I think if I were any non-US government I’d be very seriously thinking about not using Microsoft software at this time, particularly if it connects to the cloud. And that goes for companies with government contracts, or merely companies who are potential targets of industrial espionage.
That said, LibreOffice needs to tap the EU for funding to broaden its features and also improve the UX because it’s not great tbh. It can be extremely frustrating using LibreOffice after using MS Office, in part because the UI is so different, noisy with esoteric actions, and very unrefined compared to its MS counterpart. That needs funding and to get to the point that somebody can pick up LibreOffice for the first time and not be surprised or stuck by the way it behaves.
Exactly recently downloaded Libre on my PC and it looks dated and busy, plus not their fault but every Office doc I open in a Libre app looks bad, the formatting and fonts are off and every change I make it says it can’t save in the office format and suggests converting the document to ODT format, that alone will scare away casual users who don’t understand what an open format is
When it comes to the UI, I guess it depends on what you’re used to. The LibreOffice UI is a lot more similar to the UI used by MS Office 2003, so I’ve always been pretty comfortable with it. But Microsoft’s “ribbon” UI which debuted back in 2007 is now old enough to vote, so I can see how there are people out there where that’s all they’ve ever used.
Personally, while I’ve learned to deal with it in Word and Outlook, even after all of these years the ribbon still pisses me off every time I have to use Excel.
If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don’t only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.
If the EU invests massively in free and open source software, pretty soon all across the world countries will hop on the FOSS-train.
If FOSS catches on, it shows to the world the power of collaboration. A power we have mostly forgotten, thinking that competition is a better idea. But competition alone is shit. To give an example. Here in the Netherlands we’re very proud of ASML, a company that makes the machines needed to produce microchips. They’re famous because they’re unique, in that no other company is able to produce these machines. It’s a competitive success, but obviously it’s holding us all back. If they’d share their knowledge companies across the world could try to improve on these machines, speeding up innovation. I’m supposed to think China’s corporate espionage is a crime, but to be honest I feel like not sharing such crucial information with the world is the actual crime. The power of collaboration is easily underestimated, let’s give it a try.
Don’t forget that ASML is only possible due to many suppliers which are also unique in being able to supply such high quality parts. Example given Zeiss for Mirrors
Lets go Libreoffice. I hope to see more FOSS projects embraced.
Libreoffice for the fucking win!
tl;dr: “digital sovereignty”. “EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe’s dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future.”
Fair enough and makes sense. Every country should be trying to be as independant as possible IMO.
I always wondered how any head of state could feel like they were not being spied on if they were using windows.
Can governments really ensure that windows has been secured that well or is there always a possibility that Microsoft is spying for the United States?
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When you can spend a lot on security staff, they’ll probably convince you that your own installation of Windows is sterile.
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They probably use Macs.
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They might even only use air-gapped machines, with sufficient paranoia.
Security services use things like airgapping, but our politicians talk to each other using WhatsApp…
I think I’ve read US military and navy etc have their own parallel Internet, a few actually.
Using a Mac wouldn’t be any safer, that’s also an American company. Plus Apple has full control of the hardware as well as the software and they make their own silicon… It’d be even easier for Apple to spy on users than Microsoft, they could even do it with less chance of being detected.
Not in the sense of it being an American company, but in the sense of it being a bit less of a mess.
Intentional spying yes of course.
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Because they are free and any government getting rid of all Microsoft licensed software will save hundreds of millions per year.
The best thing Europe could do is take those savings and use it to cover the salaries of a couple full time developers per country to help verify code and add new features.
It would be such a boon to the whole world.
And also do away with concerns about data security. As far as I know if you’re using the M$ office suite stuff like email gets routes through American based servers. And that gives the US government access.
Data security is important.
The problem is every lazy asshole in IT or Management uses it as an excuse for everything if they don’t want to do something
Sooooooo…more serious than I thought… shiiiiiiiiit…
Also Microsoft products have become enshitified beyond recognition.
I teach boomers how to use SharePoint. Last week Microsoft updated office.com to be 95% copilot. The only way to find “All Apps” (word, SharePoint, PowerPoint, excel, etc.) is to find the tiny little “apps” button all the way at the bottom of the screen.
Everything else is copilot. Everyone is confused and my job just got 100% harder.
All of the M$ office apps have premium features now too. Pay extra monthly and you can use python in excel. Pay extra monthly and Teams will… I dont even know because I closed that popup so fucking fast. FFS my company must pay M$ at least 7 figures a year - why are they trying to nickel and dime us?
Just earlier this week I created some Sharepoint folders for my father-in-laws business. I created the groups in Outlook and used the ”See files in Sharepoint”-button to access them. Next it required to ask for permission for him to the folder. I granted them using his own account. It was funny because the request was literally John Doe asked John Doe for permission, and the emails were identical too. So I granted him his own access with his own account.
The funniest thing though was that the process was different all of the four times, like different links opening to completely different tools. Now I’m not a Microsoft MVP and probably did it the wrong way, but at least I had fun doing it.
Today I tried to get some files from Teams that I hadn’t used in a year or so.
Error.
Something went wrong [7q6ck]
Works ok on my phone for now though so at least I got past that road block for today.
A former colleague at a place where I used to work added my personal MS account to a Teams community inside the organization. It split my Teams account in two, prompting me to choose which one I wanted to use every time I opened Teams.
One side was associated with the organisation, the other was still my personal account. My personal account became inaccessible and attempting to login would result in a referral loop and an error. The MS advice for the error code was to get the system admin to remove my account from the organisation, which wasn’t possible because I don’t work there anymore.
The question is why not?
There are infinite undocumented “things” integrated with Microsoft solutions. Just of the top of my head, here are couple that i’ve encountered
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SCADA software
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Entire business critical database application written in access
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Hundreds of tailor made order documents for logistics that are made with Excel
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Accounting software that only runs on Windows
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The immense cost of moving all of your projects from the web that is teams/sharepoint/OneDrive
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Is it because they’re better and free? It’s because they’re better and free. I bet that’s it.
I’m a Dane and I approve this, massively.
north germany is doing the same.
anyone remember limux? bill gates attacked german democracy bribing munich to drop limux in favor if windows in exchange for 8000 jobs.
fuck the windows user too though.
The funny thing about that story, and the outset that no one covered after the fact, is that Munich reversed direction again and ultimately did go with Linux and open source stacks.
not really true. so 20(!!!) years later they as the last of the states woke up.
bavaria is pathetic. “LANGSAM” is their word for being backwards and ultra-conservative. i mean Freie Wähler? Aiwanger? What a shit place. And it is just SAD that they just NOW started to civilize. worst of the west.
Munich is governed by Social Democrats. Don’t mix it up with the Bavarian state government
it is a fig. bavaria does not know what democracy is. from what i remember there has yet only been 1 party ruling whole legislatures simce WW2 and that is CSU. dont mix up the free world and bavaria!
Important notice in this regard is that there is agreement on this among both left and right wing politicians.
So this is NOT something that will change with new administrations in either government or local communities.When this is implemented, I don’t see any way for Microsoft to get that business back!
Edit PS:
It’s not just office, it’s also mail and cloud services.People complain different, government sees increased costs, and then they switch back
IDK if you read the article, but in 5 years cost of licenses paid to Microsoft increased 72%.
Also even if cost increase temporarily, it creates local jobs skills knowhow and tax revenue. Every “dollar” spend benefits the local community! instead of just sending the money to USA.
Servicing with open source and Linux will rapidly become cheaper than Microsoft, because there will be no artificial disruptions caused by Microsoft planned obsolescence or forced updates or whatever crap Microsoft is pushing.I feel like there has to be a push in education for open source success
A couple dozen of Danish municipalities are working on replacing Google and Microsoft entirely in schools with a project called OS2Skole (skole meaning “school”). It’s expected to save them around €3 million in yearly and the intention is to de-Googleify and de-Microsoftify children already from an early age and to make it open source.
Mind you that the project was started before Trump got re-elected.
There is a out of the box product for that available,btw: The UCS@school environment does exactly what they want, using only Open source products. It basically joins OpenLDAP,Samba,Keycloak,etc. together. Works both with Windows as well as Linux clients.
Local libraries here and there in Copenhagen have already switched to Manjaro. Haven’t heard anyone complain about it.
Can’t happen fast enough.
Also good and free: Sumatra You can read any pdf.
Libre office drawer you can sign. No need for acrobat or any of that garbage.
It’s because libre office doesn’t spy on you.
