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.
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
More linux adoption is great. Steam deck and this will help push it forward. Next step would be something like the steam machines
Lets go Libreoffice. I hope to see more FOSS projects embraced.
Everyone in tech did this 10 plus years ago.
If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don’t only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.
Go Denmark!
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
I wonder if it creates more inhouse sysadmin jobs? When you buy a license from M$ you also get tech support. But if you have problems with open source, you gotta go get a computer person
Possibly does. On occasion I read about German cities trying to do similar, but then reverting back to M$.
Most of the issues are around people not wanting to take time to get use to new software (happened at a job where they moved to GSuite) or the FOSS stuff not having a corporation that can be sued for loss of earnings (like crowd strike when they didn’t read only friday). Note that these are not technical issues with FOSS.
Still there is political support to not just use this as an angle to get M$ to lower their pricing.
But if you have problems with open source, you gotta go get a computer person
- Not necessarily, most commercial enterprise Linux distros sell support contracts, for example, RHEL and SUSE being the two most famous examples of that.
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.
Not necessarily, lots of open source projects offer enterprise support contracts and in house staff could be retrained. Definitely going to be good for training, consulting, and MSPs though
Hopefully. But I think companies are already starting to realise the value of having your bytes in a place you control
Libreoffice for the fucking win!
The question is why not?
There are infinite i documented “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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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.
Sumatra? I am going to take note of that.
Is it because they’re better and free? It’s because they’re better and free. I bet that’s it.
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
It’s because libre office doesn’t spy on you.
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.
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.
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.
I’m a Dane and I approve this, massively.
LETS GOOOOOOO
