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

Unless you use Redhat or just fork anything yourself without upstreaming changes.

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.

LETS GOOOOOOO

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.

I’m a Dane and I approve this, massively.

It's because libre office doesn't spy on you.

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?

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.

Because they are free and any government getting rid of all Microsoft licensed software will save hundreds of millions per year.

Is it because they're better and free? It's because they're better and free. I bet that's it.