Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

dub.uu.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 383 posts

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#141

Post by trinix912 »

kakacik wrote: post #135
saubeidl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

As Swiss resident coming originally from EU country, how to put it politely... fuck that . EU does some good but its top politicians are absurd obscure career bullshitters (Leyen, who the heck likes her and whom she represents? Certainly not eastern EU, she represents everything wrong with EU though. She is so lost and yet untouchable, ie still pushes for destruction of whole European automotive industry while playin…

So what's your proposed alternative? For every country to stick to their own stuff and wish for the best?

Have you forgotten what a hassle it was to do international trade before your East European country was a part of the EU?

EU is far from perfect but it's still better than pretending member countries can do it all on their own.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#142

Post by vander_elst »

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".

How I can imagine it works: Amazon only provides the packaged software, the infra and the ops are officially driven by a 100% European company. AWS probably provides support, but they don't have the encryption keys not any access to the installation.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#143

Post by breve »

pjmlp wrote: post #46

Depends. Can they get rid of Typescript, npm, Github, VS, VSCode, .NET, C#, F#, C++ / DirectX, Next.js, vcpkg, Microsoft contributions to Java, Rust, and Linux kernel, on their students teaching materials? If they can switch to UNIX FOSS technologies with zero trace of Microsoft's money sponsorship, and hinder the students careers in specific job markets, then surely. People usually never look beyond getting rid of O…

The problem is described in the first two sentences of the article:

> "The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court suddenly couldn't access his email. According to Microsoft, that's because of US sanctions against the court's employees."

Nothing you've listed relates to that.

If American services and platforms have become unreliable and untrustworthy because the American government is erratic, then it's only natural that European organisations will look for alternatives.

DirectX is a funny one to list because 90% of Windows games run on Linux. WINE and Proton solve that problem for you:

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/nearly-90-percen...

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#144

Post by wiseowise »

YC398739847 wrote: post #99
ta20240528 wrote: post #81

If China can survive — and even start to thrive without ASML and TMSC, then have no doubt that should push come to shove Europe will be able to run a mail server and some office tools. They’re just hedging that American politics will stop licking the car battery.

EU politicians are just too dependent on keeping the status quo of the last decade. The status quo is how they got to their position so they have no incentive to change anything (Starmer, Merz, Marcon, Von der Lyen. Yuck). By the time they finally get the shove they need to rapidly decouple, e.g. when America invades The Hague* to rescue Netanyahu from war crimes charges, it will be when they're already on the edge o…

Only invasion, or a real threat of invasion, from Russia, US or China can shook Europe into real change.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#145

Post by rorylawless »

trinix912 wrote: post #131
graemep wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is not a political entity or an organisation. Who exactly will do it? The EU, some EU country, Russia, the UK, Switzerland, some cooperative agreement...?

We're talking about running a few mail server, network shares, and an office suite (LibreOffice if you want). Any university's in-house IT department should be able to pull that off, and it's exactly what many did for a very long time.

If Universities are anything like other large public/public-adjacent organizations, the bulk of the in-house IT department was long since replaced by Microsoft resellers posing as IT. It’s insidious.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#146

Post by anonzzzies »

> for example, by using its own mail server.

I was one of the people fighting for keeping Unix when the UU went to Exchange. It was a drama: instable af, the MS consultants could not keep it running even for 24 hours at a time while unix had 0 issues and kept chugging along (I don't remember what Unix: I think it was SunOS/Solaris). It was forced through at great cost and effort but of course sponsored by MS. It sucked for years to come.

I was at the UvA too when they moved to, equally instable MS stuff too: I worked behind some of the last Sun machines and got to take a palet of sparcstations, ultras and an e450 home when they got phased out (I still have them and they are still working, of course). Could have all been Linux now but MS was so aggressive and no one listened to profs or students, even in all tech deps who were all vehemently against the move.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#147

Post by trinix912 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #86
manuel_w wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is overly bureaucratic in the EU? I as an European get the feeling people usually hate on the EU just because it dares to interfere with local legislation. But that's its job. And usually the EU interferes for a good reason. Usually because member countries falling back to only thinking about themselves and forgetting that we Europeans are in this shit together. > you can't do that It's good that you can…

When people talk about the EU, they don't necessarily mean the EU proper, just like many "US" problems are more at the state or local level. People often mean "within the EU", including national regulations that may be widespread.

Then they should say that, not bash on the EU as a whole.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#148

Post by canyp »

trinix912 wrote: post #116
graemep wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is bigger, and a lot more ambitious, and is willing to put resources into it. European countries (except maybe Russia!), in the EU and outside, are very complacent.

It's not as much about complacency as it is about the lack of funding and resources. We're talking about countries with government budgets as low as 20 billion USD. Looking at common election promises, people here would rather see that money spent on non-profit housing, healthcare, infrastructure, than some ambitious AI or tech project that they likely wouldn't directly benefit from - at least compared to the things…

Does China actually "force" things to be done? As far as I can tell, in the realm of technology at least, the government mostly just sets direction and then lets private capital do its thing, albeit without letting power concentrate in a way that subverts government.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#149

Post by ClikeX »

trinix912 wrote: post #131
graemep wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is not a political entity or an organisation. Who exactly will do it? The EU, some EU country, Russia, the UK, Switzerland, some cooperative agreement...?

We're talking about running a few mail server, network shares, and an office suite (LibreOffice if you want). Any university's in-house IT department should be able to pull that off, and it's exactly what many did for a very long time.

The trap of Microsoft is long contracts and setting up dependency. In many cases it was a big undertaking to get the current setup, now try convincing anyone to tear it out.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#150

Post by vid »

I completely support not being dependant on a foreign company (or any company at all, standards FTW) and I don't think there should even be a shadow of possibility that an organization like the ICC could be cut off from services due to a foreign directive, but while I have seen it repeated many times, I think the article's opening assertion is not true; https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

It is very distressing how many organizations have become dependant on Microsoft and the US cloud for core services. I hope that an unintended consequence of the current US administration's approach is that this becomes less so.

Post reply on HN