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.

Can't happen fast enough.

Also Microsoft products have become enshitified beyond recognition.

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?

1. When you can spend a lot on security staff, they'll probably convince you that your own installation of Windows is sterile.

2. They probably use Macs.

3. They might even only use air-gapped machines, with sufficient paranoia.

It’s because of that new update where they fucked up the task bar. Look what youve done, Bill

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.

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.

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.

We only need that independence because we can't trust each other. There's no problem in some countries being more focused on one thing or another, as long as we are collaborating with each other without taking advantage of anyone. Unfortunately, there are still dangerous players in the world and we have to be prepared to defend against them and this capitalistic view we currently have guarantees that there's always someone taking advantage of someone else.

We need to evolve...

People complain different, government sees increased costs, and then they switch back

Hehe - sounds similar to my case. On my PC if I try to log in as the work account, it asks for a code from an authenticator app, but rejects it. Still working on my phone though. Microsoft being Microsoft.

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.

15 years ago this statement would lead to accusations of being anti-globalist, communist, economically illiterate.

15 years ago this made economical (just not political) sense and was the right approach.

Now it still is, but there's an additional quality - I think the incentive is not of public good, it's of strengthening authoritarianism on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Domestic authoritarians always want to play with their toys without foreign authoritarians meddling. But if the domestic environment is not authoritarian, only foreign is, then they are not in conflict, and the other way around too.

So this may mean that both USA and EU are changing for the worse, for now.

Not attacking Linux or LibreOffice.

Local libraries here and there in Copenhagen have already switched to Manjaro. Haven't heard anyone complain about it.

I would argue that switching to an open-source model for all your tools is more globalist. Open source projects are being maintained by people all over the world, and any group or branch is allowed to modify and redistribute their personal version of any project.

It's the opposite of being subject to an ever growing corporation you can't even put checks on. Every government using the product of a single small group of massively rich corporations is giving said corporation unprecedented power over the world.

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.

OS2skole | OS2 – Offentligt digitaliseringsfællesskab

OS2 – Offentligt digitaliseringsfællesskab (www.os2.eu)

Mind you that the project was started before Trump got re-elected.