Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux
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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.
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they are also no providing intelligence and ai assistance to the israeli regime rogue state genocide on neighboring city state Palestine
Or sending your position to the migration services so they can send you to Guantanamo.
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I'd think it would be obvious that a country wouldn't want to depend on a foreign country's proprietary product when an open source alternative exists. Even if it's not spying, what if the US forced Microsoft to put some kill switch on their products? Even if it doesn't affect your most secure systems because of air gap, it could still cripple enough to cause huge problems.
There's simply no reason to take the risk.
If I was running a government, I would strongly desire proof that all of my government software is doing only what I want it to. That means not only do I have access to the source code, but I also need it to be simple enough that my government teams can actually audit all of it.
Obviously, that's not going to be feasible in every situation. There might be proprietary software that is protected from competition via IP laws, and some software is so necessarily complex that it would be really hard to audit completely, but overall, I find it shocking that any foreign government would run a Microsoft product when a feature comparable open source alternative exists.
Plus everyone benefits. Even Microsoft would benefit from healthy competition... Instead of making shit software, they should fix the problems.
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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.
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.
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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...
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Everyone in tech did this 10 plus years ago.
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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.
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.
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Plus everyone benefits. Even Microsoft would benefit from healthy competition... Instead of making shit software, they should fix the problems.
M$ and Apple both extensively use OSS projects in the creation and maintenance of their own products. And neither really fund many/any of the projects they use. So this would directly benefit them even further.
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Lets go Libreoffice. I hope to see more FOSS projects embraced.
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More linux adoption is great. Steam deck and this will help push it forward. Next step would be something like the steam machines
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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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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.
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Yeah true, but these are more business to business. RHEL support is pretty expensive, and in my experience Oracle support (maybe not really open source) is both terrible and ridiculously expensive. Maybe this will create a market for more consumer like support. Maybe that could even create new business models for open source software.
I think you're right about creating demand for more consumer like support, someone in in another comment chain on this post mentioned several Danish municipalities doing something similar with their schools...
Is there a relevant cert to do this kind of work yet? I think it would be interesting to do Linux tech support. Maybe just find a junk laptop and work my way through the Arch wiki breaking and fixing stuff (since my main Linux distro has been incredibly hands off so far)?
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Anyone else think that this could lead enough pish for IT independence that a company starts selling micro clouds. Jist a bog ole computer that handles a semi local cloud say at a campus scale. Amd we just swing back to mainframes
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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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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.
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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.
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Im Danish and had no clue about this, even though Im rather interested in open source.
Thanks for sharing.
Jeg havde sgu heller ikke hørt om det før, indtil jeg så en lille spalte i avisen om det forleden
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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.
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.
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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.
The ribbon was contentious but most people are familiar with it and it has advantages like taskcentricity and less clutter. LibreOffice has an experimental ribbon that I think should be worked on, mainstreamed and set during installation or in the settings.
UX in other areas should be improved. Lots of little annoyances add up for new users and can break their opinions. It's not hard to look over the UI and see things which have no business being there, or should only appear in certain contexts, or could be implemented in better ways. I think the project should get some MS Office volunteers into a lab and ask them to do things and observe their problems. I'd have power Word, Excel, Powerpoint users come in and do non-trivial things they normally do and see where they trip up or even if they can do what they need.
