7 ms·

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 governme

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...
    - Forgeties79 8mo ago
      What France is doing is great but, as you’ll see discussed in that HN comment section, it is hardly an office suite. It’s not a full replacement by a long shot. I hope it will be one day though!
    - Jolter 8mo ago
      Good luck convincing the government (or local councils) of Bulgaria to migrate to an office suite that’s available in French or English only. That’s beside the sibling comment’s point that this suite is not complete enough (yet).
    - lukan 8mo ago
      "Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting" If you claim, that this is my position, please read at least one more sentence "So yes, one can (and should) build them. "
    - mgoetzke 8mo ago
      Considering that I doubt most normal office-user people even use features in Word other than changing fonts etc I doubt that will be a big issue anyway.
      - MegaDeKay 8mo ago
        It doesn't need to be "most". "Some" or even "a few" can be enough to make a hell of a mess if those few have created documents that are key to the business in one way or another (proposals, end-user documentation, etc). And there are the other components to the suite like Powerpoint, Excel, and Project to consider.
        einr 8mo ago
        So then act now, because the best time to act was yesterday, and the longer you wait the worse the mess and pain becomes. Not acting at all is not an option.
      - bdavbdav 8mo ago
  - Johnny555 8mo ago
    The problem is that Google only covers "most of it", so even if it covers 99% of use cases, for that cases where it doesn't, companies still need MS Office. I worked for a startup that was all OSX desktops and Google Docs. Then when we hit 100 employees, the finance department required MS Office, so they used Office for Mac, then as we grew, they needed real MS Office running in Windows, so they ran Windows in Parallels, then as we continued to grow they moved to full Windows laptops. When I left the company (at around 1000 employees), almost a third of the company was on Windows (mostly in Finance, Sales, and other business departments). And the team supporting the 2/3 Mac desktops was about 1/3 the size of the team supporting Windows. Though I suppose it's easier for a government to move off Microsoft. When an investor tells you to use their financial modeling software that only works with MS Excel, it's pretty hard for a small company to refuse, but a government has more power to force others to conform to their choice.
    - wasabi991011 8mo ago
      Any insight in to why the finance department (and other departments) required MS office?
      - Johnny555 8mo ago
        Their initial need for Office was some soft of forecasting model that they needed to update for a large investor. That was a big spreadsheet that ran on Office for OSX if I remember correctly. After that, I don't know what specifically they needed to use, they had purchased some software that required Windows and Office.
        sho 8mo ago
        Call me cynical, but having been around the block a few times when I hear "need" and "require" my brain translates that to "want" and "it would be convenient if". I've done my share of forecasting for investors and am quite confident that there is nothing in any startup forecast that could conceivably "require" Windows. I mean, absolute worst case, just use SQL. The CFO just preferred Windows, that's it, I'd bet money on it.
  - clickety_clack 8mo ago
    After using both extensively, there is no comparison between Google and the MS suite. Google’s apps are like a toy version of MS Office.
    - Gigachad 8mo ago
      The Microsoft ones feel broken, buggy, and bloated with decades of crap. I guess there are some people using those weird edge features, but if you don’t, the Google stuff works way better.
  - kube-system 8mo ago
    They're competitive but they're not drop-in replacements. Even office for Mac is not a drop-in replacement for office on Windows. It's pretty trivial to find significant differences that will be in use in any large organization.
    - Gigachad 8mo ago
      Considering every job I’ve had in recent times has involved a switch between Google/Microsoft tools after being acquired, it’s about as drop in as anything gets in tech. Of course no product will be an identical replica of the Microsoft tools, but both get the job done.
      - kube-system 8mo ago
        It depends. If you're writing documents and sending email, it probably not gonna be too tough. If you've got 100,000+ lines of Excel macros, you're gonna need a pretty significant migration.
- lpcvoid 8mo ago
  There's Nextcloud/OCIS/Owncloud for Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint) and Onedrive, there's Libreoffice/Collabora (and Onlyoffice, but that's russian...), there's Thunderbird for Email. Windows is absolutely replaceable also, of course, maybe even easier than the Office365 subscription mentioned above. The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and should be in the EU. You simply cannot trust an American company anymore after Trump.
  - Foobar8568 8mo ago
    People get a lot of cash, house and other benefits when they pick up suppliers. And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.
    - close04 8mo ago
      Someone yanked your chain with this one. Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft, these cases can't even register in the statistic of the total volume of orders. Every tech company would buy you a house if that worked, when a house is always a rounding error on the value of the contracts we're talking about. They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has". It's easier to deal with a single party than it is to get licenses and support from 20 other suppliers that then blame each other when there are issues at the border between 2 of the products. You can talk to anyone else who has Teams, your files are always fully compatible, all of the rest of your software integrates, single identity, etc. A lot of good it is that you have Google Meet and Libre Office when the partners you work closes to have Teams and MS Office. Users are proficient with the products, you can find skilled admins everywhere. Incumbency has a lot of inertia. So you have to pay millions in support contracts every year, it's the cost of doing business. So MS gets hacked every other day, what could you have done about it better when even MS (!!!) couldn't?
      - bobmcnamara 8mo ago
        > Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft... This is the same Microsoft we're talking about right? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end-134811427.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end... https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corruption-complaint/178295/ https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr... https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-bribery-scheme-in-middle-east-and-africa-11648221986 https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-b... Any fines that allow profitable operations are no more than a tax.
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  For many services there are drop-in Replacements available. I don't see what's so special about Mail or Calendar from Microsoft vs other vendors. The Quality is also Shit. I get some stupid Errors when trying to Access OWA every other day. Then I have to reset cookies/cache and can login again
  - mrweasel 8mo ago
    You don't want a drop-in replacement for each service, you want one for the entire system. Microsofts advantage is ActiveDirectory integration. Centrally managed users and machines, every user, every application, every service authentications through the AD. Organizations opt for Teams all the time, because it's part of the package and fully integrated. There's no reason they couldn't pick something else, but why deal with it when Teams just work (sort of).
    - redkoala 8mo ago
      Is there a combination of open standards to drop in to replace AD integration with self management? OAuth enabled systems aren’t enough, central management of users and machines are huge. If that core matures, it opens up the market for replacements in other areas. Teams, Outlook and the Office Suite need first grade replacements.
    - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
      And OpenDesk has managed to do without, they seem to be using Univention Nubus as an AD Replacement https://www.univention.de/loesungen/alternative-zu-microsoft-active-directory/ https://www.univention.de/loesungen/alternative-zu-microsoft...
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Yes and they keep blocking features in Firefox on Linux. When I change the user agent to match edge on windows things suddenly work fine. When it's set to Firefox attachment uploads don't work and ever morning it jumps to "please wait while we're signing you out..." when i never asked for that. When it thinks it's edge it just stays signed in. Not to mention the huge amount of telemetry I need to block with ublock origin.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Well, if your goal is to be 100% the same as what Microsoft offer, then sure no there's not. But that's letting them set the goalposts. If you look at the features you actually need and are willing to explore different ways of doing things that are not exactly like M365 there's more options. France and Germany are also working on freeing themselves from M365. This kinda thing sounds a lot like those RFPs that were specifically written so they could only be fulfilled by Microsoft because it was just a list of their feature tickboxes.
  - KronisLV 8mo ago
    > But that's letting them set the goalposts. This is missed in so, so very many discussions out there. You can reproduce about 50-75% of what MS offers with FOSS and work on writing the rest in-house/in-EU. Would a bunch of workflows suffer initially? Sure, but not even trying is just preseving the status quo.
    - Guestmodinfo 8mo ago
      Today I opened a .docx file on libreoffice on my linux machine. Did a whole bunch of editing and sent back the file for some semi official purpose. And the .docx file behaved as usual on the windows machine of the sender. I mean to say for many many people the workflows will not suffer even one but. It's just too much automated people whose work may suffer initially b cause they are using windows API or something like that. But that's like just for developers suffering. Most govt offices or universities just work on individual files and that will never suffer even one bit
      - KronisLV 8mo ago
        I mean, to be honest, I've historically had most software out there break in all sorts of ways, LibreOffice had some interesting issues while working on my thesis: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/libreoffice-bibliography-is-broken https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/libreoffice-bibliography-is-bro... (bit of a rant back then, when I had a section on my blog called "Everything is broken", but you get the idea) But yeah, it probably depends on what you're trying to do with any one software package, some people will be affected more than others and sometimes most stuff will just work!
- rconti 8mo ago
  The best time to do this was ~2010 before all of the cloud lock-in stuff. The second best time is now.
- throwyawayyyy 8mo ago
  What I find interesting, and reflects my ignorance of how these things are used, is that if you look at, say, FAANG companies, Office isn't used. I've worked for two FAANGs over the past couple of years, and everything is done via Google docs. Replacing a giant suite like Office looks hard, replacing something simpler like Google docs looks very much simpler, and surely should suffice?
hermanzegerman 8mo ago
Well the State of Schleswig Holstein is ditching Microsoft completely. But it's a difficult political uphill battle, because some Users won't change their habits and cry about it. The Minister shut this up with "Software is a decision by the employer, the employee has to accept it" Which then got blown up by the tabloid media, which ran BS Headlines like "OMG Courts and Police not working (because they're childish and refuse to learn another E-Mail Client) Also Microsoft is playing dirty and lobbying very hard behind the scenes to obstruct it, in Munich they changed their German HQs to Munich and started to pay Taxes there. So suddenly the city changed back to MS TL;Dr: It's a thankless and tough battle for politicians, because they face lobbying and media pressure against them. Also they will be blamed for any roadblocks, and there is no real upside for them in it, as no one except for a few nerds cares about this
- lnsru 8mo ago
  You’re absolutely right. The benefit of being US independent has no value in the eyes of the large part of European population. The politician fighting for it is fighting uphill battle against mega corporation with endless lobbying budget and simultaneously digging a grave for the political career.
  - mijoharas 8mo ago
    > The benefit of being US independent has no value in the eyes of the large part of European population I think this may have changed a bit within the last year or so...
    - xylifyx 8mo ago
      Definitely, at least in Denmark.
      - justinclift 8mo ago
        And in Greenland. ;)
  - deleted 8mo ago
Izmaki 8mo ago
The “that’s nice but Denmark is small” comment is getting tiresome. Whether the country had 6 million or 60 million the bureaucracy is the same. It’s not about the size or the economics, it’s about the message. It won’t be long until the rest of the public sectors follow along. There has already been plenty of consideration and desire to follow through. What’s holding them back typically is not the desire to stay with Microsoft et. al., but the investment needed to make the switch away from a live system.
- quietbritishjim 8mo ago
  > The “that’s nice but Denmark is small” comment is getting tiresome. The parent comment didn't complain that Denmark or its overall government is small. They complained that this agency represents a small fraction of their government.
  - nunobrito 8mo ago
    Yes. Typically is some town hall shifting to Linux and making a big fuss when literally million others are still running Windows. Seeing an agency doing it is good, but still less than the French ditching Teams and Zoom altogether as country-wide policy.
    - slow_typist 8mo ago
      But still, this is Denmark’s tech modernization agency. They follow an eat-your-own-dogfood stance. Transforming the public administration is the logical next step. Something different happening here, not the town hall big fuss approach.
      - nunobrito 8mo ago
        Indeed, crossing the fingers to see if we finally have a proper transition.
      - MengerSponge 8mo ago
        It makes you wonder what critics think the process should look like? Plan A: Just burn it down and rebuild FOSS in the ashes. Plan B: The tech modernization agency can make the transition, document and enhance the process, and then guide less savvy users. I dunno. Tough call.
Tarq0n 8mo ago
Not everything is a state secret. There's no need to immediately migrate every trivial email and permit request, but having a parallel infrastructure for the stuff that needs it should be a no-brainer.
- heikkilevanto 8mo ago
  > Not everything is a state secret. No, but almost everything is a potential DDOS. And slight modifications to emails, documents, and calendars can cause a lot of havoc that may be hard to detect.
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  It's not about state secrets, it's about being able to provide services when the US is turning Hostile. Hospitals or Police aren't guarding state secrets too, but if they would loose access to their IT Infrastructure because Donald had some strange brainfart this morning like the Judge of the International Court of Justice it would impact the State critically
- marcosdumay 8mo ago
  There's no point in having a parallel software "infrastructure". In fact, it's a choice well known for never working. Either your main architecture handles something or it doesn't get handled.
llm_nerd 8mo ago
>That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government The US recently doubled down on using US corporations as vehicles of coercion, sanctioning ICC judges for judging against Israel. https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions This is beyond insane, and every American company causing grief for the staff of a criminal court in which every single civilized nation but the US and Israel (I guess I didn't have to add that but) belongs needs to see enormous fines, and to be marginalized and removed. Microsoft, Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal...either they can domesticate in another nation, or get relegated to provincial US operations. It is absolutely untenable, and every single nation needs to purge all American operations as rapidly as possible. And...it's happening. This criminal US administration filled with pedophiles and self-dealing garbage overextended. They overplayed their hand, and the result is not only the rapidly accelerated decline of the American empire, it invariably has redoubled China's influence. I keep seeing prophesying about China invading Taiwan on here. Surely HN knows that won't be necessary, right? Taiwan recently re-engaged in diplomatic unification talks with China (not overtly, but the feelers are obvious to anyone with any sense of the moment), and they're going to make that choice themselves. Now that the US is relegated to worldwide joke/idiocracy, and it really is rapidly becoming a unipolar world, it's really the only rational choice. But I guess the US has the pathetic joke of the Board of Peace, or their close allies El Salvador and new puppet state Venezuela. What a disgrace.
- bytehowl 8mo ago
  >Taiwan recently re-engaged in diplomatic unification talks with China That's news to me, got any good articles on the topic?
- wiseowise 8mo ago
  > But I guess the US has the pathetic joke of the Board of Peace, or their close allies El Salvador and new puppet state Venezuela. What a disgrace. You forgot Trumps best butt-buddy: Putin.
- tick_tock_tick 8mo ago
  Why shouldn't the USA sanction a clear overstep of authority? Neither the USA or Israel are part of the ICC.
zero_shift 8mo ago
I agree. Whilst I think MS products are on a downward trajectory, I'm getting "Maastricht Planning Department switches to Kali Linux" vibes I want to see (sincerely) a whole government ditch MS
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  See la suite in France. They have an extensive history in this too. The gendarmerie even has their own Linux distro for their workstations.
piokoch 8mo ago
"all Microsoft licenses will be terminated" Ok, and what will be the alternative? I am not talking about the easy part, like documents creation, although I don't see walking away from Excel as LibreOffice alternative is a bit of disappointment. But what about the whole security/networking/permissions area? What is the viable alternative that can scale? Remember Covid times? In Poland all schools got access to Office 365 (overnight ) and education kept going. 500 000 teachers and a few millions of pupils. Tell me who else except Microsoft or Google have ability to support that?
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  In my part of Germany we used BigBlueButton after a short time when Zoom was used. E-Mail and a LDAP account was also always available for students. It's not exactly Rocket Science. There are also ready made solutions available for purchase https://www.univention.com/industries/educational-sector/ https://www.univention.com/industries/educational-sector/
- mastermage 8mo ago
  Also the IT Administrators that may be skilled in Windows Server and similar but less so in Linux. Thats something that beeds to be taken into account. Can be changed they can learn new things, but that takes time.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Time is not a problem. Keeping up with Microsoft takes time and investment too. Especially right now as they're changing stuff around on a monthly basis in their rabiate urge to sell copilot.
- xylifyx 8mo ago
  99% of users, could just as well use another form of spreadsheet. Only complex macros or custom integration does. Perhaps very large spreadsheets, I don't know.
erk__ 8mo ago
It is actually at least two agencies that is working in that direction, The Danish Road Authorities is also working on it: https://www.fstyr.dk/nyheder/2025/dec/faerdselsstyrelsen-tager-foerste-skridt-mod-open-source-pc%E2%80%99er-i-staten https://www.fstyr.dk/nyheder/2025/dec/faerdselsstyrelsen-tag...
justin66 8mo ago
> 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. Edgy! But it sounds like really terrible government. As if the failure of a government agency which cannot adapt to losing all its computer systems and therefore "dies" will not negatively effect those who are governed.
philipallstar 8mo ago
This is a clash of semi-overlapping, transitioning philosophies. The global, liberal hegemony philosophy is that you can trust other countries, and countries are just economic zones with mildly different food and weather. Country dividing lines for any other purpose are bad. The UK was evil for wanting more sovereignty vs the EU; what's the difference? Open the borders. Let anyone vote. This has only recently been philosophically countered in the popular left-leaning consciousness by the war in Ukraine, where at least one border is seen to be worth defending, and in the mainstream as sovereignty and related conservative ideas are taking hold again, although with a few extra steps to make it palateable to non-conservatives. The practical philosophy is: we already save a huge amount of money we can spend on benefits by depending on the US for defence; might as well do the same with tech. They probably know everything anyway, and what's to know? This isn't exactly countered yet philosophically, but Donald Trump is making people realise they should at least pay their own way in defense, which is helping to gradually override the prioritising of short-term vote-buying.
- macintux 8mo ago
  > The UK was evil for wanting more sovereignty vs the EU I don't think many thought the UK was evil. I think many thought the UK had been sold a bag of lies, and that exiting based on a very slim majority of voters on a referendum was a bad idea.
usrbinbash 8mo ago
> That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. Transitioning every system wholesale at once, is not gonna happen. I rather have our governents and agencies do it step by step than not at all.
- tchalla 8mo ago
  It won’t but it creates a sense of urgency.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    Not exactly the best conditions for making good and measured choices, I'd prefer if we didn't add more urgency than what most of us (Europeans) feel already. Everyone already have it on their mind when making purchasing decisions now, no need to also make those people do rash decisions.
    - tchalla 8mo ago
      The reason Europeans feel the urgency is because of rigid minders and failure to act at least 10-15 years ago. So now it’s ok to bite the bullet a bit. It’s a lesson for the next time.
octocop 8mo ago
A lot of hospitals run Microsoft. So it would be literal death you are talking about.
- yardie 8mo ago
  A lot of hospitals and healthcare systems in Europe use the open source EMR platform. No ones charts are in .docx format, it is not life or death, lets be serious.
  - cguess 8mo ago
    Hospitals are also planning documents, budgets, schedules, grants, reports, all with different access levels, privacy requirements, and legal regulations. They're far more than just patient care in the moment.
    - yardie 8mo ago
      Certainly true, but no one is dying because payroll is down.
      - octocop 8mo ago
        Really? Maybe this is news to you then, I rarely get to educate ppl on here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack
flexie 8mo ago
I am Danish, working with IT in the private sector, but with regular contact to the public sector. I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, ministries, municipalities, private companies etc. in both Denmark and other European countries looking into switching to non-American software. "Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. Everybody asks about it it. Everybody plans around it. Although the weaning off will take many years, and although European companies and governments will probably never be entirely without American software, and why should they, the American dominance will disappear, little by little. For better or worse, the American Century is coming to an end, also in IT.
- esafak 8mo ago
  What counts as data sovereignty in your book? Are the sovereign clouds of AWS, MS, Google acceptable? If not, who are your preferred providers?
  - foobarian 8mo ago
    Should we discuss DNS root servers at some point too?
    - koalacongregate 8mo ago
      I've had this thought too - of the 13 root servers, 10 are US or US-based companies. The only exceptions are Netnod (Sweden), RIPE NCC (Netherlands), WIDE Project (Japan). Even ICANN and Internet Systems Consortium are US-based non-profits... How do you even mitigate risk in this case?
      - esafak 8mo ago
        Looks like a business opportunity.
      - j16sdiz 8mo ago
        China do root server mirrors: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml
hbn 8mo ago
You make it sound like a noble act of sacrifice but the employees are all still getting paid. The real people who will be hurt are the citizens relying on their government to function, and telling a bunch of government employees of varying competence levels to "suck it up and adapt to your workflow being broken" will throw a real wrench in that.
- KronisLV 8mo ago
  > telling a bunch of government employees of varying competence levels to "suck it up and adapt to your workflow being broken" will throw a real wrench in that. I will weep on the day when the great Europe is defeated by people being unable to use a slightly different spreadsheet program, word processor, or a file sharing solution. But yeah, the argument about "adapt or die" is also way off base. Ideally it'd be a gradual migration, all low hanging fruit first, seeing what works and what doesn't.
- gizzlon 8mo ago
  > The real people who will be hurt are the citizens relying on their government to function You make it sound like the current Microsoft stack is so insanely great it will be impossible to replace. Yes, change is hard, but there are also massive upsides in switching to something better.
csmpltn 8mo ago
Have you ever even used OpenOffice? It's 50 years behind.
- thfuran 8mo ago
  Or at least a decade behind, which should be surprising given that it hasn’t been actively developed in about a decade.
- rconti 8mo ago
  Honestly, I hadn't used Microsoft Office in 15 years, and it somehow went 20 years backwards in that time.
- timbit42 8mo ago
  OpenOffice is 15 or so years behind but LibreOffice isn't. LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice in 2011 and the vast majority of volunteers working on it left the OpenOffice project and kept working on LibreOffice. Anyone still using OpenOffice probably doesn't realize they would likely be much better off using LibreOffice instead. OpenOffice doesn't support docx or xlsx but LibreOffice supports them much better.
lewisjoe 8mo ago
It honestly doesn't make any sense. Interestingly, India was bold enough to move its government infra to Zoho's office suite cutting all reliance on Microsoft. It's only sane that other countries do the same.
integralid 8mo ago
>top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die This is unrealistic populism. The type that gets upvoted on HN, apparently. It's not possible to just ditch all Microsoft licenses in a year, or in 5 years, or in 10 years. There are hundreds of critical systems that can't just be migrated to Linux overnight (or ever). And "just dying" is... not an option for a government branch. What is this even supposed to mean. But we can limit American bigtech by 90%, and we should. Especially everything in the cloud.
DrScientist 8mo ago
Indeed. I also fail to see how the existence of the CLOUD act, and thus use of any US company, is compatible with GDPR. See https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/ https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/ ( Though note exoscale, as a European provider has skin in the game here ).
otikik 8mo ago
> Adapt or die. Yeah, no. That's not how government works - thankfully. I don't want my water to stop flowing just because someone decided to be drastic about software changes. I agree with you in that all governments should be using open source software, for the record. But governments are big machines and you can't steer them like a sports car. In some cases, the massive inertia they have can even be a good thing - a crazy guy can't just be elected one day, start issuing presidential mandates, and then expect them to happen immediately, for example.
maratc 8mo ago
> That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government. Is it OK for a French sovereign government if a German government can demand access to its data?
tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
Also, they haven't actually done it yet. Announcements are easy. Implementation is hard, and most of them fail. Wake me up when they actually do it.
tick_tock_tick 8mo ago
> 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. "put up with this" implies they have a choice.
vanschelven 8mo ago
Every journey starts with the first step... And those steps are finally being taken now. Don't see why this kind of naysaying would be the top comment here
AtlasBarfed 8mo ago
Well governments need to wake up and realize that if they aren't the US and even if they are the US, open source provides most of the basic building blocks of what you're going to build independent non-corporate controlled and non-external-state controlled software So fund it! Governments burn billions of dollars on defense which really is just an economic waste outside of the deterrent effect it does from getting invaded. Investing in open source to enable you to be software independent and protected, not only is it providing some measure of electronic and economic defense, it improves software for you and your allies. You get return on your investment.
throw10920 8mo ago
> 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. This is insane. This is sacrificing the well-being of your constituents to send a (minor) political message. The amount of service degradation (including actual physical health) that you'd put your citizens through would be unbelievable. Only those who are extraordinarily stupid or outright malicious decide to deprecate important services before first assessing the needs of every dependent on that service, and then ensuring that a full replacement is in place.

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...
  - Forgeties79 8mo ago
    What France is doing is great but, as you’ll see discussed in that HN comment section, it is hardly an office suite. It’s not a full replacement by a long shot. I hope it will be one day though!
  - Jolter 8mo ago
    Good luck convincing the government (or local councils) of Bulgaria to migrate to an office suite that’s available in French or English only. That’s beside the sibling comment’s point that this suite is not complete enough (yet).
  - lukan 8mo ago
    "Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting" If you claim, that this is my position, please read at least one more sentence "So yes, one can (and should) build them. "
  - mgoetzke 8mo ago
    Considering that I doubt most normal office-user people even use features in Word other than changing fonts etc I doubt that will be a big issue anyway.
    - MegaDeKay 8mo ago
      It doesn't need to be "most". "Some" or even "a few" can be enough to make a hell of a mess if those few have created documents that are key to the business in one way or another (proposals, end-user documentation, etc). And there are the other components to the suite like Powerpoint, Excel, and Project to consider.
      - einr 8mo ago
        So then act now, because the best time to act was yesterday, and the longer you wait the worse the mess and pain becomes. Not acting at all is not an option.
    - bdavbdav 8mo ago
- Johnny555 8mo ago
  The problem is that Google only covers "most of it", so even if it covers 99% of use cases, for that cases where it doesn't, companies still need MS Office. I worked for a startup that was all OSX desktops and Google Docs. Then when we hit 100 employees, the finance department required MS Office, so they used Office for Mac, then as we grew, they needed real MS Office running in Windows, so they ran Windows in Parallels, then as we continued to grow they moved to full Windows laptops. When I left the company (at around 1000 employees), almost a third of the company was on Windows (mostly in Finance, Sales, and other business departments). And the team supporting the 2/3 Mac desktops was about 1/3 the size of the team supporting Windows. Though I suppose it's easier for a government to move off Microsoft. When an investor tells you to use their financial modeling software that only works with MS Excel, it's pretty hard for a small company to refuse, but a government has more power to force others to conform to their choice.
  - wasabi991011 8mo ago
    Any insight in to why the finance department (and other departments) required MS office?
    - Johnny555 8mo ago
      Their initial need for Office was some soft of forecasting model that they needed to update for a large investor. That was a big spreadsheet that ran on Office for OSX if I remember correctly. After that, I don't know what specifically they needed to use, they had purchased some software that required Windows and Office.
      - sho 8mo ago
        Call me cynical, but having been around the block a few times when I hear "need" and "require" my brain translates that to "want" and "it would be convenient if". I've done my share of forecasting for investors and am quite confident that there is nothing in any startup forecast that could conceivably "require" Windows. I mean, absolute worst case, just use SQL. The CFO just preferred Windows, that's it, I'd bet money on it.
- clickety_clack 8mo ago
  After using both extensively, there is no comparison between Google and the MS suite. Google’s apps are like a toy version of MS Office.
  - Gigachad 8mo ago
    The Microsoft ones feel broken, buggy, and bloated with decades of crap. I guess there are some people using those weird edge features, but if you don’t, the Google stuff works way better.
- kube-system 8mo ago
  They're competitive but they're not drop-in replacements. Even office for Mac is not a drop-in replacement for office on Windows. It's pretty trivial to find significant differences that will be in use in any large organization.
  - Gigachad 8mo ago
    Considering every job I’ve had in recent times has involved a switch between Google/Microsoft tools after being acquired, it’s about as drop in as anything gets in tech. Of course no product will be an identical replica of the Microsoft tools, but both get the job done.
    - kube-system 8mo ago
      It depends. If you're writing documents and sending email, it probably not gonna be too tough. If you've got 100,000+ lines of Excel macros, you're gonna need a pretty significant migration.
lpcvoid 8mo ago
There's Nextcloud/OCIS/Owncloud for Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint) and Onedrive, there's Libreoffice/Collabora (and Onlyoffice, but that's russian...), there's Thunderbird for Email. Windows is absolutely replaceable also, of course, maybe even easier than the Office365 subscription mentioned above. The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and should be in the EU. You simply cannot trust an American company anymore after Trump.
- Foobar8568 8mo ago
  People get a lot of cash, house and other benefits when they pick up suppliers. And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.
  - close04 8mo ago
    Someone yanked your chain with this one. Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft, these cases can't even register in the statistic of the total volume of orders. Every tech company would buy you a house if that worked, when a house is always a rounding error on the value of the contracts we're talking about. They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has". It's easier to deal with a single party than it is to get licenses and support from 20 other suppliers that then blame each other when there are issues at the border between 2 of the products. You can talk to anyone else who has Teams, your files are always fully compatible, all of the rest of your software integrates, single identity, etc. A lot of good it is that you have Google Meet and Libre Office when the partners you work closes to have Teams and MS Office. Users are proficient with the products, you can find skilled admins everywhere. Incumbency has a lot of inertia. So you have to pay millions in support contracts every year, it's the cost of doing business. So MS gets hacked every other day, what could you have done about it better when even MS (!!!) couldn't?
    - bobmcnamara 8mo ago
      > Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft... This is the same Microsoft we're talking about right? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end-134811427.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end... https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corruption-complaint/178295/ https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr... https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-bribery-scheme-in-middle-east-and-africa-11648221986 https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-b... Any fines that allow profitable operations are no more than a tax.
hermanzegerman 8mo ago
For many services there are drop-in Replacements available. I don't see what's so special about Mail or Calendar from Microsoft vs other vendors. The Quality is also Shit. I get some stupid Errors when trying to Access OWA every other day. Then I have to reset cookies/cache and can login again
- mrweasel 8mo ago
  You don't want a drop-in replacement for each service, you want one for the entire system. Microsofts advantage is ActiveDirectory integration. Centrally managed users and machines, every user, every application, every service authentications through the AD. Organizations opt for Teams all the time, because it's part of the package and fully integrated. There's no reason they couldn't pick something else, but why deal with it when Teams just work (sort of).
  - redkoala 8mo ago
    Is there a combination of open standards to drop in to replace AD integration with self management? OAuth enabled systems aren’t enough, central management of users and machines are huge. If that core matures, it opens up the market for replacements in other areas. Teams, Outlook and the Office Suite need first grade replacements.
  - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
    And OpenDesk has managed to do without, they seem to be using Univention Nubus as an AD Replacement https://www.univention.de/loesungen/alternative-zu-microsoft-active-directory/ https://www.univention.de/loesungen/alternative-zu-microsoft...
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Yes and they keep blocking features in Firefox on Linux. When I change the user agent to match edge on windows things suddenly work fine. When it's set to Firefox attachment uploads don't work and ever morning it jumps to "please wait while we're signing you out..." when i never asked for that. When it thinks it's edge it just stays signed in. Not to mention the huge amount of telemetry I need to block with ublock origin.
wolvoleo 8mo ago
Well, if your goal is to be 100% the same as what Microsoft offer, then sure no there's not. But that's letting them set the goalposts. If you look at the features you actually need and are willing to explore different ways of doing things that are not exactly like M365 there's more options. France and Germany are also working on freeing themselves from M365. This kinda thing sounds a lot like those RFPs that were specifically written so they could only be fulfilled by Microsoft because it was just a list of their feature tickboxes.
- KronisLV 8mo ago
  > But that's letting them set the goalposts. This is missed in so, so very many discussions out there. You can reproduce about 50-75% of what MS offers with FOSS and work on writing the rest in-house/in-EU. Would a bunch of workflows suffer initially? Sure, but not even trying is just preseving the status quo.
  - Guestmodinfo 8mo ago
    Today I opened a .docx file on libreoffice on my linux machine. Did a whole bunch of editing and sent back the file for some semi official purpose. And the .docx file behaved as usual on the windows machine of the sender. I mean to say for many many people the workflows will not suffer even one but. It's just too much automated people whose work may suffer initially b cause they are using windows API or something like that. But that's like just for developers suffering. Most govt offices or universities just work on individual files and that will never suffer even one bit
    - KronisLV 8mo ago
      I mean, to be honest, I've historically had most software out there break in all sorts of ways, LibreOffice had some interesting issues while working on my thesis: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/libreoffice-bibliography-is-broken https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/libreoffice-bibliography-is-bro... (bit of a rant back then, when I had a section on my blog called "Everything is broken", but you get the idea) But yeah, it probably depends on what you're trying to do with any one software package, some people will be affected more than others and sometimes most stuff will just work!
rconti 8mo ago
The best time to do this was ~2010 before all of the cloud lock-in stuff. The second best time is now.
throwyawayyyy 8mo ago
What I find interesting, and reflects my ignorance of how these things are used, is that if you look at, say, FAANG companies, Office isn't used. I've worked for two FAANGs over the past couple of years, and everything is done via Google docs. Replacing a giant suite like Office looks hard, replacing something simpler like Google docs looks very much simpler, and surely should suffice?

hermanzegerman 8mo ago

Well the State of Schleswig Holstein is ditching Microsoft completely. But it's a difficult political uphill battle, because some Users won't change their habits and cry about it. The Minister shut this up with "Software is a decision by the employer, the employee has to accept it" Which then got blown up by the tabloid media, which ran BS Headlines like "OMG Courts and Police not working (because they're childish and refuse to learn another E-Mail Client) Also Microsoft is playing dirty and lobbying very hard behind the scenes to obstruct it, in Munich they changed their German HQs to Munich and started to pay Taxes there. So suddenly the city changed back to MS TL;Dr: It's a thankless and tough battle for politicians, because they face lobbying and media pressure against them. Also they will be blamed for any roadblocks, and there is no real upside for them in it, as no one except for a few nerds cares about this

lnsru 8mo ago
You’re absolutely right. The benefit of being US independent has no value in the eyes of the large part of European population. The politician fighting for it is fighting uphill battle against mega corporation with endless lobbying budget and simultaneously digging a grave for the political career.
- mijoharas 8mo ago
  > The benefit of being US independent has no value in the eyes of the large part of European population I think this may have changed a bit within the last year or so...
  - xylifyx 8mo ago
    Definitely, at least in Denmark.
    - justinclift 8mo ago
      And in Greenland. ;)
- deleted 8mo ago

Izmaki 8mo ago

The “that’s nice but Denmark is small” comment is getting tiresome. Whether the country had 6 million or 60 million the bureaucracy is the same. It’s not about the size or the economics, it’s about the message. It won’t be long until the rest of the public sectors follow along. There has already been plenty of consideration and desire to follow through. What’s holding them back typically is not the desire to stay with Microsoft et. al., but the investment needed to make the switch away from a live system.

quietbritishjim 8mo ago
> The “that’s nice but Denmark is small” comment is getting tiresome. The parent comment didn't complain that Denmark or its overall government is small. They complained that this agency represents a small fraction of their government.
- nunobrito 8mo ago
  Yes. Typically is some town hall shifting to Linux and making a big fuss when literally million others are still running Windows. Seeing an agency doing it is good, but still less than the French ditching Teams and Zoom altogether as country-wide policy.
  - slow_typist 8mo ago
    But still, this is Denmark’s tech modernization agency. They follow an eat-your-own-dogfood stance. Transforming the public administration is the logical next step. Something different happening here, not the town hall big fuss approach.
    - nunobrito 8mo ago
      Indeed, crossing the fingers to see if we finally have a proper transition.
    - MengerSponge 8mo ago
      It makes you wonder what critics think the process should look like? Plan A: Just burn it down and rebuild FOSS in the ashes. Plan B: The tech modernization agency can make the transition, document and enhance the process, and then guide less savvy users. I dunno. Tough call.

Tarq0n 8mo ago

Not everything is a state secret. There's no need to immediately migrate every trivial email and permit request, but having a parallel infrastructure for the stuff that needs it should be a no-brainer.

heikkilevanto 8mo ago
> Not everything is a state secret. No, but almost everything is a potential DDOS. And slight modifications to emails, documents, and calendars can cause a lot of havoc that may be hard to detect.
hermanzegerman 8mo ago
It's not about state secrets, it's about being able to provide services when the US is turning Hostile. Hospitals or Police aren't guarding state secrets too, but if they would loose access to their IT Infrastructure because Donald had some strange brainfart this morning like the Judge of the International Court of Justice it would impact the State critically
marcosdumay 8mo ago
There's no point in having a parallel software "infrastructure". In fact, it's a choice well known for never working. Either your main architecture handles something or it doesn't get handled.

llm_nerd 8mo ago

>That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government The US recently doubled down on using US corporations as vehicles of coercion, sanctioning ICC judges for judging against Israel. https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions This is beyond insane, and every American company causing grief for the staff of a criminal court in which every single civilized nation but the US and Israel (I guess I didn't have to add that but) belongs needs to see enormous fines, and to be marginalized and removed. Microsoft, Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal...either they can domesticate in another nation, or get relegated to provincial US operations. It is absolutely untenable, and every single nation needs to purge all American operations as rapidly as possible. And...it's happening. This criminal US administration filled with pedophiles and self-dealing garbage overextended. They overplayed their hand, and the result is not only the rapidly accelerated decline of the American empire, it invariably has redoubled China's influence. I keep seeing prophesying about China invading Taiwan on here. Surely HN knows that won't be necessary, right? Taiwan recently re-engaged in diplomatic unification talks with China (not overtly, but the feelers are obvious to anyone with any sense of the moment), and they're going to make that choice themselves. Now that the US is relegated to worldwide joke/idiocracy, and it really is rapidly becoming a unipolar world, it's really the only rational choice. But I guess the US has the pathetic joke of the Board of Peace, or their close allies El Salvador and new puppet state Venezuela. What a disgrace.

bytehowl 8mo ago
>Taiwan recently re-engaged in diplomatic unification talks with China That's news to me, got any good articles on the topic?
wiseowise 8mo ago
> But I guess the US has the pathetic joke of the Board of Peace, or their close allies El Salvador and new puppet state Venezuela. What a disgrace. You forgot Trumps best butt-buddy: Putin.
tick_tock_tick 8mo ago
Why shouldn't the USA sanction a clear overstep of authority? Neither the USA or Israel are part of the ICC.

zero_shift 8mo ago

I agree. Whilst I think MS products are on a downward trajectory, I'm getting "Maastricht Planning Department switches to Kali Linux" vibes I want to see (sincerely) a whole government ditch MS

wolvoleo 8mo ago
See la suite in France. They have an extensive history in this too. The gendarmerie even has their own Linux distro for their workstations.

piokoch 8mo ago

"all Microsoft licenses will be terminated" Ok, and what will be the alternative? I am not talking about the easy part, like documents creation, although I don't see walking away from Excel as LibreOffice alternative is a bit of disappointment. But what about the whole security/networking/permissions area? What is the viable alternative that can scale? Remember Covid times? In Poland all schools got access to Office 365 (overnight ) and education kept going. 500 000 teachers and a few millions of pupils. Tell me who else except Microsoft or Google have ability to support that?

hermanzegerman 8mo ago
In my part of Germany we used BigBlueButton after a short time when Zoom was used. E-Mail and a LDAP account was also always available for students. It's not exactly Rocket Science. There are also ready made solutions available for purchase https://www.univention.com/industries/educational-sector/ https://www.univention.com/industries/educational-sector/
mastermage 8mo ago
Also the IT Administrators that may be skilled in Windows Server and similar but less so in Linux. Thats something that beeds to be taken into account. Can be changed they can learn new things, but that takes time.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Time is not a problem. Keeping up with Microsoft takes time and investment too. Especially right now as they're changing stuff around on a monthly basis in their rabiate urge to sell copilot.
xylifyx 8mo ago
99% of users, could just as well use another form of spreadsheet. Only complex macros or custom integration does. Perhaps very large spreadsheets, I don't know.

erk__ 8mo ago

It is actually at least two agencies that is working in that direction, The Danish Road Authorities is also working on it: https://www.fstyr.dk/nyheder/2025/dec/faerdselsstyrelsen-tager-foerste-skridt-mod-open-source-pc%E2%80%99er-i-staten https://www.fstyr.dk/nyheder/2025/dec/faerdselsstyrelsen-tag...

justin66 8mo ago

> 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. Edgy! But it sounds like really terrible government. As if the failure of a government agency which cannot adapt to losing all its computer systems and therefore "dies" will not negatively effect those who are governed.

philipallstar 8mo ago

This is a clash of semi-overlapping, transitioning philosophies. The global, liberal hegemony philosophy is that you can trust other countries, and countries are just economic zones with mildly different food and weather. Country dividing lines for any other purpose are bad. The UK was evil for wanting more sovereignty vs the EU; what's the difference? Open the borders. Let anyone vote. This has only recently been philosophically countered in the popular left-leaning consciousness by the war in Ukraine, where at least one border is seen to be worth defending, and in the mainstream as sovereignty and related conservative ideas are taking hold again, although with a few extra steps to make it palateable to non-conservatives. The practical philosophy is: we already save a huge amount of money we can spend on benefits by depending on the US for defence; might as well do the same with tech. They probably know everything anyway, and what's to know? This isn't exactly countered yet philosophically, but Donald Trump is making people realise they should at least pay their own way in defense, which is helping to gradually override the prioritising of short-term vote-buying.

macintux 8mo ago
> The UK was evil for wanting more sovereignty vs the EU I don't think many thought the UK was evil. I think many thought the UK had been sold a bag of lies, and that exiting based on a very slim majority of voters on a referendum was a bad idea.

usrbinbash 8mo ago

> That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. Transitioning every system wholesale at once, is not gonna happen. I rather have our governents and agencies do it step by step than not at all.

tchalla 8mo ago
It won’t but it creates a sense of urgency.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  Not exactly the best conditions for making good and measured choices, I'd prefer if we didn't add more urgency than what most of us (Europeans) feel already. Everyone already have it on their mind when making purchasing decisions now, no need to also make those people do rash decisions.
  - tchalla 8mo ago
    The reason Europeans feel the urgency is because of rigid minders and failure to act at least 10-15 years ago. So now it’s ok to bite the bullet a bit. It’s a lesson for the next time.

octocop 8mo ago

A lot of hospitals run Microsoft. So it would be literal death you are talking about.

yardie 8mo ago
A lot of hospitals and healthcare systems in Europe use the open source EMR platform. No ones charts are in .docx format, it is not life or death, lets be serious.
- cguess 8mo ago
  Hospitals are also planning documents, budgets, schedules, grants, reports, all with different access levels, privacy requirements, and legal regulations. They're far more than just patient care in the moment.
  - yardie 8mo ago
    Certainly true, but no one is dying because payroll is down.
    - octocop 8mo ago
      Really? Maybe this is news to you then, I rarely get to educate ppl on here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack

flexie 8mo ago

I am Danish, working with IT in the private sector, but with regular contact to the public sector. I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, ministries, municipalities, private companies etc. in both Denmark and other European countries looking into switching to non-American software. "Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. Everybody asks about it it. Everybody plans around it. Although the weaning off will take many years, and although European companies and governments will probably never be entirely without American software, and why should they, the American dominance will disappear, little by little. For better or worse, the American Century is coming to an end, also in IT.

esafak 8mo ago
What counts as data sovereignty in your book? Are the sovereign clouds of AWS, MS, Google acceptable? If not, who are your preferred providers?
- foobarian 8mo ago
  Should we discuss DNS root servers at some point too?
  - koalacongregate 8mo ago
    I've had this thought too - of the 13 root servers, 10 are US or US-based companies. The only exceptions are Netnod (Sweden), RIPE NCC (Netherlands), WIDE Project (Japan). Even ICANN and Internet Systems Consortium are US-based non-profits... How do you even mitigate risk in this case?
    - esafak 8mo ago
      Looks like a business opportunity.
    - j16sdiz 8mo ago
      China do root server mirrors: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml

hbn 8mo ago

You make it sound like a noble act of sacrifice but the employees are all still getting paid. The real people who will be hurt are the citizens relying on their government to function, and telling a bunch of government employees of varying competence levels to "suck it up and adapt to your workflow being broken" will throw a real wrench in that.

KronisLV 8mo ago
> telling a bunch of government employees of varying competence levels to "suck it up and adapt to your workflow being broken" will throw a real wrench in that. I will weep on the day when the great Europe is defeated by people being unable to use a slightly different spreadsheet program, word processor, or a file sharing solution. But yeah, the argument about "adapt or die" is also way off base. Ideally it'd be a gradual migration, all low hanging fruit first, seeing what works and what doesn't.
gizzlon 8mo ago
> The real people who will be hurt are the citizens relying on their government to function You make it sound like the current Microsoft stack is so insanely great it will be impossible to replace. Yes, change is hard, but there are also massive upsides in switching to something better.

csmpltn 8mo ago

Have you ever even used OpenOffice? It's 50 years behind.

thfuran 8mo ago
Or at least a decade behind, which should be surprising given that it hasn’t been actively developed in about a decade.
rconti 8mo ago
Honestly, I hadn't used Microsoft Office in 15 years, and it somehow went 20 years backwards in that time.
timbit42 8mo ago
OpenOffice is 15 or so years behind but LibreOffice isn't. LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice in 2011 and the vast majority of volunteers working on it left the OpenOffice project and kept working on LibreOffice. Anyone still using OpenOffice probably doesn't realize they would likely be much better off using LibreOffice instead. OpenOffice doesn't support docx or xlsx but LibreOffice supports them much better.

lewisjoe 8mo ago

It honestly doesn't make any sense. Interestingly, India was bold enough to move its government infra to Zoho's office suite cutting all reliance on Microsoft. It's only sane that other countries do the same.

integralid 8mo ago

>top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die This is unrealistic populism. The type that gets upvoted on HN, apparently. It's not possible to just ditch all Microsoft licenses in a year, or in 5 years, or in 10 years. There are hundreds of critical systems that can't just be migrated to Linux overnight (or ever). And "just dying" is... not an option for a government branch. What is this even supposed to mean. But we can limit American bigtech by 90%, and we should. Especially everything in the cloud.

DrScientist 8mo ago

Indeed. I also fail to see how the existence of the CLOUD act, and thus use of any US company, is compatible with GDPR. See https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/ https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/ ( Though note exoscale, as a European provider has skin in the game here ).

otikik 8mo ago

> Adapt or die. Yeah, no. That's not how government works - thankfully. I don't want my water to stop flowing just because someone decided to be drastic about software changes. I agree with you in that all governments should be using open source software, for the record. But governments are big machines and you can't steer them like a sports car. In some cases, the massive inertia they have can even be a good thing - a crazy guy can't just be elected one day, start issuing presidential mandates, and then expect them to happen immediately, for example.

maratc 8mo ago

> That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government. Is it OK for a French sovereign government if a German government can demand access to its data?

tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago

Also, they haven't actually done it yet. Announcements are easy. Implementation is hard, and most of them fail. Wake me up when they actually do it.

tick_tock_tick 8mo ago

> 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. "put up with this" implies they have a choice.

vanschelven 8mo ago

Every journey starts with the first step... And those steps are finally being taken now. Don't see why this kind of naysaying would be the top comment here

AtlasBarfed 8mo ago

Well governments need to wake up and realize that if they aren't the US and even if they are the US, open source provides most of the basic building blocks of what you're going to build independent non-corporate controlled and non-external-state controlled software So fund it! Governments burn billions of dollars on defense which really is just an economic waste outside of the deterrent effect it does from getting invaded. Investing in open source to enable you to be software independent and protected, not only is it providing some measure of electronic and economic defense, it improves software for you and your allies. You get return on your investment.

throw10920 8mo ago

> 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. This is insane. This is sacrificing the well-being of your constituents to send a (minor) political message. The amount of service degradation (including actual physical health) that you'd put your citizens through would be unbelievable. Only those who are extraordinarily stupid or outright malicious decide to deprecate important services before first assessing the needs of every dependent on that service, and then ensuring that a full replacement is in place.