13 ms·

Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

• jjgreen 8mo ago
  The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
• okintheory 8mo ago
  How could any European govt use MS after Trump ordered MS to sanction an ICC prosecutor and MS complied? I imagine they're all trying to walk away
  • abc123abc123 8mo ago
    Easy. Intertia and incompetence. Government is full of paper pushers who hav eno higher wish but to live comfortably on tax payers money until they retire. The key to survival is to do what everyone else is doing, and not to be the first to try anything new. The good thing is, as soon as someone tries anything new, and it looks like it is a success, the paper pushers will join in as soon as they think it is safe, and try to steal the fame and glory. This is just how the government and the public sector works.
    • kachnuv_ocasek 8mo ago
      This is not in any way specific to the government or public institution. Many (perhaps most) private companies work the same way.
      • q3k 8mo ago
        Yeah, anyone who says 'the government should be ran like a company' has likely never worked in a large corporation. It's full of meaningless work, bullshit jobs and red tape.
    • Frieren 8mo ago
      > Government is full of paper pushers who hav eno higher wish but to live comfortably on tax payers money until they retire. Even billionaires are into getting as much tax payer money as possible. But they get the big numbers. Report Says Elon Musk's Businesses Have Been Awarded $38 Billion In Government Contracts Since 2003: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-says-elon-musks-businesses-150042117.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-says-elon-musks-busine...
    • olav 8mo ago
      Plus, fulfillment of wishes to users as opposed to IT architecture management. Users have been brainwashed to demand certain brands. When you combine this with an IT Management that lacks mid-term risk management or a vision, you get happy users and an IT landscape easily taken hostage by single vendors.
    • CoastalCoder 8mo ago
      > This is just how the government and the public sector works. I work in the public sector, and that isn't remotely my experience. Could you roughly quantify what faction of public sector workers you believe operate that way, and how you arrived at that belief?
  • seu 8mo ago
    Not exactly governments, but I work with NGOs in Germany, and plenty of them use Teams and other MS products, just because they receive them for free and don't have the budget to pay someone to install open source alternatives. Training is especially costly and in these environments people are not really "digital native". It's not even about age, but about culture: people here will do what they are trained to do and fear doing something they don't know, because they might "do something wrong". I was responsible for a platform that gives free online storage, chat functions and videocalls (BBB) for NGOs, and had to hear these arguments over and over when discussing migrations. So unless there is a political drive, together with good trainings and support, the transition is very very difficult.
  • pjmlp 8mo ago
    The big problem, and I say this as someone that appreciates some of the Microsoft technologies, is that it is always first and foremost about Office, and nothing else. Forgotten are Windows, XBox, DirectX, VC++, C#, F#, TypeScript, Github, VSCode, Azure, Teams, SQL Server, SharePoint, Dynamics,.... Ah but some of those are FOSS, they are, pity that most money and project steering only flows from one place. Repeat the same listing exercise for every US big tech company and their influence on the computing industry at large, and possible geopolitcs, that is how we end up with HarmonyOS NEXT with ArkTS.
    • ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
      > Forgotten are Windows, XBox, DirectX, VC++, C#, F#, TypeScript, Github, VSCode, Azure, Teams, SQL Server, SharePoint, Dynamics,.... Ah but some of those are FOSS Which of those are FOSS?
      • pjmlp 8mo ago
        C#, F#, TypeScript, VSCode, under the business friendly OSI approved licenses, MIT and Apache.
  • hrmtst93837 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  • tick_tock_tick 8mo ago
    Europe still buys Russian gas and just signed a trade deal with India to whitewash it buying of Russian gas after they "stop".
• nunobrito 8mo ago
  Very good news for open source, hopefully.
• embedding-shape 8mo ago
  Bit old, from June 13th, 2025, this and similar stories been on HN a bunch of times: - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Danish%20%20Microsoft%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Denmark%20%20Microsoft%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• 999900000999 8mo ago
  The entire American software industry will feel the ramifications here. Gotta stay polite for HN. No data stored on an American server is secure. I really really do like Open Suse though, and I think an open source future is possible. Open Suse, Libre Office, etc.
  • data_maan 8mo ago
    I love these posts that are so on the edge that I can't tell if it's sarcastic or for real :)
    • titanomachy 8mo ago
      The perception in the rest of the world is that America has gone completely off the rails and could do almost literally anything at any time. I don't think this comment is that strange.
      • edgyquant 8mo ago
        Which country do you live in?
        • titanomachy 8mo ago
          Currently in Europe, but I've spent a few years in the states. (Avoiding specifics, because I think AI will soon make it too easy to mass-doxx HN accounts based on their comment history, and I want to remain employable)
    • maypeacepreva1l 8mo ago
      Which part is sarcastic here? As far as Europe as market goes, Software industries have already started to feel the pinch. Right now data protection and privacy rights of common people in the US is at lowest point, as we have seen in the news, anything goes for this administration. One must be living in an alternate reality to not see these things happening.
• trilogic 8mo ago
  I wonder about Vatican policy in regards to similar compromising infrastructure.
• Mashimo 8mo ago
  I work in software development for Danish hospitals, and some regions already used OpenOffice, now libre office, for .. well over 15 years. At least in parts. We integrate with an API into libreoffice, and it more or less did not change in well over a decade. But sometimes libreoffice crashes and you can't figure out why. There are just no logs. It feels like a black box at times. But I don't think they will be switching away from Teams as quickly. Will be interesting for sure. Slightly off topic, but does anyone know why libreoffice stopped publishing artefacts to mvn repo? https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.libreoffice/libreoffice https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.libreoffice/libreoffi...
  • deanc 8mo ago
    I think if we're to move to away from these US products to open source ones, then governments should also provide resources or funding to develop them using the licensing fees they save. Is the Danish government contributing back to libreoffice?
    • hermanzegerman 8mo ago
      The German State of Schleswig Holstein does https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-source-digital-sovereignty https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-s...
      • wolvoleo 8mo ago
        There's a lot more than just one municipality. The French government uses a lot of open source and is actively working on la suite.. The gendarmerie has been on Linux for years. Nato is using matrix (noteworthy especially because America is of course part of that) https://element.io/en/case-studies/nato https://element.io/en/case-studies/nato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
    • toomuchtodo 8mo ago
      Indeed, take what you're paying US Big Tech and direct it to domestic EU enterprises, corporate or non profit.
• ulrikrasmussen 8mo ago
  And meanwhile the exact same agency spits out government Android apps that use Play Integrity so citizens cannot ditch Google for GrapheneOS. This is symbolism, the minister does not actually care about digital sovereignty for the citizens.
  • guerrilla 8mo ago
    > This is symbolism I don't think so. It's more complicated than that. The state is not a monolith. Different heads are doing different things and it's a enormous bureaucracy. The divisions pumping out Android will eventually catch up to what's going on and the vulnerability they're exposing themselves to. These things take time. It doesn't all happen at once. People (who are not very technical, barely knowing what a computer is) need to understand what's going on and that can take a while. Let's just hope they figure it out before it matters.
    • Aeglaecia 8mo ago
      denmark spearheads the EU push for chat control , this is a bit of an impediment to the good will argument
      • guerrilla 8mo ago
        There is no "good will" argument being made here. The state doesn't care about good, it cares about it's own survival. Being independent from foreign interference in the software they use and having deep insight into what residents within the territory of that state are talking about are critical to that mission. It has nothing to do with morals. It is a machine.
        • steinvakt2 8mo ago
          EU chat control is also better than American government spying on American tech companies (which is effectively a kind of EU Chat Control, except its USA who gets to spy). Both are bad, but one is less bad.
• fbn79 8mo ago
  Who remember the failed experiment of abandoning Micro$oft by Munich https://www-sueddeutsche-de.translate.goog/muenchen/muenchner-stadtverwaltung-von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck-1.2090611?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-sueddeutsche-de.translate.goog/muenchen/muenchne...
  • c03 8mo ago
    I don't. But I remember that the French also just did the same.
  • cromka 8mo ago
    It failed because of MS pushback and lobbying. As was reported countless times.
    • xienze 8mo ago
      So, it can happen again is what you’re saying.
      • cromka 8mo ago
        Not what I am saying. But yeah, except MS position in general is much weaker nowadays, especially because of Apple, not open source.
    • petcat 8mo ago
      Also because Munich didn't actually want to leave Microsoft, they just wanted a better deal. (Which they got)
  • Kampfschnitzel 8mo ago
    failed due to corrupt government official and M$ bribes
    • amelius 8mo ago
      Sounds like a strategy to get money from M$. You can always switch to FOSS later.
• mrweasel 8mo ago
  > Copenhagen and Aarhus, which previously announced plans to abandon Microsoft software, citing financial concerns, market dominance and political tensions with Washington. That's not going to happen, their infrastructure is completely tied to Microsoft Active Directory, it's going to be incredibly expensive to just plan a migration out of that. Trump will be out of office before anything serious can even get startet, and depending on the next US administration, someone will decide that it's not worth the spending. Plus you'd need to re-train and army of Windows administrators to run, what... Linux and OpenLDAP?
  • throwawaysleep 8mo ago
    Trump represents the average American. That part is not changing and that problem is not going away. Joe Average said "Yes! [current mess] is what I want."
    • maypeacepreva1l 8mo ago
      Exactly, people saying Trump will be out of office and everything will be back to normal are incredibly naive. If current trends stay, Trump is going to be one of the better ones for what is coming next. The politicians in US are saying worst xenophobic, racist, sexist things and are still getting praised or even promoted to higher positions. At least for a decade, unless something big or drastic happens, nothing is going to change for better in US, politics wise.
    • CoastalCoder 8mo ago
      > Trump represents the average American. If that were true, you wouldn't see such a deeply divided America right now.
      • throwawaysleep 8mo ago
        Fine. Median American. 2 out of 3 Americans either endorsed this explicitly or were ok with it.
    • tallanvor 8mo ago
• adornKey 8mo ago
  Oh oh... Time to say goodbye to Greenland. Lets see what is going to happen to LEGO.. Freedom Bricks?
  • ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
    Why do you think there's a connection between the Danish government and LEGO?
    • simonh 8mo ago
      Trump has already started talking about taking over Iceland. Where's next? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yZA7A1fy8yelNvDK2aVesx24jakOg4vM/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yZA7A1fy8yelNvDK2aVesx24jak...
• prathje 8mo ago
  Happy to see Schleswig-Holstein switching as well and also it being mentioned in an article on the HN front page. Who would have thought?
  • andypiper 8mo ago
    They also have their own Mastodon server, which is a great way forward for government institutions!
• piker 8mo ago
  A lot of good behind this idea if nothing else than to keep Microsoft honest. The Azureware push is nauseating and such a transparent attempt to lock in its monopoly against disruptors. We’re hoping Tritium[1] can provide a free or commercial alternative for legal teams soon. All that said, it’s easy to underestimate the quality of Microsoft’s office products. They handle millions of edge cases, accessibility, i18n. They are performant and in a lot of cases extended through long-term add ins. Even Google hasn’t achieved real parity. It’s Microsoft’s race to lose, but my bet is they’re too distracted by AI to even noticed those coming for them. [1] https://tritium.legal https://tritium.legal
  • bayindirh 8mo ago
    > performant Inexplicably taking two seconds to load the next page in a simple, 10 page .docx document on a completely idle MacBook Air M1 w/ 16GB RAM. No memory pressure, no heavy processes, no excessive number of apps open. Yes, it's normally much faster, but not always.
    • piker 8mo ago
      Yes, that is surprising. Though I think modern Office has always struggled on macOS.
• motoboi 8mo ago
  Brazil’s free software initiative in 2000’s was all about technological dependency. Brazil was hoping to leverage governmental spending to kickstart a national software development industry. Some sort of leap into the future, jumping over first the industrial era and then service-based economy we missed. It was killed with fire by huge Microsoft (and American, I suppose) lobbying in congress, but then America had a very favorable public view as a nurturing and democratic partner. Some sort of older brother guiding you into adulthood. Currently, at least in my bubble, the public view of America is more like a predator with Trump as a protodictator. Not necessarily true, understand me, just as that older brother view wasn’t. But it’s public perception. A good part of that disabling of the Brazil initiative was simply free Google workspace for public universities (which were in the government plan). I suppose that given the existencial threat level of anxiety caused by current developments will probably make Europe government immune to American lobby (at least in the short term), so I suppose this can actually happen. Let’s see how it develops when they try to ban Microsoft from the universities. That would be the acid test.
  • marcosdumay 8mo ago
    > It was killed with fire by huge Microsoft (and American, I suppose) lobbying in congress Well... the bad quality of the decree itself helped at least as much as Microsoft. Government organizations often discover it's easier to publish their software in github than to make the publishing agency accept it. There was no migration plan, and the option that was actually pushed from the central organizations required constant contracts that were about as expensive and hard to manage as the ones with Microsoft, but hiring the government. At the same time, the same organization that others were supposed to contract was getting delisted worldwide for bad security practices.
• goldman7911 8mo ago
  Sorry if I sound bit political but this whole trump/usa political issue (hope) helps push more and more opensource and decentralization.
  • blue_hex 8mo ago
    This is a good thing, imo. Perhaps, the EU could generally switch to OSS, wherever possible, thus eroding even more the grip of the US tech giants on parts of the digital world.
• sylware 8mo ago
  From an applications point of view: They want web apps only running in whatng cartel web engines? libreoffice? A massive piece of software you can build only with US c++ compilers (MIT and mostly apple)? (the mistake was to use c++ in the first place, well computer languages on an insane level of complexity). To put it together: it won't be perfect, lines for compromises will have to be drawn, and it will feel like getting out of 'the matrix' for the time (normal "users" won't understand), if you see where I am going. Digital freedom has a "price", efty "price" in a digital world dominated by Big Tech. Going for a strong independence will have to hurt, or it will be slatted as "posture" more than a real long term/strategic will. It is not "against" the US, but "in the interest" of the danish people (well, should be EU though...)
  • robinei 8mo ago
    Who cares if a piece of open source has American maintainers? The point is not to avoid touching anything American. It is control and sovereignty.
    • sylware 8mo ago
      This is what I implied: this is not against the US, which have actually the most control and sovereignty on critical software. It is much cheaper and easier to have control and sovereignty on less complex software, including the SDK. Usually you get developer lock-in via non-pertinent complexity, often including the SDK namely the computer language.
• daft_pink 8mo ago
  Good luck. It’s just not really practical. Office 365 is cheap and training everyone on another platform will cost more and make it harder to onboard new talent than using another system. I worked for a company that was fully Google and the executives who were highly effective all just paid for excel themselves. It’s just not really practical when you’re going to make a presentation to learn how to do pivot tables in a new software in the crunch time. I’m not a fanboy. I prefer Mac, but in a high cost labor environment like Europe it’s not worth it to save less than 1% of your labor cost on new software.
  • hapidjus 8mo ago
    If the goal is purely to save costs, then yes. The main reason is actually stated in the title of the article. I recommend clicking the link to see it.
    • daft_pink 8mo ago
      The articles like 2-3 paragraphs? It’s not only costs. It’s the productivity and output of your labor force compared to something that in the grand scheme of things is not really expensive.
• whh 8mo ago
  I think a move to Open Source would be great in Europe, but only if the governments using the technologies are actively funding their development. This doesn't just mean once-off grants, or a bit of cash donated here and there. I would like to see per-user per-year contributions to the organisations that develop these tools on-par with the current spend going towards Microsoft Cloud products. It can be better than Microsoft, but you need to fund it to be better than Microsoft.
  • embedding-shape 8mo ago
    > It can be better than Microsoft, but you need to fund it to be better than Microsoft. Lol no. Microsoft profits more than the value they provide, not exactly we should want to copy. We need to prevent hypercapitalism from reaching us in Europe, not make it worse, as we now seen exactly what it does to countries when you let it grow unfettered. But I agree in general, governments and companies that use FOSS should donate back either engineering-time or money, but no need to do complicated "per-user per-year contributions", give them a sum per year, enough to fund the core developers at least and ideally to hire new ones, otherwise hire engineers and let them full-time contribute back. Luckily, at least in Europe, this is exactly what we're seeing now. The governments who are looking into FOSS are all thinking about how to help fund it, no one seem to be thinking "How can we do this for free?" which is nice thing to see.
    • hbn 8mo ago
      Governments funding FOSS is not Microsoft's business model and it's not capitalism.
      • embedding-shape 8mo ago
        > Governments funding FOSS is not Microsoft's business model Yeah, long time ago we last saw the whole "Microsoft <3 Open Source" shtick, so seems more true than ever.
    • kakacik 8mo ago
      Europe as in EU can certainly use a bit more capitalism. Nothing brutal like US or China have where individuals are often crushed by system or situation with no help in sight, but Europe got lazy, complacent, used to over-generous unsustainable easy to abuse social system and generally living off debt to future generations. Self-serving massive bureaucracy and corruption. Companies like car makers are already being hit badly and its going to get a lot worse with global competition. For the 1000th time here and elsewhere - look no further than Switzerland. Highly diverse, federated group of people that managed to preserve most direct democracy in the world for 800 years and counting. 'Most free and most armed nation in the world' still holds true without clusterfuck that US gun situation is. Each canton is very self-sufficient, governs local rules, laws and taxation so there is no animosity between various regions - really a mini version of EU. This is how EU parliament should look like, if (mostly) french and german egos would step down from their pedestals and acknowledge that somebody may figured things out better. Its most capitalistic country in Europe by far while preserving most of what we call social and healthcare net, has top notch free education and so on. Also its not increasing its debt, a clear mark of sustainable economical success of such approach, in contrary with literally any EU country.
• pu_pe 8mo ago
  One aspect of the AI bubble that is not talked about very much is how the European market is a key factor in any serious calculation about future revenue. If Europe decides to, or is forced to decouple its digital infrastructure from the US, that essentially slashes the addressable market of a company like chatGPT by a third. And Europe has some of the richest customers too. In other words, Sam Altman et al. should be hardcore Atlanticists at this point.
  • _ache_ 8mo ago
    You are right, but I have the feeling that the Google, Microsoft, ... and the IA companies think that the EU is a acquired market. It's false, they can shift off the US, they eventually will.
  • enaaem 8mo ago
    It also destroys the winner takes all market. Investors would count on the winner takes all market and give infinite VC money to a start up, so that they would make a product that is slightly better than the competitor and kill the competition early on.
  • kyboren 8mo ago
    Maybe this will happen eventually but decoupling any time soon is a pipe dream. For the foreseeable future, Europe's BATNA is shit. Forget Microsoft and Google services, what about the hardware? To support all this new demand for European infrastructure you'll have to buy tons of new gear from mostly American companies: AMD, INTC, NVDA, MU, etc. Are cutting-edge European competitors going to suddenly spring into existence to satisfy that demand? Is TSMC gonna allocate wafer spins to some scrappy EU startup instead of NVDA, AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, AMD, INTC, AVGO, QCOM? I dunno if you've been paying attention to the market but demand for all data center components has gone through the roof and supply is already spoken for for years to come. The hardware you'd need to decouple simply isn't available, when it becomes available you'll be competing with nearly $1T in annual hyperscaler CapEx, and Europe has no capability to produce domestic alternatives.
    • pu_pe 8mo ago
• tokai 8mo ago
  This is way overblown. Its parts of some ministries. All public IT in Denmark is still bound to Microsoft. Statens IT, the IT systems provider for the public sector, is right now in the middle of rolling out Windows 11.
  • Braxton1980 8mo ago
    The article says "Danish agency" not a"Denmark"
• bradley13 8mo ago
  That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. If we (Europeans) really mean it - and we should - the top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die. According to the CLOUD act, the US government can demand access to data from US companies, regardless of where that data is stored. That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government. I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this.
  • skrebbel 8mo ago
    > That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. All change starts small. If these small agencies or very local bits of government successfully pull it off, larger ones may well follow.
  • lukan 8mo ago
    "I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this." Maybe because there is no drop in replacement of microsoft and microsoft dependant tools? So yes, one can (and should) build them. But the market right now is not offering this yet.
    • Gigachad 8mo ago
      Google has drop in replacements for most of it. But that doesn’t solve the problem of using US tech.
      • m000 8mo ago
        France have already developed their own (recently posted here) [1][2]. Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting. Yes, you will not get 100% of the Office 365 features out of the box. There will be some friction. It's simply ridiculous seeing EU bureaucracy preparing e.g. to ban russian oil [3], making life more expensive for all people, and balking on being forced to switch their stupid word processor. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923736 [2] https://github.com/suitenumerique https://github.com/suitenumerique [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-propose-permanent-ban-russian-oil-after-hungary-election-document-shows-2026-02-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-propose-permanent...
• teekert 8mo ago
  I do like this news, but I wonder why they choose LibreOffice. It's the most widely known MS alternative, but things like OnlyOffice [0] and Nextcloud Office [1] (which is based on Collabora Online [2], which in turn is based on LibreOffice) offer much more compelling collaborative features, imho. Just plain office (like it's 1997) is quite a step back, no? Especially OnlyOffice looks extremely similar to MS Office, I have it on all our Linux laptops at home so the kids don't feel much difference between home and school envs. I think document interoperability (as in: Looks similar) is also better. [0] https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/ [1] https://nextcloud.com/office/ https://nextcloud.com/office/ [2] https://www.collaboraonline.com/ https://www.collaboraonline.com/
  • eXpl0it3r 8mo ago
    OnlyOffice, Nextcloud OPffice, Collabora might all have free offerings to a degree, but you'll end up at the mercy of the companies behind those tools and OnlyOffice comes with Enterprise offering that does also cost money. Costing money isn't necessarily bad, but it's also hard to beat free & libre.
    • teekert 8mo ago
      True. But I have to say that I got quite used to collaborative editing, not something I'd like to give up. People can get used to buttons moving to other places (imo), but collecting and integrating edits from multiple people via email is not something I look back at fondly.
      • eXpl0it3r 8mo ago
        Yeah, then again most people haven't experienced this and are happy to just enable "track changes" in Word and send the document back and forth, maybe if you're lucky, it's hosted on SharePoint or OneDrive.
  • StrauXX 8mo ago
    OnlyOffice had some controversy around being owned and operated by a Russian company through shell companies. They might even fall under EU sanctions. There is an open German information request to the government that was never answered. Wether those connections are true or not I can't say, but I do know people that dropped OnlyOffice in their evaluations for this reason.
• jl6 8mo ago
  The European sovereign tech trend isn’t exclusively a benefit to OSS. SAP must be anticipating a significant windfall of Oracle refugees.
  • lejalv 8mo ago
    Can proprietary software (SAP) be truly sovereign, though? On the one hand, nothing stops SAP from behaving like Oracle for the sake of shareholder value. On the other hand, even SAP could be bought by Blackrock or Peter Thiel, and back to US dependence. Am I missing something about SAP that precludes these scenarios?
    • jl6 8mo ago
      Nothing absolutely precludes malfeasance, but SAP is a European legal entity, answerable ultimately to European law. Microsoft and Oracle also trade in Europe through European legal entities, which are theoretically also bound by European law, but should that law conflict with any US law that binds the parent companies, we would expect the US law to be the stronger influence (likely covertly).
• wangzhongwang 8mo ago
  [dead]
• AtomicOrbital 8mo ago
  take your abandon laptop which still runs and install Ubuntu on it ... you will see how easy linux is today ... there is no justification for microsoft windows in 2026
• Eddy_Viscosity2 8mo ago
  What are the hurdles from any of the EU governments from: 1. Choosing the best open source options for the various MS replacements 2. Fund an office who's job would be to provide software support, continue development, and make customizations for various departments. They continue to host this as open source. 3. Expanding adoption of the new tools to more gov departments over time. Continue to expand software office accordingly. 4. Eventually, they will have a solution entirely within their control. The costs will initially be higher likely, but way less over time. If this progresses, then other governments can also adopt those same tools and also provide funding to the software office so that the software is continuously updated for things like security, big fixes, etc. all remains gov sponsored open source. Am I crazy?
• voxleone 8mo ago
  I think an important point in this discussion is that adopting FOSS requires a level of institutional openness that is not typical of governments in general. It’s not just a question of switching vendors; it’s about embracing transparency, auditability, and shared ownership of public infrastructure. The question is: are governments fully aware of what FOSS adoption actually implies? Brazil is an interesting case. On paper, we have a strong legal mandate. Under Art. 16 of Lei 14.063/2020[0], information and communication systems developed exclusively by public bodies must be governed by an open-source license, allowing use, copying, modification, and distribution without restriction by other public entities. However, implementation tells a different story. Take PIX, the instant payment system developed by the Brazilian Central Bank. As of today, only the API is open. The core system code remains unpublished[1]. If the system was developed exclusively by the public administration, this seems difficult to reconcile with the letter - and certainly the spirit - of the law. So the issue is not only whether governments should reduce vendor lock-in. It’s whether they are prepared to follow through on what real openness demands once they commit to it. [0] https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2019-2022/2020/Lei/L14063.htm https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2019-2022/2020/Lei... [1] https://d1gesto.blogspot.com/2025/06/brazils-pix-system-faces-legal-risk-for.html https://d1gesto.blogspot.com/2025/06/brazils-pix-system-face...
• ddtaylor 8mo ago
  I mean they should be using open source software for this type of stuff, but every time I see these announcements they are either worded strangely or the governments just don't do it, because the end result is always the same. Can we do a Polymarket bet? I'm taking the Microsoft side. Yeah they suck. Yup, nothing new there, but they'll find a way to keep all these dolts paying.
• troad 8mo ago
  I'm very happy for all the Europeans getting to use software they like and prefer, but honestly I'm a little tired of reading about it. There's been an awful lot of recent blogging and news about de-Americanising one's stack. It seems very important to the Europeans that they let everyone else know they're leaving? It's got the air of a thirty-five year old threatening to move out of his parents' basement any day now. Go already! Stop telling us about it. We all wish you the best. Good luck! (Don't expect to get much say over how foreign tech platforms operate going forward, if you get the balkanised Internet you seem to yearn for?)
  • teekert 8mo ago
    It's an incredibility hot topic here (in the EU) right now. It also provides a lot of (business) opportunities here. I get that this (HN) is not an EU platform, but a lot of us are on here. Collectively we feel like we are going through an EU/US divorce that is rough and will take years to complete. All our tech is entangled with the US, everything would grind to a halt if Trump would pull some plugs at the moment. It's like everybody just woke up. We lost an ally that we really leaned on. We even have news like "Dutch Defense dept considers jailbreaking F35s" [0]. Completely nuts of course! But gives a taste of the climate here. I don't see what you mean with your remark about the balkanized internet, the problems is we've been building our systems in US walled gardens, and now we want our freedom back. [0] https://tweakers.net/nieuws/244764/defensie-ziet-jailbreak-van-f-35-als-uitweg-voor-techafhankelijkheid-van-de-vs.html https://tweakers.net/nieuws/244764/defensie-ziet-jailbreak-v...
    • troad 8mo ago
      > I don't see what you mean with your remark about the balkanized internet, the problems is we've been building our systems in US walled gardens, and now we want our freedom back. The short version is that Europe's influence on tech is going to be significantly reduced by Europe trying to silo itself off from the rest of the world. If Europe becomes even more marginal of a market than it is now, then the established players have ever less reason to attempt to comply with European regulations. (You may say they already push back, but that's quite different from not bothering at all.) Of course the rest of the world isn't going anywhere, and Europeans will remain exposed to new technologies coming out of Asia and America. It does Europe very little good to make a Euro-Twitter that abides by Euro regs, if the original Twitter remains widely accessible from Europe, but decides to no longer do business in Europe, and is no longer responsive to European regulation / courts / etc. TLDR: A necessary outcome of increasing Euro digital autonomy is a reorientation of foreign players back towards home markets, and the rise of an American digital autonomy that no longer humours Europe at all.
• FpUser 8mo ago
  Ability to make certain kind of software is totally strategic for countries to be independent. Completely relying on some other 3rd party is truly stupid.
• retired 8mo ago
  Is there a European alternative to Microsoft 365? Most platforms like Nextcloud focus on file storage, email, documents and video conference but don't do anything similar to the identity management, provisioning, policies and SSO that Office 365 provides. A national government is large enough to run their own Keycloak instance but a regional branch of government would be better off with having a SaaS for that. It would be great if the EU would subsidize a full alternative to Microsoft 365 and give every government worker in every EU country an account to that. Just grab a random laptop from the shelf, install EUnionOS, log-in to EUnionCloud and have all the required apps for their work install themselves, set all the rights correctly, mail works automatically, automatic access to the correct files. Full disk encryption, theft protection etcetera.
  • wongarsu 8mo ago
    Many governments have their own MSPs (managed service provider) who could host any open source software, just as they are likely in charge right now of many Microsoft admin tasks. And if the government doesn't have one but a branch office wants a regional branch wants a keycloak instance they can always get an MSP for that I do like your vision of a unified full replacement version. But even just gathering everyone's requirements for that seems like a near impossible task that would take years. And the end result would almost certainly end in a mess that's too restrictive for some, unusuably unsecure for others, and have a set of apps that will always be slightly wrong and difficult to change. These huge top-down solutions rarely work well
  • wolvoleo 8mo ago
    You can always pick other components for those things. Many enterprises do this also because the included parts in M365 are usually pretty mediocre compared to AAA solutions that specialise in that part. For example dedicated MDMs are better than Intune. Dedicated IDPs are better than Entra AD. Dropbox is better than OneDrive, slack is way better than teams (to be fair, anything is better than teams :) ) The big benefit of the MS package is that you get it all for one price. And that it's integrated so you have less configuration. But they're not deal-breakers. That's why parties like Okta and MobileIron still exist. Airwatch was also really good but VMware screwed them up like they screw everything up. But M365 is not the only game out there. Unless you're limiting yourself to wanting exactly what M365 is. Then it's only that yes.
• rambojohnson 8mo ago
  Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability. my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should probably stop wiring the house through a burning building." Payments, cloud, office software, data infrastructure, all of it. so Denmark moving to cut Microsoft dependence in the name of digital independence is basically the same story. When the US starts looking less like stable infrastructure and more like a chaotic landlord, everyone starts building their own exits.
  • tchalla 8mo ago
    > They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term be Digital euro push is beyond the current US administration if that’s what you are hinting at. The trigger was Big Tech payments (Facebook Libra) and the rise of BTC.
  • ilikerashers 8mo ago
    Europe has just been catastrophically slow in developing anything related to it's own tech infrastructure. Its doesn't back itself. Given how poor it's responding to things like the Draghi report, I wouldn't anticipate success. Just more flailing around and working groups.
    • pydry 8mo ago
      There are plenty of european hosts (e.g. hetzner) and with payments systems the technology is rarely the problem it's the politics. I imagine EPI will have no problem succeeding. The major problem Europe has (mentioned in the draghi report) is with industrial competitiveness and strategy and access to cheap energy. With the former it's not like the US is doing any better though. I dont think anybody in the west even has an industrial strategy.
      • 8mo ago
• fyredge 8mo ago
  There's something about governments moving to open source software that doesn't sit well with me. The only advantage I can see is reduction in expenditure with free software. I believe we should go a step further and institute open standards. Move away from .docx and to .odt in document submission on government websites. This gives users the flexibility of choice as long as they adhere to a specific standards. This would also hopefully alleviate some of the mess of inconsistent rendering of the same document on different software.
  • timbit42 8mo ago
    What are you talking about? ODT is an open standard.
• 202508042147 8mo ago
  I know someone that works in the central government of an EU country and have persuaded her to talk to the IT department in the ministry where she works to try to move away from Microsoft products. The short answer: "It's not possible for us to move away from Microsoft". And it's not that they don't want to, but they have extremely low IT resources + the employees are very reluctant to make any change. Sometimes they introduce a new program, or update an older one and there's massive whining in the entire ministry. These public employees should really try to adapt more and understand that digital environments have become crucial for independence, privacy and self-reliance.
• mark_l_watson 8mo ago
  Some degree of national pride and independence simply makes a lot of sense: slightly modified Linux distros set up for local information resources and banking, tuned open LLMs, local web site indexing and search, and parallel backup financial infrastructure. I get that some of these things are difficult to do, but small steps lead to larger steps.
• JSR_FDED 8mo ago
  Of all the Microsoft products, Excel is going to be the hardest to replace. Firstly, it's critical in many organisations. We all know you shouldn't run your business on a spreadsheet, but everyone does. Just a tiny difference in how data is handled, an unsupported macro, a missing formula...the whole deck of cards collapses. Secondly, while people only use 20% of its features, everyone uses a different 20%.
  • acidburnNSA 8mo ago
    That is a common and reasonable sentiment. I can't help wonder if Claude Code will move this needle. Maybe people will stop relying as much on excel?
• tsoukase 8mo ago
  An open source replacement of proprietary SW is very easy in the beginning but becomes hard quickly. You grab a Linux distribution and the App that match the functionality at best and call it a day. But the next day a bunch of problems arise: some features are not implemented, the UI is not ergonomic, the stability is not there and when updates come, the situation goes overboard. The billions of dollars don't start software, they end it polished and consumer ready.
  • encom 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FUD https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FUD
• jccx70 8mo ago
  [dead]
• rbbydotdev 8mo ago
  An EU Linux distro could be interesting
• cs702 8mo ago
  In the past, a small number of European cities or municipalities have tried to move away from proprietary software, but those have been isolated cases, lacking broader support. This time, things look different. Anecdotally, more people in Europe now suddenly actually care about this. They no longer want their governments to rely on software controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust it. Many are shocked and upset about recent US actions that they view as "detestable," including "irrational efforts against NATO," "nonsensical tariffs against allies," "ICE raids that trample over human rights," and "missiles targeting boat survivors." I'm paraphrasing what others have mentioned to me here. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans. They don't particularly care for the open-source movement on its own, but they now view open-source software as a more desirable alternative. In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies. This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.
• ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
  (2025) Story from June OP? Lots of discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44234552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44234552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44255352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44255352
• m00dy 8mo ago
  I lived in Denmark for quite a while, don’t ever believe that, because it’s never going to happen.
• Beijinger 8mo ago
  Well, not really surprising, considering that Trump wants to snap Greenland and Microsoft's founder likes to fuck Russian prostitutes on Epsteins island. Both is not really inspiring confidence to run a government infrastructure on such software.
• arbirk 8mo ago
  Can we just use markdown already?
• bookofjoe 8mo ago
  One of the driving themes of "Industry" Season 4 is precisely this: what happens to your data once big players ahold of it.
• miroslavr 8mo ago
  I am wondering what EU was doing 20+ years in the digital world? Why doesn't it have own video streaming, cloud, email, social net... pretty much all that we use now Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft for. It is very difficult for fragmented Europe to have the central service in pretty much any domain. And its citizen and ruling classes were sleeping 20 years living cozy.
• notepad0x90 8mo ago
  Great for them. But are they just going too mooch off of open source software then? Nothing wrong with that, so long as they fund developers and projects.
• tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
  I look forward to reading these exact same articles 10 years from now: "EU contemplating debate over a draft proposal to definitely invest in a consulting contract to study the migration of a part of one agency to a homegrown office suite away from Microsoft"
• neuroelectron 8mo ago
  Previous post on this subject-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636445
• dagaci 8mo ago
  Its understated, but this kind move is now systemic in the EU due to the sanctioning of ICC & EU officials and random people who hurt the presidents feelings requiring Microsoft to remotely kill access to resources tied to Microsoft Accounts. Without rules of law its literally irresponsible for EU to have this kind of heavy dependency on US corporations.
• fdebian 8mo ago
  [dead]
• sublimefire 8mo ago
  However you like it or not banning just one company is not a recipe for success. IMO the issue is in the procurement and how these tenders are worded. For instance, if the requirement is data residency backed by private keys and conf compute then put it in writing. The idea that some other vendor will come in and solve this problem without such a requirement upfront will not hold for long. By and large MS problem is that our world gets fragmented and you need to have products that adapt, eg great firewall in China, strict data residency in Europe. It is difficult to achieve that without segmenting your products as well.
• thomasjudge 8mo ago
  There are a number of US states that have moved off Microsoft (mostly to G-Suite) and a number more that are considering it. And yes it won't be EVERYone (you can pry excel out of accountants cold dead hands) or everyTHING (obviously mainly Windows) but it's at least a blow against the pricing and quality issues from MSFT
• eitally 8mo ago
  The problem isn't plain MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The more nefarious set of issues is around domain-specific software that is only compatible with Microsoft platforms and software. For example, Veeva Vault is the industry standard content (and content workflow) platform for life sciences. It's a heavy, somewhat unpleasant platform similar to a Workday or ServiceNow, but it's ingrained and it compliant with all life sci regulatory bodies' regulations. It requires customers use SharePoint and Office under the hood. Things like that can't just be ripped out and replaced because there are no FOSS options.
• Flatterer3544 8mo ago
  Denmark was literally the US lapdog for such a long time, open to provide access and info. Denmark was the first to follow US into Iraq, while the rest of Scandinavia was much more skeptical. Guess just bad luck with Greenland turning them the complete opposite direction, since I was certain that Denmark would be the one of the last to go against US in any way.
  • jeroenhd 8mo ago
    As a Dutch citizen, I take issue with that. Our politicians worked hard to be considered the USA's most reliable lapdog! People also ridiculed the French for maintaining independence of American influence for decades, even within the EU/EEG/etc., but that should prove that the America-sceptic voices have always been around, even if they weren't the most influential. It's also not the first time the Americans have eyed Greenland, that's why they have negotiated the right to set up military bases there. After European countries aligned with America's overreactions in the Middle East as a gesture of goodwill (but also to buy political capital, despite the Americans starting an intense smear campaign against the French for not falling for their propaganda), European governments expected to be handled as an ally at the very least. The past decade, the people of the USA and their representatives have dropped all pretences and the slow and steady criticism in the background has now made it to the foreground. The political capital countries tried to buy by doing what Washington asked has turned out to be worthless. With recent threats of invasion and the diplomatic problems American representatives have caused, it's getting harder and harder to see a future where European governments end up treating the USA any different from other (upcoming, but not necessarily politically-aligned) world powers such as China, Russia, India, or Pakistan.
• capevace 8mo ago
  I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to. The fact they’re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.
• kakoni 8mo ago
  Does somebody have the latest on how the Epic EHR is doing in Copenhagen/Zealand regions?
• encom 8mo ago
  >reduce dependence on U.S. tech firms Let's have a look: $ host -t A digmin.dk digmin.dk has address 172.232.147.252 digmin.dk has address 172.233.57.17 $ whois 172.233.57.17 | grep -i orgname OrgName: Akamai Technologies, Inc. OrgName: Linode Pathetic. This kind of press release happens every so often. It's an election year, so that probably explains it. Nothing ever comes of it. As someone employed in the danish public sector, I'd love nothing more than to never have to use Outlook again, but it's unlikely to happen.
• aucisson_masque 8mo ago
  > If everything goes as expected, all employees will be on an open-source solution during the autumn For once, it's very fast.
• aucisson_masque 8mo ago
  https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-orders-diplomats-fight-data-sovereignty-initiatives-2026-02-25/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... Related
• Emen15 8mo ago
  The interesting question is not "can LibreOffice replace Word" but whether Denmark is restructuring identity, device management, and procurement to avoid recreating lock in elsewhere. Office is visible, but AD or Entra, MDM, compliance tooling, and vendor tied workflows are the real gravity wells. The success metric is not feature parity. It is whether dependency risk is measurably reduced over a 5 to 10 year horizon without fragmenting operational continuity.
• huntoa 8mo ago
  A token gesture. Europe is extremely dependent on foreign tech. I don't see the political will to really change that. I think the main causes are corruption, incompetence, extortion (negotiations on trade, etc.), and short-term thinking of politicians and managers. People did warn them, but they were ignored. They fucked the citizens long-term. Treason. Critical infrastructure, such as energy, healthcare, or train service, runs on US software and services and thus only works as long as the US allows it. In Germany, the German Railway moved all of their software services into US clouds and shut down their own data center. That didn't protect them from a recent DDoS, taking down their main customer-facing site for hours. Meanwhile, the local job market abounds with job ads from government agencies and private businesses, requiring administrating MS software (AD, 365, Exchange), cloud and doing "Power"-stuff. The study "European Software and Cyber Dependencies" [1] (Dec 2025) from of the European Parliament explains the dire state. It's full of money quotes: "Non-EU actors, primarily US companies, control nearly all critical layers of Europe’s digital stack. These dependencies are reinforced by vendor lock-in, long-term contracts, proprietary formats, & network effects that limit switching and suppress market entry for EU innovators" "80% of European corporate spending on software and cloud flows to US vendors." "Public administrations rely heavily on Microsoft and Google productivity suites, with only isolated instances of migrations to open-source alternatives" "A case study of the EU’s energy infrastructure provides a further illustration of how its digitalisation creates critical cyber dependencies. Industrial control, grid management, and market-trading software increasingly rely on non-EU vendors and cloud platforms." "Such heavy reliance on US tech and vendors results in [...] tangible sovereignty risks. The CLOUD Act, FISA Act and US sanctions regimes give US authorities legal reach over data of European citizens and institutions hosted by American providers." "Dependence extends across the supply chain — from chips and hardware (90% of advanced semiconductors imported) to developer tools and standards (GitHub, Docker, and major programming frameworks are US-governed);" "The EU’s digital trade deficit exceeds EUR 100 billion annually" "These outflows finance US R&D and jobs: according to one study, retaining just 15% of this spending could create around 500,000 jobs in Europe by 2035;" "Lock-in inflates long-term costs and undermines innovation, while dependence on external platforms diminishes Europe’s leverage in trade and security negotiations;" "Europe’s software and cyber dependencies are becoming a structural strategic liability. [...] without decisive action, Europe risks becoming a “digital colony”- dependent on others’ platforms, standards, and priorities for decades to come." "[EU]’s deep reliance on non-EU tech is a strategic vulnerability. It exposes the EU to geopolitical coercion (a de-facto “virtual kill switch”), with potential cascading disruption across finance, health, energy and transport if access to […] cloud or key software is curtailed. "In the current geopolitical scene, technology interdependence is being weaponised. External pressure can push the EU to dilute rules or face retaliatory trade measures, while dependence reduces Europe’s geopolitical leverage." "the EU already faces pressure to dilute its own digital regulations to appease allies or avoid retaliation – recently, trade negotiators even been softening EU digital rules (like the new Digital Markets Act) in exchange for avoiding US tariffs" "if a major US platform suffered a prolonged outage, or if transatlantic relations deteriorated, leading to data access blocks, a large swath of European business and government services could grind to a halt." "semiconductors account for about 80% of the strategic value of a data centre; building AI campuses without European hardware will therefore send most of the value abroad" [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/778576/ECTI_STU(2025)778576_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/7785...
• dgan 8mo ago
  I always wondered : govt needs support for their IT infra; students need experience. Every damn uni / eng school have a ton of "associations". Just delegate software support/development into universities/eng school? I see it as a win-win
• Vicentj 8mo ago
  Advanced Crypto Recovery Experts | Intelligence Cyber Wizard Gift card scam, cryptocurrency scam, credit card scam, debit card scam, bank transfer scam, etc.Contact us NOW! We may freeze or recover funds before it’s too late. Wire TransferNotify us immediately we might intercept the money. 1• Credit/Debit CardDispute the charge Many banks can reverse it. Bank TransferFile a stop-payment or dispute right away. 2• Mailed Payments / Money OrdersContact us or the issuer fast some payments can be canceled. Undelivered Products/ServicesReport it & keep all receipts. 3• Personal Info (SSN, Passwords, etc.)Change passwords, monitor accounts, consider a credit freeze. CryptocurrencyWe can trace & help recover your crypto. 4• Why Choose Intelligence Cyber Wizard?Cyber Intelligence ExpertsCrypto Investigation SpecialistsProven Asset RecoveryAct fast scammers don’t wait! 5• Take Action NOW! Contact us with scam details Share screenshots & receipts Start getting your money back today Schedule a mail session with our forensic team of professionals today. How to Approach Contacting our team: Type “Intelligence Cyber Wizard” into Google to find our official contact on Google reviews or contact directly via – Mail at intelligencecyberwizard@cyber-wizard.com to get started immediately. Intelligence Cyber Wizard – Your Money, Your Rights
• pullthatupjamie 8mo ago
  [dead]