owned by Microsoft. A lot of code jobs are c# on Azure, and all the office people use Excel. This is a welcome change. I've thought for a long time, why would your average office worker even need to pay MS for their desktop OS when so many things could just be done on the web? And why develop a bunch of stuff on a proprietary platform when you can just code it on a Linux platform?

SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago
You can use c#, even c# on Azure and still be mostly Linux. For many common uses, it just works. And at least it gives a migration path.
madduci 1y ago
Same in Germany
- amiga386 1y ago
  The answer is, sadly, still more political than technical. Munich moved to Linux in 2004 and was mostly complete by 2013. Then Microsoft turned up the charm, and moved its headquarters in Germany to Munich, and Munich decided in 2017 to switch back to Windows by 2020: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170301-01.html https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170301-01.html But then different politicians were elected, and in 2020 it decided to switch back to Linux again: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/238252/munich-says-its-now-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-software----again https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/238252/munich-says...
  - netsharc 1y ago
    Ha, can a city run with a dual-booting system? /s
  - sam_lowry_ 1y ago
    Munich story is one failure among many successes. Ever heard of GendBuntu? [1] Probably not, because it was a successful migration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
    - timbit42 1y ago
      I find it puzzling they use OpenOffice instead of LibreOffice.
      - Symbiote 1y ago
        The project started 6 years before the LibreOffice fork existed.
        timbit42 1y ago
        Yes, but it's been left in the dust since the devs left to fork it as LibreOffice.
txdv 1y ago
Dankse Bank is a synonym for C# dev jobs here
ochrist 1y ago
I'm Danish, and yes: I can confirm. Everything is Microsoft. I have talked about this a lot in many years, and I was very (positively) surprised to read about this, as it will be a large job to move everything out of Microsoft. Most companies (both public and private) I have worked for in the last twenty years or so are almost entirely on Microsoft solutions: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Sharepoint, Teams. You name it. Occasionally you meet something like JIRA or AWS and more technical systems, but the backbone of anything related to management, communications and documentation is based on MS solutions.
pieds 1y ago
They don't have the capacity. The opinion you present is actually part of the narrative you are seemingly against. That you can compete with big tech if you just want to. And you "can" compete with big tech, but it isn't actually possible. Because the right pre-requisites, environment and priorities doesn't exist. Not in Europe, not in much of the US and not in much of the world. The European companies the would (or could) prioritize having their own digital infrastructure (mostly research or more industrial companies) are also having lay-offs, or at least not growing close to more service oriented companies that are hooked into big tech. For the same types of reasons the US also won't bring back manufacturing. Edit: It also reminds me of a story from some time ago in Sweden. Because of the growing number of fashion designers the press were talking about the growing fashion industry as "the fashion wonder". The then CEO of H&M commented in an interview that most of these brands were making less revenue than just one of their stores. Many of these companies are now dead or irrelevant while H&M, Zara and Shein are still around and more relevant than ever. If there actually was even more a shift to the web from desktop it would probably benefit Google with ChromeOS. Just like a shift from Windows for software development benefited Apple and their more closed ecosystem.
- Jolter 1y ago
  You say that the priorities are missing, but this article is about just that: this politician is changing the priorities. Admittedly for a rather small number of office workers, but it should be seen as a pilot project. Half the ministry staff will be off MS Office by end of summer, is the plan.
  - pieds 1y ago
    No, they aren't. These things happen all the time. Anyone can install Linux on a few laptops. Heck, 'anyone' can create their own Linux distribution. And plenty do. To make a difference they need to hire staff to actually manage it. And because Linux doesn't have the same facilities they probably need to be developers. Europe doesn't have a track record of hiring developers for government service. As a politician from the "Moderates" she is likely against it. It's now all privatization all the time. The US ironically does. I bet this doesn't last much longer than until there is a new minister for digitalisation.
0points 1y ago
Same in Sweden :-( Hundreds of millions of taxpayers money goes to Microsoft licenses for the public sector every year.
victorbjorklund 1y ago
Same in Sweden. Everything is azure, office365 and c# (okay not everything but a way higher % than elsewhere)
mrtksn 1y ago
It’s the same everywhere, that’s why Bill Gates is so rich :) If you ever tried to use anything else than Word & Excel to interact with people who are using Word & Excel , chances are that you encountered problems like wrong encoding files, that don’t open, files that open, but look incomplete, problems with alignment, etc. There’s so much friction that it’s not worth bothering. unfortunately, the proprietary software has become the standard. IMHO the only solution would be to force a large number of people switch to something else and create the new standard, so maybe the Danes can pull it off. Since many years, I keep hearing about countries trying to move away from Microsoft, but I don’t know how much they succeeded.
- paxys 1y ago
  Fun fact – Steve Ballmer has now made more money from Microsoft than Bill Gates.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  I encountered problems where people only accept .docx, not even .pdf

SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago

You can use c#, even c# on Azure and still be mostly Linux. For many common uses, it just works. And at least it gives a migration path.

madduci 1y ago

Same in Germany

amiga386 1y ago
The answer is, sadly, still more political than technical. Munich moved to Linux in 2004 and was mostly complete by 2013. Then Microsoft turned up the charm, and moved its headquarters in Germany to Munich, and Munich decided in 2017 to switch back to Windows by 2020: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170301-01.html https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170301-01.html But then different politicians were elected, and in 2020 it decided to switch back to Linux again: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/238252/munich-says-its-now-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-software----again https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/238252/munich-says...
- netsharc 1y ago
  Ha, can a city run with a dual-booting system? /s
- sam_lowry_ 1y ago
  Munich story is one failure among many successes. Ever heard of GendBuntu? [1] Probably not, because it was a successful migration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
  - timbit42 1y ago
    I find it puzzling they use OpenOffice instead of LibreOffice.
    - Symbiote 1y ago
      The project started 6 years before the LibreOffice fork existed.
      - timbit42 1y ago
        Yes, but it's been left in the dust since the devs left to fork it as LibreOffice.

txdv 1y ago

Dankse Bank is a synonym for C# dev jobs here

ochrist 1y ago

I'm Danish, and yes: I can confirm. Everything is Microsoft. I have talked about this a lot in many years, and I was very (positively) surprised to read about this, as it will be a large job to move everything out of Microsoft. Most companies (both public and private) I have worked for in the last twenty years or so are almost entirely on Microsoft solutions: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Sharepoint, Teams. You name it. Occasionally you meet something like JIRA or AWS and more technical systems, but the backbone of anything related to management, communications and documentation is based on MS solutions.

pieds 1y ago

They don't have the capacity. The opinion you present is actually part of the narrative you are seemingly against. That you can compete with big tech if you just want to. And you "can" compete with big tech, but it isn't actually possible. Because the right pre-requisites, environment and priorities doesn't exist. Not in Europe, not in much of the US and not in much of the world. The European companies the would (or could) prioritize having their own digital infrastructure (mostly research or more industrial companies) are also having lay-offs, or at least not growing close to more service oriented companies that are hooked into big tech. For the same types of reasons the US also won't bring back manufacturing. Edit: It also reminds me of a story from some time ago in Sweden. Because of the growing number of fashion designers the press were talking about the growing fashion industry as "the fashion wonder". The then CEO of H&M commented in an interview that most of these brands were making less revenue than just one of their stores. Many of these companies are now dead or irrelevant while H&M, Zara and Shein are still around and more relevant than ever. If there actually was even more a shift to the web from desktop it would probably benefit Google with ChromeOS. Just like a shift from Windows for software development benefited Apple and their more closed ecosystem.

Jolter 1y ago
You say that the priorities are missing, but this article is about just that: this politician is changing the priorities. Admittedly for a rather small number of office workers, but it should be seen as a pilot project. Half the ministry staff will be off MS Office by end of summer, is the plan.
- pieds 1y ago
  No, they aren't. These things happen all the time. Anyone can install Linux on a few laptops. Heck, 'anyone' can create their own Linux distribution. And plenty do. To make a difference they need to hire staff to actually manage it. And because Linux doesn't have the same facilities they probably need to be developers. Europe doesn't have a track record of hiring developers for government service. As a politician from the "Moderates" she is likely against it. It's now all privatization all the time. The US ironically does. I bet this doesn't last much longer than until there is a new minister for digitalisation.

0points 1y ago

Same in Sweden :-( Hundreds of millions of taxpayers money goes to Microsoft licenses for the public sector every year.

victorbjorklund 1y ago

Same in Sweden. Everything is azure, office365 and c# (okay not everything but a way higher % than elsewhere)

mrtksn 1y ago

It’s the same everywhere, that’s why Bill Gates is so rich :) If you ever tried to use anything else than Word & Excel to interact with people who are using Word & Excel , chances are that you encountered problems like wrong encoding files, that don’t open, files that open, but look incomplete, problems with alignment, etc. There’s so much friction that it’s not worth bothering. unfortunately, the proprietary software has become the standard. IMHO the only solution would be to force a large number of people switch to something else and create the new standard, so maybe the Danes can pull it off. Since many years, I keep hearing about countries trying to move away from Microsoft, but I don’t know how much they succeeded.

paxys 1y ago
Fun fact – Steve Ballmer has now made more money from Microsoft than Bill Gates.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
I encountered problems where people only accept .docx, not even .pdf