Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#31

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #6

Is it really that hard to switch to [google|libre|apache|free|etc.|etc.]? It seems like at the university level the ideas are the important part, and the need to write/spreadsheet at the bleeding edge of functionality much less so?

Short answer: to Google it's not so bad but it's not like the legal risks are any different from Microsoft. And to the rest -- yes it is very hard.

Universities need cloud storage with online collaboration and a fully functioning office suite.

LibreOffice doesn't work because it's desktop-only and has no collaboration. However, there's an online-collaboration fork called Collabora Online, and you can use something like Nextcloud to provide your own privately hosted cloud backend. But obviously this is a gigantic effort for the university's IT department to provide and maintain with reliable redundancies and backups.

Also, LibreOffice/Collabora is pretty good if you stick to its native formats, but its interoperability with MS Office files has a lot of bugs.

In the end, it's just cheaper and more reliable to use MS or Google like everyone else. Students, professors and administrators wind up having basically the same needs around office software as businesses do.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#32

Post by aeyes » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #23

When I did a 4 year CS degree at a UK university in the 1980s I don't think I touched anything from Microsoft for the entire time I was there!

Because for a CS degree students are expected to work with other systems and the software needed to complete the course work is usually low level. Even when I did my CS degree 20 years ago our labs were Linux and Solaris.

For other degrees you need software which only runs on Windows.

It might also help that Microsoft was totally irrelevant in the professional world in the 80s.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#33

Post by cuttothechase » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #23

When I did a 4 year CS degree at a UK university in the 1980s I don't think I touched anything from Microsoft for the entire time I was there!

I am pretty sure you wouldn't have touched anything from google and meta as well.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#34

Post by seanieb » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #4

Workaccount2 wrote: post #2

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

EU is in a really tough situation. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while also facing a belligerent Russia on their eastern borders. And their internal politics and governance makes it very difficult to align in a direction that could enable them to start digging out of so much globalized dependence.

A recent analysis of the Trump Tarrifs on the EU concluded that while “some regions and industries could suffer”, for Europe overall the hit may be “limited but not negligible.

The EU is quietly investing massively in diversifying away from the US market. there are trade negotiations or agreements in process (or being advanced) with countries/regions including India, the countries of the Mercosur bloc, Mexico, and Middle-East countries.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#35

Post by SunshineTheCat » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #2

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

It feels like an emphasis has been placed more on legislating or policing what other people make rather than making anything of value themselves (as far as tech goes).

Being a barnacle on the side of a boat might be a nice free ride for a while until it goes somewhere you don't want to.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#36

Post by sharpy » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

saubeidl wrote: post #9

bojan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity. Yes, we have European Union which helps a lot, but it is not complete (and certainly wasn't in the time when Microsofts and Googles of this world started), making that all-important initial scaling way more difficult than it is in the US.

> "Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity It really needs to be, though, that's kind of the crux of it. Federate or die off, it's time to get rid of old tribal thinking. We're all Europeans.

Intellectually, I think people agree with that. But I think the weight of history works against it. When you have a history filled with war, and intense competition...

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#37

Post by qoez » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #2

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

AI is gonna be even worse. At least there's some competition from scandinavia and germany and france's tech scenes. For AI there's basically none.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#38

Post by denimnerd42 » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

at work I don't need MS at all. It's just used because the IT department prefers it to manage things. I wish we could just use Fedora or Ubuntu.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#39

Post by WJW » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #18

ttkari wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand how an American company would be able to provide any service that could be "sovereign European".

In theory Amazon could license the stack to a European Operator while having no operative access themselves. I think this is already done in some cases altough the political reliability has not yet been tested.

I guess the question then becomes: what happens if some future US government pressures Amazon to revoke the license. Unless and until there's a good answer to that, it'd still be better to develop something locally.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#40

Post by Balinares » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

ttkari wrote: post #13

t0mas88 wrote: post #3

AWS had announced a sovereign European cloud, probably to avoid a loss of business in the long term due to these initiatives. But it's questionable whether this would survive strong political pressure from the US government.

I'm not sure I understand how an American company would be able to provide any service that could be "sovereign European".

By providing the software to be installed in clusters owned and operated by European companies.

The sovereign cloud spec designed by the folks at France's ANSSI agency is tight.