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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)

#301

Post by cguess »

yardie wrote: post #223
octocop wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A lot of hospitals and healthcare systems in Europe use the open source EMR platform. No ones charts are in .docx format, it is not life or death, lets be serious.

Hospitals are also planning documents, budgets, schedules, grants, reports, all with different access levels, privacy requirements, and legal regulations.

They're far more than just patient care in the moment.

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

#302

Post by nxm »

Izmaki wrote: post #92
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…

The “that’s nice but Denmark is small” comment is getting tiresome. Whether the country had 6 million or 60 million the bureaucracy is the same. It’s not about the size or the economics, it’s about the message. It won’t be long until the rest of the public sectors follow along. There has already been plenty of consideration and desire to follow through. What’s holding them back typically is not the desire to stay wit…

Investment and long term maintenance costs are usually not worth it. All is good until there’s a self induced outage and your boss has to take the blame (and not Microsoft)

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

#303

Post by thomasjudge »

There are a number of US states that have moved off Microsoft (mostly to G-Suite) and a number more that are considering it. And yes it won't be EVERYone (you can pry excel out of accountants cold dead hands) or everyTHING (obviously mainly Windows) but it's at least a blow against the pricing and quality issues from MSFT

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

#304

Post by acidburnNSA »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #212

Of all the Microsoft products, Excel is going to be the hardest to replace. Firstly, it's critical in many organisations. We all know you shouldn't run your business on a spreadsheet, but everyone does. Just a tiny difference in how data is handled, an unsupported macro, a missing formula...the whole deck of cards collapses. Secondly, while people only use 20% of its features, everyone uses a different 20%.

That is a common and reasonable sentiment. I can't help wonder if Claude Code will move this needle. Maybe people will stop relying as much on excel?

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

#305

Post by bonesss »

MengerSponge wrote: post #269
slow_typist wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It makes you wonder what critics think the process should look like? Plan A: Just burn it down and rebuild FOSS in the ashes. Plan B: The tech modernization agency can make the transition, document and enhance the process, and then guide less savvy users. I dunno. Tough call.

Also, how does government work?

Model A: some visionary gets a great idea and everyone across the board stops whatever they’re doing all at once to prioritize this one initiative, budgets and contracts and laws be damned.

Model B: the modernization department sets standards, those standards are mandatory in the governments procurement process. All suppliers know to update, everything swaps out as-planned over time, no one goes to jail.

I dunno. Danes are weird.

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

#306

Post by weirdmantis69 »

m000 wrote: post #124
Gigachad wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has drop in replacements for most of it. But that doesn’t solve the problem of using US tech.

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…

It is way more ridiculous to ask USA to protect you from Russia when you are funding the Russian military with your oil purchases.

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

#307

Post by maxloh »

StrauXX wrote: post #109
teekert wrote: post #81

I do like this news, but I wonder why they choose LibreOffice. It's the most widely known MS alternative, but things like OnlyOffice [0] and Nextcloud Office [1] (which is based on Collabora Online [2], which in turn is based on LibreOffice) offer much more compelling collaborative features, imho. Just plain office (like it's 1997) is quite a step back, no? Especially OnlyOffice looks extremely similar to MS Office,…

OnlyOffice had some controversy around being owned and operated by a Russian company through shell companies. They might even fall under EU sanctions. There is an open German information request to the government that was never answered. Wether those connections are true or not I can't say, but I do know people that dropped OnlyOffice in their evaluations for this reason.

> They might even fall under EU sanctions.

They FALL under EU sanctions.

https://www.tu.berlin/en/campusmanagement/news-details/umste...

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

#308

Post by eitally »

The problem isn't plain MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The more nefarious set of issues is around domain-specific software that is only compatible with Microsoft platforms and software.

For example, Veeva Vault is the industry standard content (and content workflow) platform for life sciences. It's a heavy, somewhat unpleasant platform similar to a Workday or ServiceNow, but it's ingrained and it compliant with all life sci regulatory bodies' regulations. It requires customers use SharePoint and Office under the hood.

Things like that can't just be ripped out and replaced because there are no FOSS options.

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

#309

Post by beached_whale »

bee_rider wrote: post #295
bombcar wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sus…

The US exec probably doesn't want to order them either. So the game would be played and they did their best. There's another article about the US fighting data sovereignty requirements/laws in other countries, but that relies on their quickly dwindling soft power.

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

#310

Post by Flatterer3544 »

Denmark was literally the US lapdog for such a long time, open to provide access and info. Denmark was the first to follow US into Iraq, while the rest of Scandinavia was much more skeptical.

Guess just bad luck with Greenland turning them the complete opposite direction, since I was certain that Denmark would be the one of the last to go against US in any way.

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