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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#311

Post by greatgib »

tester756 wrote: post #237
arianvanp wrote: post #194

I studied at Utrecht University and all the programming classes in the Bachelor were C#, Visual Studio, XNA, DirectX. Windows. Database class i had to learn in Proprietary Microsoft tools too. All Microsoft stuff. Sure nobody would complain if you did stuff on Linux but all the support by TAs and teachers was on Microsoft platforms only.. The Master was much better but the Bachelor basically was grooming people to be…

Visual Studio is world class IDE, C# is one of the better designed languages and ecosystems, Windows is everywhere - from home, to enterprise.

Visual studio code sucks badly, just most common developers started with it and are used to it in the same way that Windows was "the os" for the same kind of developers at a specific point in the past.

It is even worse know that vscode and all the clones are packed with llm agents that such devs can't live without.

For one thing for example, the latency of the editor is crazy for someone that worked with native editors.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#312

Post by jimbohn »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #224
jimbohn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with Europe's incompetence and divisiveness, you must also consider that the US has kept it so tight under its umbrella that it has squeezed it. The US wants a rich market to sell into, a suitable ally for oil campaigns, but not a competitor. The US is also still cultivating divisiveness, at the EU level, they groom a politically aligned minority that conveniently opposes any long-term improvement (Looking at M…

As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it. Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has o…

I disagree about that being the root cause of the issue. It's true that in some countries there is a sort of permanent work contract that essentially means once you are in, you cannot be fired; that's obviously bad. In my experience, work ethic, or perhaps, bargaining power, is generational, long story short: young people have to work much harder/longer for lower pay than boomers, due to the lack of leverage of their generation and overall market conditions.

Agree with your second paragraph, just disagreeing with the generous work/life conditions part, that's something that was enjoyed by boomers (through country-level debt, even!), but new generations work harder for a salary that in US terms looks like scraps.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#313

Post by greatgib »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #224
jimbohn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with Europe's incompetence and divisiveness, you must also consider that the US has kept it so tight under its umbrella that it has squeezed it. The US wants a rich market to sell into, a suitable ally for oil campaigns, but not a competitor. The US is also still cultivating divisiveness, at the EU level, they groom a politically aligned minority that conveniently opposes any long-term improvement (Looking at M…

As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it. Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has o…

Surprisingly, from France, Hen I work for US companies, the American employees were on holidays more often than the french ones.

For example, here "sick leaves" days are not considered normal holidays that have to be taken in the year to not be lost.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#314

Post by graemep »

freehorse wrote: post #205
rorylawless wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Universities are anything like other large public/public-adjacent organizations, the bulk of the in-house IT department was long since replaced by Microsoft resellers posing as IT. It’s insidious.

Not all universities in Europe are like this, but some are 100% like this. But if there was a larger political directive towards a more autonomous solution, it would eventually work, I think.

Can universities be given political directives like that in most European countries? In the UK they are usually (entirely?) independent, are non-profits and registered charities.

They get government funding for both (British resident) students and research so the government has leverage but would have to use that to incentivise them. I imagine at least some other European countries are much the same.

An even trickier question if you are interested in digital sovereignty is how to get the private sector to do the same. Running everything on AWS and requiring a mobile app to do anything seems to be almost instinctive for many organisations.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#315

Post by robtherobber »

arianvanp wrote: post #307
tokioyoyo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if students learn some open-source software that doesn’t get used in private industry, will they be able to land a job that’s asking Autodesk et al. knowledge as a requirement?

It's not the job of a university to prepare you for the workplace. That's the job of the workplace. I'm sick of industry outsourcing their jobs to public institutions. It's the job of a university to teach cutting edge research

Agree with this 100%. At some point the private sector decided that it will accept no responsibilities of any kind (except for what was fought and defended tooth and nail by the civil society and a few slightly more responsible governments), and all the costs that can be avoided will be avoided, shifting the burden on the public sector.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#316

Post by kkfx »

Yes, of course, when their teachers learn to use a FLOSS desktop for all tasks, starting with writing theses and papers in LaTeX... In other words, when they run courses for students to recover what they didn't learn in high schools.

Today, a desktop is the primary epistemological tool; only a FLOSS one is suitable for study, as it reveals what it does and is, or at least can be, shaped according to need. Most are simply IT illiterate, like professors from the 1950s unable to read and write fluently, except they still haven't realised it...

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#317

Post by vanviegen »

qoez wrote: post #37
Workaccount2 wrote: post #2

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

AI is gonna be even worse. At least there's some competition from scandinavia and germany and france's tech scenes. For AI there's basically none.

Yeah, but unless there's AGI right around the corner, it's starting to look more and more like there's no real moat in the trillions being invested. As switching between AI providers is easy (especially when compare the stranglehold say Microsoft has on organizations), catching up may be relatively easy and cheap for latecomers.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#318

Post by deaux »

Balinares wrote: post #40
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".

By providing the software to be installed in clusters owned and operated by European companies. The sovereign cloud spec designed by the folks at France's ANSSI agency is tight .

Whoops, the European company just got bought out by a US entity. Tough luck! [1]

Is this part of the spec? If not, it's as loose as a tent. And by "part of the spec" I mean "all your assets will be forcefully nationalized the second you or a parent company of yours becomes less than X% European owned", where X is well above 50.

[1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/dutch-looking-into-conseque...

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#319

Post by mmcnl »

isk517 wrote: post #216
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…

I'm always amazed at how needlessly complicated and useless administration of Microsoft products and services are. So much of 365 feels like it is 75-90% completed then abandoned. Every time I find something that sounds like it should be really useful, it turns out to lack at least one function or feature needed to do what I would need it to.

For every Microsoft service there are 5 tiers of certifications that are needlessly updated every few years.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#320

Post by Workaccount2 »

greatgib wrote: post #313
Workaccount2 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it. Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has o…

Surprisingly, from France, Hen I work for US companies, the American employees were on holidays more often than the french ones. For example, here "sick leaves" days are not considered normal holidays that have to be taken in the year to not be lost.

Thankfully we don't have to rely on anecdotes, and can just check data. The average American works 300 (!) more hours a year than the average Frenchman.

37.5 days more, That's huge. And France isn't even the lowest in the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

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