Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.

There's a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I'm not a professional. So they'd have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to "let's not change anything".

So for now I'd just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.

The same goes for Google Workspace. Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS) would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It's cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don't work as desired. These people just don't see it as a priority. Don't understand the dangers.

So that's why Gates said he would donate money once he dies

There's really no competitor for large orgs with robust technology needs.

I don't trust any of these "giving pledges" upon death. In name, their fortunes will pass on to nonprofits. Nonprofits controlled by their family members, which comes down to letting them keep their inheritances tax-free. This even happens in Europe.

Yup it's mostly bullshit. Someone, somewhere might benefit, but certainly not any of the people within two thousands miles of where the rich guy lived. Which is still better than nothing, but Bill Gates could end homelessness in America immediately if he chose to do so. (I'm not saying it would be easy or fast, just that he has the money to make it happen.) He could make ALL COLLEGE FREE for students. Musk could have too, likely for less than he spent on Twitter.

There are absolutely large orgs in the Google and Apple ecosystems.
My org, for example, doesn't use Microsoft except for a smattering of Excel and Word subscriptions to deal with some customer documents that aren't handled well by Google Docs and Google Sheets.

Now now, it's not like they get the whole inheritance. It's more like they get cushy overpaid non-work jobs to manage or consult for the non-profit.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives you all this:

Plan highlights:

• Identity and access management for up to 300 users

• Web and mobile versions3 of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook

• Custom business email (you@yourbusiness.com)

• Chat, call, and video conference with Microsoft Teams

• 1 TB of cloud storage per employee

• 10+ additional apps for your business needs (including Microsoft Bookings, Planner, and Forms)

• AI chat experience with web grounding, writing assistance, data analysis, and access to agents4

• Automatic spam and malware filtering

• Anytime phone and web support

LibreOffice gives you ………. 1 of those bullet points lol. Not really a like for like replacement is it?

Of course not.

He said that he was giving away 99%+ 30 years ago, it's just publicity stunts, or as Kyrgizon explains below they "give" things to nonprofits that they control. Why? They no longer pay taxes. So nice!

Bill gates is another billionaire mentally ill evil crap person, no different than elon or zuckenberg etc.

Bill gates has already given away tens of billions of dollars. There’s no reason to believe he won’t give away the whole lot.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fact-check-bill-gates-has-given-over-50-billion-charitable-causes/3169864001/

$54Bn To the "Gates and Melinda" fund.

Guess who are in control of it, even you might figure it out.

Otherwise, is the boot juice good today?

How are you handling compliance/legal obligations like DLP policies on your email and cloud storage, legal holds and investigations, data tagging, and retention policies? I'm under the impression that only Microsoft offers those in a single product.

They didn’t donate all of that to that fund. They’ve donated hundreds of millions/billions to many other charities and causes that they don’t run. The money that they do donate to that fund does get used to help humanity. If you’re going to claim that it just goes back to line their own pockets, can you provide evidence of this?

Oh and what a creative way to use one of the most uncreative low-iq commie insults!

They "donated" 54 billion dollars to the gates & melissa fund.

The other "donations" are coming with so many strings attached people do not want them. Hey let me "donate" to your researh! I just gotta need the IP of anything that comes from it...

Zuckenberg also does this.

For the low quality meme, well you are out here "protecting" an evil person. For free too.

Actually I think this isn't exactly news. The university I go to, which is technically a foundation, had MS365 pulled last year IIRC and sent us all scrambling to find alternatives.

It didn't bother me too much because I had already fully transitioned to LibreOffice, but my classmates were furious because they didn't want to lose the "seamless online editing experience". I told them to either use LibreOffice or move to Google Docs, but they didn't like the idea and most (if not all) of them purchased MS365 subs. I unfortunately had to budge and get one too, because we needed to get some work done ASAP. I can't wait until I graduate (should be soon-ish?) to stop paying for that crap.

But yeah. IIRC they started by reducing the amount of storage the university got, meaning they had to quickly delete data from past classes (fortunately I managed to back up quite a bit), and then one day they suddenly sent everyone an email saying "you don't have access to MS365 anymore lol get fucked"

Legal Hold is easy in the Google Workspace using Google Vault and DLP is a native feature-set for Enterprise plans. Audit and investigation features are very thorough and we've used them extensively.

We do use an additional third-party endpoint DLP software with TLS inspection as well.

Interesting, I didn't realize that Google Suite enterprise options had become so robust.

Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.

honestly cant tell if this is satire. my university is currently purging google storage as fast as we can because they altered the licening once we were fully invested. and that was before they started screwing around with licensing language around their Ai. the google mdm is an absolute joke. not even my orgs own google team reccomends it and their jobs depend on google being used. i'd use the vmware nightmare formerly known as airwatch over google mdm.

google is exactly this greedy.

we used google docs alot during my final years in college, why aare they so resistant, its free. libreoffice i havnt touched yet.