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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#131

Post by trinix912 »

graemep wrote: post #101
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.

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.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#132

Post by Muromec »

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.

If I run your software, you can have no operational control, but you can sneak a root kit or some kind of stuff I dont want to have there

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#133

Post by mistrial9 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #82
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.

This is true, but it's also a fixable problem. The issue I've seen is that there isn't really the political will to fix it. Europeans broadly seem uncomfortable giving up national sovereignty when it comes to digital issues (including those that impact scaling businesses), so they implicitly choose the status quo that makes it hard for software/internet businesses to succeed. Literally in this thread you can see Euro…

on the other hand, the USA got mass surveillance normalized, and an entire generation with serious emotional disturbances due to social media.. Many indicators of required cell phone IDs and airport biometrics still on the way. Is that a "win" in the long term?

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#134

Post by e12e »

LPisGood wrote: post #88
seanieb wrote: post #21

I spent the past year working for a company that relies heavily on Microsoft for email, productivity tools, and identity management. After that experience, I can say with confidence: never again. The support is astonishingly poor, and user experience feels like an afterthought. More importantly, using Microsoft at scale can leave your organization fundamentally insecure. The obscure, insecure defaults are, at best, d…

What kind of obscure insecure defaults are there?

One not-so-obscure problem is how hard it is to only elevate yourself to admin when you need it (and run as a regular user the other time).

Essentially you need to pay double license for admin users so they can have two logins; and it's a pain to quickly elevate privilege to do day to day admin tasks.

So if your friendly domain admin clicks the wrong link, your entire network is owned.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#135

Post by kakacik »

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.

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 playing her political games. EU parliament is a behemoth of corrupt ultra bureaucracy and so on. Certainly not a leader for whole continent).

For poor countries in the east, EU is salvation, it dumps billions every year on them that are promptly stolen by cleptocratic governments (I know this darn too well as coming from one such place and literally everybody there knows this, you guys are fools for allowing this for decades). Yeah, all you westerners, you don't even bother to check whats happening with your truckloads of money as long as politicians don't stick out like Orban or Fico. And even if they do, all that happens is some PR statements and things go on as usually.

For Swiss for example, it would be a massive downgrade in many aspects - sovereignty, general freedom, performance, agility in ever-changing world, freedom of self-determination, and obviously economical power and wealth. They themselves voted in public vote to not join, same for NATO.

EU should be more like Switzerland, that I honestly believe is the only general recipe how long term old continent can compete and be peer to behemoths like US or China. Its not about this topic or that program, but general working and mindset of society. But good luck that western EU egos would ever accept that somebody found a more effective and way more sustainable way of functioning within European dominion. So its a path to stagnation, I see it as inevitable.

Harder working, more clever countries not laying comfortably deep in their unsustainable social systems, bureaucracy and corruption will catch up and move far beyond EU in upcoming decades, and those further like US will keep pushing beyond whats possible for EU. Maybe bigger war with russia would actually change that mindset not sustainable in 2025, but it could also mean collapse and utter catastrophe. EU is weak and slow and lost, in times when its really bad idea.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#137

Post by boznz »

osener wrote: post #103
vladms wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more a risk management issue. A country that wants to do everything by itself (from food, to shovels, to cars, to computers) will not be the most efficient and will loose a lot. Before '90s communist countries were "proud" that everything was produced locally - except many things were breaking or bad quality or unavailable (not all, but many). I would claim that today is a much better moment to switch than it wa…

I knew plenty of office workers managing just fine using OpenOffice 10-15 years ago. Today people are much more reliant on real-time collaboration, polished cloud and mobile experiences. Fractionalized open source software has a harder time competing with this than file based boxed software workflows of the past.

Agree, Personally I consider these newer systems a curse as far as productivity goes, using a simple email/open-office combination never caused any issues with clients or suppliers in the last 20 years.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#138

Post by ahartmetz »

vunderba wrote: post #53
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.

What could go wrong with more centralization of power… https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-council-approves-new-chat-contr...

Sarcasm aside, what could go wrong is what is going wrong: the democracy is a little too indirect so that it feels like the EU leadership is governing itself.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#139

Post by saubeidl »

ramon156 wrote: post #27
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.

I can't fathom why you would give one parlement all the power. This is the root issue of America right now, individual states have less and less power every year.

It might not be ideal and wildly swing the pendulum every couple of years, but looking at American centralization from our end, it still seems more functional somehow. At least you guys can get something done.

Imagine if every state governor in the US had veto power over federal legislation. Imagine trying to get anything done that would require buy-in from both California and Alabama. That's the situation we find ourselves in.

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