I've never seen a European corporation that doesn't do user management with ActiveDirectory. Some still have it on their own Windows servers, but most browser based applications still go through Entra (Azure Cloud based AD). Just shut off their Entra/AAD and most of their software is blocked because nobody can log in.

I think both questions would be a perfect fit for the paid support bugtracker of LibreOffice maintainers. Hopefully paid by some hospital funds that are not spent on MS Office licenses.

This is unrealistic populism. The type that gets upvoted on HN, apparently. It's not possible to just ditch all Microsoft licenses in a year, or in 5 years, or in 10 years. There are hundreds of critical systems that can't just be migrated to Linux overnight (or ever). And "just dying" is... not an option for a government branch. What is this even supposed to mean.

But we can limit American bigtech by 90%, and we should. Especially everything in the cloud.

Lol no. Microsoft profits more than the value they provide, not exactly we should want to copy. We need to prevent hypercapitalism from reaching us in Europe, not make it worse, as we now seen exactly what it does to countries when you let it grow unfettered.

But I agree in general, governments and companies that use FOSS should donate back either engineering-time or money, but no need to do complicated "per-user per-year contributions", give them a sum per year, enough to fund the core developers at least and ideally to hire new ones, otherwise hire engineers and let them full-time contribute back.

Luckily, at least in Europe, this is exactly what we're seeing now. The governments who are looking into FOSS are all thinking about how to help fund it, no one seem to be thinking "How can we do this for free?" which is nice thing to see.

It won’t be long until the rest of the public sectors follow along. There has already been plenty of consideration and desire to follow through. What’s holding them back typically is not the desire to stay with Microsoft et. al., but the investment needed to make the switch away from a live system.

I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, ministries, municipalities, private companies etc. in both Denmark and other European countries looking into switching to non-American software.

"Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. Everybody asks about it it. Everybody plans around it.

Although the weaning off will take many years, and although European companies and governments will probably never be entirely without American software, and why should they, the American dominance will disappear, little by little. For better or worse, the American Century is coming to an end, also in IT.

Maybe because there is no drop in replacement of microsoft and microsoft dependant tools?

So yes, one can (and should) build them. But the market right now is not offering this yet.

Transitioning every system wholesale at once, is not gonna happen.

I rather have our governents and agencies do it step by step than not at all.

I want to see (sincerely) a whole government ditch MS

The Minister shut this up with "Software is a decision by the employer, the employee has to accept it"

Which then got blown up by the tabloid media, which ran BS Headlines like "OMG Courts and Police not working (because they're childish and refuse to learn another E-Mail Client)

Also Microsoft is playing dirty and lobbying very hard behind the scenes to obstruct it, in Munich they changed their German HQs to Munich and started to pay Taxes there. So suddenly the city changed back to MS

TL;Dr: It's a thankless and tough battle for politicians, because they face lobbying and media pressure against them. Also they will be blamed for any roadblocks, and there is no real upside for them in it, as no one except for a few nerds cares about this

For the 1000th time here and elsewhere - look no further than Switzerland. Highly diverse, federated group of people that managed to preserve most direct democracy in the world for 800 years and counting. 'Most free and most armed nation in the world' still holds true without clusterfuck that US gun situation is. Each canton is very self-sufficient, governs local rules, laws and taxation so there is no animosity between various regions - really a mini version of EU.

This is how EU parliament should look like, if (mostly) french and german egos would step down from their pedestals and acknowledge that somebody may figured things out better. Its most capitalistic country in Europe by far while preserving most of what we call social and healthcare net, has top notch free education and so on. Also its not increasing its debt, a clear mark of sustainable economical success of such approach, in contrary with literally any EU country.

For example detailed plan for next 5-10 years how gradually everything moves. Now it feels like 1 step ahead 3 steps back, nice pat on the back for doing something, while overall transition will take 2 centuries unless magic happens. Not enough, not at this point when all cards are on the table.

If you look at the features you actually need and are willing to explore different ways of doing things that are not exactly like M365 there's more options. France and Germany are also working on freeing themselves from M365.

This kinda thing sounds a lot like those RFPs that were specifically written so they could only be fulfilled by Microsoft because it was just a list of their feature tickboxes.

The second best time is now.

They have an extensive history in this too. The gendarmerie even has their own Linux distro for their workstations.

See https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/

( Though note exoscale, as a European provider has skin in the game here ).

All change starts small. If these small agencies or very local bits of government successfully pull it off, larger ones may well follow.

Wether those connections are true or not I can't say, but I do know people that dropped OnlyOffice in their evaluations for this reason.

The parent comment didn't complain that Denmark or its overall government is small. They complained that this agency represents a small fraction of their government.

https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-s...

The Quality is also Shit. I get some stupid Errors when trying to Access OWA every other day. Then I have to reset cookies/cache and can login again

The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and should be in the EU. You simply cannot trust an American company anymore after Trump.

I don't think so. It's more complicated than that. The state is not a monolith. Different heads are doing different things and it's a enormous bureaucracy. The divisions pumping out Android will eventually catch up to what's going on and the vulnerability they're exposing themselves to. These things take time. It doesn't all happen at once. People (who are not very technical, barely knowing what a computer is) need to understand what's going on and that can take a while. Let's just hope they figure it out before it matters.

It is probably unintentional. I work and worked in such projects (in The Netherlands), and the process is -rightfully- chaotic.

Governments typically don't have a central single team that builds all their android apps. They usually write a tender with loads of requirements and app-agencies will then build it. Or freelancers. Or volunteer teams. Or all of that. So there's no central team governed by one minister who can dictate what should happen today. There's hundreds of companies, teams, freelancers, interims, running around trying to make deadlines

Between writing a spec and the delivered app, there's chasms: could be a year between the specs are written and the first app pushed onto a phone. In a (trump)year a lot can change. But also between how specs are requirements or wishes in real life. "No user data may ever reach a google server" (actual specs are far vaguer and broader) may sound good, but will conflict directly with "user must receive push notifications of Foo and Bar". Or "passport NFC data must be attested for login", requiring a non-rooted, android, signed-by-google hardware attestation thingymajick.

So no, this is not malice. Nor incompetence. This is a sad reality, where we've allowed the monopoly to dictate what we, and users, expect, and to have that monopoly be the only option to provide those expectations.

For me the blame is squarely on the technical “experts” who are behind the architecture and implementation of such apps.

The only solution is no american companies in the loop at all.

Costing money isn't necessarily bad, but it's also hard to beat free & libre.

Yeah, long time ago we last saw the whole "Microsoft <3 Open Source" shtick, so seems more true than ever.

https://element.io/en/case-studies/nato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

Those offerings are garbage for anyone outside the US.

Can we have fully decentralized mesh networking yet?

I love how some hyper-sci-fi settings have the concept of a "datasphere" (analogous to atmosphere): a global cloud of nanorobots that provide connectivity, storage and computation.

Wouldn't that be ideal for AI too the way it's shaping up to be? Any device anywhere would just need to connect to a signal "neuron" of the global brain and it should theoretically be able to fetch anything.

OVH, Telecity, Hezner, Bahnhof, Tele2 etc;etc;etc;etc;etc; are all valid suppliers without the need to buy from hyperscalers.

I think what tends to work though is the idea that someone in redmond can't arbitrarily decide to shut you down as an individual or exert pressure. So it goes in order of importance:

A) Can we buy the software and use it in perpetuity

B) If we can't buy the software in perpetuity, do we at least control who has access to the software and our data

C) If we can't control who has access to the data then can we at least ensure we always have access to it?

D) If we can't ensure we have access to our own data then what are we even doing here?

Depending on where you fall on this line (which is a decision each government must make) you'll have to claw back something because right now we're all on D.

When it's set to Firefox attachment uploads don't work and ever morning it jumps to "please wait while we're signing you out..." when i never asked for that. When it thinks it's edge it just stays signed in.

Not to mention the huge amount of telemetry I need to block with ublock origin.

Entra? (User management and policy)

Office 365 Exchange?

Excel? (Finance runs on custom Excel macros and sheets)

Teams?

Office 365 in general, security, DLP, MFA?

Same with SharePoint here. I've never seen it not turn into a steaming pile of shit within months of deployment where nobody can find anything.

The way teams and yammer auto create groups left right and center in it doesn't help. And its search function is less than useless.

This is in fact the main thing I use copilot for, to find stuff in that mess.

Seeing an agency doing it is good, but still less than the French ditching Teams and Zoom altogether as country-wide policy.

Microsofts advantage is ActiveDirectory integration. Centrally managed users and machines, every user, every application, every service authentications through the AD.

Organizations opt for Teams all the time, because it's part of the package and fully integrated. There's no reason they couldn't pick something else, but why deal with it when Teams just work (sort of).

Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting. Yes, you will not get 100% of the Office 365 features out of the box. There will be some friction.

It's simply ridiculous seeing EU bureaucracy preparing e.g. to ban russian oil [3], making life more expensive for all people, and balking on being forced to switch their stupid word processor.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923736

[2] https://github.com/suitenumerique

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-propose-permanent...

And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.

I did not, but as far as I know, they require a bit more more than some office solution, shared drive and some email client.

(How do you imagine how it works internally if you apply for a new passport, they just send some office documents via email around?)

We shouldn't have waited until Trump, we had clear signs of distrust when the Americans were spying on Angela Merkel and other European officials [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...

Currently I'm involved in projects surrounding https://developer.overheid.nl/kennisbank/security/standaarde... . Have a look there. It's not FLOSS in the way that you can just provide PRs of things you'd like different, but FLOSS in the way that you can get in touch and with enough expertise, have people listen to you.

OAuth enabled systems aren’t enough, central management of users and machines are huge. If that core matures, it opens up the market for replacements in other areas. Teams, Outlook and the Office Suite need first grade replacements.

If you claim, that this is my position, please read at least one more sentence

"So yes, one can (and should) build them. "

(Avoiding specifics, because I think AI will soon make it too easy to mass-doxx HN accounts based on their comment history, and I want to remain employable)

This administration spends a lot of effort on cultivating a visibly hostile image to its former allies and emphasizing the role of force over diplomacy.

If there was any sort of tacit understanding that certain American power possibilites will only be used in relatively rare contexts (going after terrorists), it is gone. Nowadays the expectation is that the US will use various tools at their disposal even over relatively minor disagreements and conflicts.

That’s beside the sibling comment’s point that this suite is not complete enough (yet).

Well... lots disagree with that statement.

Transforming the public administration is the logical next step. Something different happening here, not the town hall big fuss approach.

If processes depend on some crappy excel table (created by somebody 20 years ago) or even worse, sharepoint app (commissioned by people who shouldn't be deciding things like this), the processes suck and need to be rebuilt anyhow.

They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has". It's easier to deal with a single party than it is to get licenses and support from 20 other suppliers that then blame each other when there are issues at the border between 2 of the products. You can talk to anyone else who has Teams, your files are always fully compatible, all of the rest of your software integrates, single identity, etc. A lot of good it is that you have Google Meet and Libre Office when the partners you work closes to have Teams and MS Office.

Users are proficient with the products, you can find skilled admins everywhere. Incumbency has a lot of inertia.

So you have to pay millions in support contracts every year, it's the cost of doing business. So MS gets hacked every other day, what could you have done about it better when even MS (!!!) couldn't?

That's special software developed for one customer only anyways. So it's perfectly possible to target another Platform or do this as some kind of WebApp.

And until then run some Windows Desktops for those special applications/services

I'm still super opposed to chatcontrol but at least it's in the open for us to fight.

This is the same Microsoft we're talking about right?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end...

https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr...

https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-b...

Any fines that allow profitable operations are no more than a tax.

I think you transposed some numbers in those dates it's more like 2062-2072. All of those things need to be built first and frankly all the initiatives started long before the current USA situation. The EU has been aware that it is wholly dependent on the USA for a myriad of reasons for a very long time now but barely seemed to care.

We'll see if anything actually happens it's a very thankless thing to push for politicians.

Digital euro push is beyond the current US administration if that’s what you are hinting at. The trigger was Big Tech payments (Facebook Libra) and the rise of BTC.

Given how poor it's responding to things like the Draghi report, I wouldn't anticipate success. Just more flailing around and working groups.

The major problem Europe has (mentioned in the draghi report) is with industrial competitiveness and strategy and access to cheap energy.

With the former it's not like the US is doing any better though. I dont think anybody in the west even has an industrial strategy.

Usa still don't even have universal social security and medications are overpriced 10 time more. Just to name a few.

This effect of politicians making decisions based on what corporate shares they own is ubiquitous now.

In the other direction, I even wonder if US threats about Greenland were related to this trend of Denmark moving off US big tech. I feel like the real game is military coercion dressed up as economics.

I suspect if people knew the real reasons behind each political decision, they'd be shocked. I'm sure it's all 100% about money; about taking as much as possible whilst giving as little in exchange as possible; filling the gap with pure coercion.