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Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

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Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#51

Post by sigmoid10 »

imjonse wrote: post #49
sigmoid10 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Munich switched to Linux in 2012. But they switched back to Microsoft in 2020 because they never could get it to work completely. At least not to the level of comfort in the old system. Open source has its advantages, but MS dominates the business world because of its tech support that is truly second to none on that scale. If Europe wants independence, they need to support local businesses and not just technology.

Tech support is clearly very important but I have a hard time believing there wasn't a great amount of lobbying involved as well.

There was, but not from Microsoft. It was the employees who were not happy with the new systems.

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#52

Post by kirushik »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #45
tormeh wrote: post #17

Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia are switching to OpenTalk for teleconference. It's really wild to see things actually happen - not just research grants and talking.

Munich switched to Linux in 2012. But they switched back to Microsoft in 2020 because they never could get it to work completely. At least not to the level of comfort in the old system. Open source has its advantages, but MS dominates the business world because of its tech support that is truly second to none on that scale. If Europe wants independence, they need to support local businesses and not just technology.

Well, Minich's return to MS tech oddly coincides with MS Germany moving their HQ there (and the ruling party change in the city); it's of course hard to explicitly call backroom deals on this (even though ex-mayor seems to be doing exactly that: https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/), but it might be that the decision wasn't fully technical.

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#53

Post by tonyedgecombe »

sylware wrote: post #13
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the PDF format is insane (I have had my head buried in the spec for the last month) but it has won in the marketplace. It's unlikely anything can supersede it now. Microsoft had a technically strong alternative but it was far too late.

dude... 'it has won in the market' : with those words, you have already lost to big tech...

Good luck changing reality.

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#54

Post by JimDabell »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #45
tormeh wrote: post #17

Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia are switching to OpenTalk for teleconference. It's really wild to see things actually happen - not just research grants and talking.

Munich switched to Linux in 2012. But they switched back to Microsoft in 2020 because they never could get it to work completely. At least not to the level of comfort in the old system. Open source has its advantages, but MS dominates the business world because of its tech support that is truly second to none on that scale. If Europe wants independence, they need to support local businesses and not just technology.

I’m not sure “they could never get [Linux] to work completely” is a fair summary of what happened.

There’s a Hacker News thread here that goes into more detail:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21497372

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#55

Post by rb666 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #37
buyucu wrote: post #24

I said this before, but will say it again: Trump is pure evil, but he is having positive (unintended) consequences. One of them will be is the migration he is triggering away from Big Tech.

Everyone is either pure good or pure evil now, huh? Red team or blue team, compromise is anathema, the centre a desert. FWIW I’m no fan of Trump, but I’m even less of a fan of this bipolar tribalism.

There's been plenty Republican presidents who did evil things and mixed it up with acceptable or even positive change. Trump is the first one who's actually an evil fascist at heart. That's the difference.

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#56

Post by sublimefire »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #51
imjonse wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech support is clearly very important but I have a hard time believing there wasn't a great amount of lobbying involved as well.

There was, but not from Microsoft. It was the employees who were not happy with the new systems.

Employees do not participate in the procurement process. It boils down to the requirements and how does it affect possible bidders. Most of the requirements can be easily met with OSS, there were prob others plus the drop of the price from MS

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#58

Post by JimDabell »

dahcryn wrote: post #43
kergonath wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are not familiar with how governments work. They are not going to rely on a random git repo, they are going to have contractors to ensure a basic level of support and bug fixing. And some contractors to ensure development and availability of tooling. And deployment and integration. They are also going to test, audit and validate updates, not just pull from remote. Also, in some cases there are research ag…

this scares me. The last thing we need is cheap consulting messing with open source projects. I don't want TCS and Accenture developing libreoffice or stuff like that and turn it into shit

Don’t worry, it’s not cheap!

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#59

Post by sublimefire »

I found it hard to even bid to solve problems for councils locally. The requirements are mental sometimes, there is a reason the company would focus on consumers rather than gov sales. This in turn makes it easy for the large corps to win over contracts. There needs to be more willingness to engage locally with the engineers to help them setup and run OSS systems. With the new generation this could become true.

Re: Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty

#60

Post by dvdkon »

dahcryn wrote: post #43
kergonath wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are not familiar with how governments work. They are not going to rely on a random git repo, they are going to have contractors to ensure a basic level of support and bug fixing. And some contractors to ensure development and availability of tooling. And deployment and integration. They are also going to test, audit and validate updates, not just pull from remote. Also, in some cases there are research ag…

this scares me. The last thing we need is cheap consulting messing with open source projects. I don't want TCS and Accenture developing libreoffice or stuff like that and turn it into shit

It seems to be working for QGIS, where multiple consulting companies provide probably the majority of the project's manpower. It's certainly a change from fully-volunteer-driven FLOSS without deadlines or promised features, but I think it's for the better for such a large project.
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