Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

binnenlandsbestuur.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 229 posts

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#51

Post by guiriduro »

bawolff wrote: post #36
guiriduro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS could always refocus themselves as a global company (in the legal rather than marketing-only sense), and move their HQ out of the US, then there could be no Trump tantrums affecting other countries, the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US affiliate, with no ability to affect their other global operations whatsoever. Why haven't they followed this approach? Have…

> the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US affiliate So what you are saying is the worst that could happen is they lose the entire US market, us based datacenters, and us based employees? I think the question answers itself.

No. It would be run by a US affiliate using the Microsoft brand, paying royalties to a global company in some other jurisdiction.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#52

Post by vincvinc »

Related:

"IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT" (white house, feb 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...

Microsoft admits in French court it can't keep EU data safe from US authorities (jul 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822902

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#53

Post by tharne »

nitwit005 wrote: post #49
bawolff wrote: post #16

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place. USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation. Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

It's basically the "No one gets fired for buying IBM" effect. Microsoft became the default. Everyone was familiar with it, and knew it would work.

People tend to underestimate the value of a solution that folks, especially less technical folks, are already trained on, comfortable with, and one that is known to work as expected.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#54

Post by Johnny555 »

bawolff wrote: post #16

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place. USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation. Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

The same reason most organizations use it -- inertia and because it's been the standard for so long, it's the best at what it does.

The startup I used to work at was exclusively on OSX + GoogleDocs, when we were small, but as we grew (and especially when the Finance team grew) more and more employees found a need for the MS Office Suite as well as apps that only run on Windows, so they started rolling out Windows VM's and then full Windows machines.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#55

Post by guiriduro »

SllX wrote: post #37
guiriduro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS could always refocus themselves as a global company (in the legal rather than marketing-only sense), and move their HQ out of the US, then there could be no Trump tantrums affecting other countries, the worse that could happen would be some sanctions on what would then be their in-country US affiliate, with no ability to affect their other global operations whatsoever. Why haven't they followed this approach? Have…

That approach is also insane. You’re always going to be vulnerable somewhere and there isn’t a better country to be if you’re in software, cloud services or AI. Not to mention it’s not like Microsoft Execs want to pickup and leave the States either.

Don't need to. Would it be a big deal to hop on a plane to e.g. Switzerland once a year?

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#56

Post by walletdrainer »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #47
munk-a wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying - and likely a fair amount of network pressure from legal systems in various nations that lean towards using office for internal documents as a default.

That, and it's solid, well supported software most people are familiar with. From those doing the paperwork with Microsoft procurement for Dutch government I learned there have been legal disputes going on for years about what even constitutes "telemetry". That was a decade ago, and even then there was push to move away from Microsoft in the government. Toward open source, or even Oracle. I suppose that with the Dutc…

The main problem is that 365 is just far cheaper than the competitors for environments like this, maintaining and supporting an open source alternative would be an incredibly expensive undertaking.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#57

Post by guerrilla »

nitwit005 wrote: post #49
bawolff wrote: post #16

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place. USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation. Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

It's basically the "No one gets fired for buying IBM" effect. Microsoft became the default. Everyone was familiar with it, and knew it would work.

I'm sure people get killed all the time for using American services. It's just that they were all brown "terrorists", not liberal Intitutions situated in Europe, until now that is.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#58

Post by thewebguyd »

iso1631 wrote: post #42
bawolff wrote: post #16

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place. USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation. Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

No doubt they started using it in the 90s when you bought a copy of software, and Microsoft had no control over your computer.

The story of Microsoft's stack in a nutshell and why everyone is still so dependent on it. Migration is hard, and it only gets harder the longer you've built yourself on top of a particular technology.

Microsoft offered what basically amounted to "IT in a box." You got identity, email/groupware, an office suite, and an OS that ran on just about any IBM compatible PC and your own servers. You paid for the license, and then you controlled and hosted it after that. Microsoft was content to let you do whatever the hell you wanted with their software, and stuck to their promise to not break shit (backward compatibility for Win32).

That everything is now cloud hosted and stuffed with telemetry was a big rug pull, but it's not like everyone could just up and migrate to something else (and what else, for that matter, there's not much out there that matches). It was literally just this year that on-prem exchange support ended for the one-time purchase license, but even then on-prem is still available via subscription.

Microsoft gave every incentive in the world to get enterprises to stick with their stack, and it worked, so it's no wonder people are just now starting to panic a little and look for alternatives.

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#59

Post by [deleted] »

vincvinc wrote: post #52

Related: "IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT" (white house, feb 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo... Microsoft admits in French court it can't keep EU data safe from US authorities (jul 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822902

[deleted]

Re: ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

#60

Post by tharne »

lysace wrote: post #19
bawolff wrote: post #16

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place. USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation. Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

USA has been very hostile to the ICC since way before Trump. The ICC was created in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president of the USA. He never ratified the Rome treaty. And then GW, Obama, Trump and Biden didn't either. Very few americans batted an eye as far as I could tell. Your are after all by definition exceptional. (/s)

This is not a U.S. specific issue. Once you strip away all of the formalities, titles, and ceremonies, you'll realize there's no such thing as international law, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word.

The law, by definition is a rule backed up by the use of force, specifically state-sanctioned violence. If you write a law but do not have the ability to use a sufficient amount violence to enforce it when needed, you don't have a law at all, you just have a suggestion around how you'd like people and countries to behave.

The only way you could ever have anything resembling "international law", would be to have some sort of global military or police force capable of exerting enough violence to ensure that the law is followed, and I'm not even sure how such a thing would work.

Post reply on HN