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Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)

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

#171

Post by rambojohnson »

Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability.

my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should probably stop wiring the house through a burning building." Payments, cloud, office software, data infrastructure, all of it.

so Denmark moving to cut Microsoft dependence in the name of digital independence is basically the same story. When the US starts looking less like stable infrastructure and more like a chaotic landlord, everyone starts building their own exits.

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

#172

Post by bobmcnamara »

close04 wrote: post #155
Foobar8568 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get a lot of cash, house and other benefits when they pick up suppliers. And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.

Someone yanked your chain with this one. Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft, these cases can't even register in the statistic of the total volume of orders. Every tech company would buy you a house if that worked, when a house is always a rounding error on the value of the contracts we're talking about. They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has".…

> Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft...

This is the same Microsoft we're talking about right?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end...

https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr...

https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-b...

Any fines that allow profitable operations are no more than a tax.

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

#173

Post by wolvoleo »

lnsru wrote: post #104
hermanzegerman wrote: post #87

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.

That was true in the time when Munich went Linux yes.

It's no longer true. There's a huge public moment to move away from all things American since Trump and his tariff wars and putting NATO at risk. A lot of people I know are now factoring this in to their purchasing choices and there's a lot more empathy for employers changing things.

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

#174

Post by nunobrito »

slow_typist wrote: post #149
nunobrito wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Typically is some town hall shifting to Linux and making a big fuss when literally million others are still running Windows. Seeing an agency doing it is good, but still less than the French ditching Teams and Zoom altogether as country-wide policy.

But still, this is Denmark’s tech modernization agency. They follow an eat-your-own-dogfood stance. Transforming the public administration is the logical next step. Something different happening here, not the town hall big fuss approach.

Indeed, crossing the fingers to see if we finally have a proper transition.

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

#175

Post by hbn »

embedding-shape wrote: post #79
whh wrote: post #68

I think a move to Open Source would be great in Europe, but only if the governments using the technologies are actively funding their development. This doesn't just mean once-off grants, or a bit of cash donated here and there. I would like to see per-user per-year contributions to the organisations that develop these tools on-par with the current spend going towards Microsoft Cloud products. It can be better than Mi…

> It can be better than Microsoft, but you need to fund it to be better than Microsoft. Lol no. Microsoft profits more than the value they provide, not exactly we should want to copy. We need to prevent hypercapitalism from reaching us in Europe, not make it worse, as we now seen exactly what it does to countries when you let it grow unfettered. But I agree in general, governments and companies that use FOSS should d…

Governments funding FOSS is not Microsoft's business model and it's not capitalism.

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

#176

Post by thfuran »

csmpltn wrote: post #169
bradley13 wrote: post #80

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.

Or at least a decade behind, which should be surprising given that it hasn’t been actively developed in about a decade.

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

#177

Post by wolvoleo »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #136
deanc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if we're to move to away from these US products to open source ones, then governments should also provide resources or funding to develop them using the licensing fees they save. Is the Danish government contributing back to libreoffice?

The German State of Schleswig Holstein does https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-s...

There's a lot more than just one municipality. The French government uses a lot of open source and is actively working on la suite.. The gendarmerie has been on Linux for years. Nato is using matrix (noteworthy especially because America is of course part of that)

https://element.io/en/case-studies/nato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

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

#178

Post by octocop »

bradley13 wrote: post #80

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…

A lot of hospitals run Microsoft. So it would be literal death you are talking about.

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

#179

Post by pjerem »

troad wrote: post #145

I'm very happy for all the Europeans getting to use software they like and prefer, but honestly I'm a little tired of reading about it. There's been an awful lot of recent blogging and news about de-Americanising one's stack. It seems very important to the Europeans that they let everyone else know they're leaving? It's got the air of a thirty-five year old threatening to move out of his parents' basement any day now…

HN is not an american only audience. I, as an european, am interested by this news.

And hey, about hearing the same things again and again, we also are tired hearing about Trump & Epstein & whatever is the today american shit. But it's still important to stay up to date.

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

#180

Post by tchalla »

rambojohnson wrote: post #171

Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability. my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should…

> They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term be

Digital euro push is beyond the current US administration if that’s what you are hinting at. The trigger was Big Tech payments (Facebook Libra) and the rise of BTC.

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