Live data from Hacker News

Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

therecord.media

161–170 of 448 posts

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#161

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 mus…

> 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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#162
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#163

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 mus…

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

See la suite in France.

They have an extensive history in this too. The gendarmerie even has their own Linux distro for their workstations.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#164

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 mus…

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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 dea…

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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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.

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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#167

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 mus…

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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#168
post #99

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 mus…

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.

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.

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#169

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 mus…

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

Re: Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

#170
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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 sh…

> Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint)

Same with SharePoint here. I've never seen it not turn into a steaming pile of shit within months of deployment where nobody can find anything.

The way teams and yammer auto create groups left right and center in it doesn't help. And its search function is less than useless.

This is in fact the main thing I use copilot for, to find stuff in that mess.

Post reply on HN