Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025) • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by lenkite » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

flexie wrote: post #164

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…

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 aro…

I really hope the EU is serious about this and doesn't change its mind with the next American administration who offers hugs and kisses.

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

#292

Post by jl6 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

lejalv wrote: post #205

jl6 wrote: post #90

The European sovereign tech trend isn’t exclusively a benefit to OSS. SAP must be anticipating a significant windfall of Oracle refugees.

Can proprietary software (SAP) be truly sovereign, though? On the one hand, nothing stops SAP from behaving like Oracle for the sake of shareholder value. On the other hand, even SAP could be bought by Blackrock or Peter Thiel, and back to US dependence. Am I missing something about SAP that precludes these scenarios?

Nothing absolutely precludes malfeasance, but SAP is a European legal entity, answerable ultimately to European law. Microsoft and Oracle also trade in Europe through European legal entities, which are theoretically also bound by European law, but should that law conflict with any US law that binds the parent companies, we would expect the US law to be the stronger influence (likely covertly).

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

#293

Post by sublimefire » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

However you like it or not banning just one company is not a recipe for success. IMO the issue is in the procurement and how these tenders are worded. For instance, if the requirement is data residency backed by private keys and conf compute then put it in writing. The idea that some other vendor will come in and solve this problem without such a requirement upfront will not hold for long.

By and large MS problem is that our world gets fragmented and you need to have products that adapt, eg great firewall in China, strict data residency in Europe. It is difficult to achieve that without segmenting your products as well.

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

#294

Post by bdavbdav » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

mgoetzke wrote: post #142

m000 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France have already developed their own (recently posted here) [1][2]. Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting. Yes, you will not get 100% of the Office 365 features out of the box. There will be some friction. It's simply ridiculous seeing EU bureaucracy preparing e.g. to ban russian oil [3], making life more expensive for all people, and balking on being forced to sw…

Considering that I doubt most normal office-user people even use features in Word other than changing fonts etc I doubt that will be a big issue anyway.

Not sure if you've worked in an office recently, but on google workspace I (we) use very regularly:

- Group Editing - this ones hard to get right - Reviewing Tools - Automated document generation - Embedding of data-backed images from 3rd party tools

Looking at my wife who works in government, they use it even more heavily, with a lot of complicated formatting, numbering, standards etc going into each document, plus OneDrive collaborative features on top of that.

I suspect office-user people are where most of the features get used. Agreed, most people only use 15% of the features, but which 15% that is likely changes quickly person to person.

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

#295

Post by bee_rider » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #266

beached_whale wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't usually an American company doing the local operations, but a local subsidiary. Like Walmart Canada telling Walmart corporate to pound sand in the 1990's over Cuban pajamas. It's illegal for Canadian companies to participate in the US embargo of Cuba. This is all well within the realm of what governments can and do regulate. Want to do business in a country with their laws or not is the choice.

At some point it comes to a head; Walmart corporate and the USA didn't care enough about Cuban pajamas, but in a situation where they DO care, you quickly get Вкусно – и точка. The EU (nay, perhaps every country) should be prepared to deal with Microsoft or AWS completely cutting them off from access to all their systems - what would be the cost and impact? We are rapidly heading to not one Internet, but country-spec…

Apparently AWS sovereign cloud is designed to continue operating even if the US offices cut them off. The servers are in the EU and the people running them are subject to EU laws, not US ones.

Realistically a US executive could be legally required to give an EU engineer a command that they legally couldn’t follow. At that point I guess we find out if the engineers’ national or corporate identities are dominant. I suspect the former in most cases, but who knows?

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

#296

Post by einr » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

MegaDeKay wrote: post #246

mgoetzke wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that I doubt most normal office-user people even use features in Word other than changing fonts etc I doubt that will be a big issue anyway.

It doesn't need to be "most". "Some" or even "a few" can be enough to make a hell of a mess if those few have created documents that are key to the business in one way or another (proposals, end-user documentation, etc). And there are the other components to the suite like Powerpoint, Excel, and Project to consider.

So then act now, because the best time to act was yesterday, and the longer you wait the worse the mess and pain becomes. Not acting at all is not an option.

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

#297

Post by cguess » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

lpcvoid wrote: post #102

lukan wrote: 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…

There's not even a reasonable FOSS calendar for Linux that integrates with email. Thunderbird has it, but it doesn't work with Google's Advanced Protection for instance.

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

#298

Post by timbit42 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

fyredge wrote: post #185

There's something about governments moving to open source software that doesn't sit well with me. The only advantage I can see is reduction in expenditure with free software. I believe we should go a step further and institute open standards . Move away from .docx and to .odt in document submission on government websites. This gives users the flexibility of choice as long as they adhere to a specific standards. This…

What are you talking about? ODT is an open standard.

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

#299

Post by Foobar8568 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

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".…

I can't quote examples for obvious reasons.

Since you quoted Microsoft, remember this? https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/04/02/cyber-safety-rev... you have other companies that have a much better track record on Security.

If you browse HN everyday, at least once a weak, you'll see security issues related to Azure and Microsoft product, to the point that Microsoft stopped bounty programs or don't include some products.

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

#300

Post by sho » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #239

wasabi991011 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any insight in to why the finance department (and other departments) required MS office?

Their initial need for Office was some soft of forecasting model that they needed to update for a large investor. That was a big spreadsheet that ran on Office for OSX if I remember correctly. After that, I don't know what specifically they needed to use, they had purchased some software that required Windows and Office.

Call me cynical, but having been around the block a few times when I hear "need" and "require" my brain translates that to "want" and "it would be convenient if". I've done my share of forecasting for investors and am quite confident that there is nothing in any startup forecast that could conceivably "require" Windows. I mean, absolute worst case, just use SQL.

The CFO just preferred Windows, that's it, I'd bet money on it.