At a time of growing concern over the power of the world’s mighty tech companies, one German state is turning its back on US giant Microsoft.
In less than three months’ time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft’s ubiquitous programs at work.
The whole article is a good read but this is the important bit:
Instead, the northern state will turn to open-source software to “take back control” over data storage and ensure “digital sovereignty”, its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP.
They also blame Trump which is pretty hilarious but probably not terribly relevant to the community.
Trump’s executive order forced Microsoft to disable access for ICC’s Chief Prosecutor. So, in a sense, Trump is indeed a threat to digital sovereignty.
Oh, he is a threat to all types of sovereignty, in every sense.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.
That includes Windows, right?
…
Right?
…
Yes, they’ll use Linux.
Linux is great for government work.
They dont need compatibility as much. They have their systems only they use, therefore they can easily make them on Linux or emulate.
Otherwise they need a office suite like Libre.
And there’s money to save. Benefits the whole country.
They have their systems only they use, therefore they can easily make them on Linux or emulate.
Also, a lot of systems are web-based (and therefore automatically multi-platform) these days.
Don’t forget, most computers are faster on Linux than on the newest windows version, so you can hold off on upgrades for longer if the hardware is physically fine, which just further decreases costs.
I have a Dell laptop from 2013 I’m running Mint on 🫡
Granted, I’m only using it for web browsing and note taking, but still.
So basically an office simulator
and therefore automatically multi-platform
But not necessarily multibrowser.
Damn those people developing only for Chrome.
So with all this AI usage, surely developing for all browsers should be a breeze now, right? Right??
And gamers are looking to SteamOS to replace windows.
SteamOS is not a good desktop distribution, which isn’t surprising as it’s not supposed to be one. It’s specialised for handhelds.
Go install Ubuntu or something, really anything, ideally don’t have an Nvidia GPU, install steam, done. SteamOS has no special sauce regarding running games.
Not Ubuntu.
Source: I use Ubuntu.
That’s not a very good idea. It’s not a general use distribution.
Es ist wirklich das Jahr des Linux-Desktops
It says they will be replaced soon, so im assuming it’s phase 2.
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP!
Yes, but only in Europe, and no Americans are allowed. 😕
Try and stop me. I don’t even have windows installed anymore.
I get it! It’s a fucking terrible program. At the moment I’ve got two instances of it running, one old and one new. Why the fuck? Why doesn’t all the old things transfer to the new one?
It’s also a joke to maneuver. The different subjects have “hidden” subcategories that aren’t supposed to be hidden but are! So you have two extra clicks to find the folder… it’s a giant fucking joke that a company the size of MS can’t make this tolerable.
Channels get hidden when they’re inactive for a decent amount of time. To see them you just view all the channels in a team. Not really hard. Can also just then tick to always show it. This is a PICNIC situation.
I’m guessing your 2 instances are the personal one that is included with windows, and then the work one. You can’t have 2 instances of the same one installed.
Do you like work for Microsoft or something, you’re all over this post
It’s like I opened it and read the comments and replied to the ones that I was thought warranted a response. Crazy I know.
Is what I said wrong?
I never understood how a huge government can’t be bothered to host their own nextcloud or whatever for a couple dozen mil per year instead of spending hundreds of millions per year on onedrive and other commercial crap.
Legal liability for when the service, inevitably, gets breached. If the government hosts it, they’re liable. If the vendor hosts it, the vendor is liable. Simple as money matters.
So they could just use a service offered by (checks notes) T-Systems, Siemens, Lufthansa Systems, SAP, TeamViewer AG,… what’s that? In all these years these companies were relying on US service providers as well, instead of innovating? Well that sucks.
Spread responsibility thinly across as many organizations and departments within those organizations and across as many legal thresholds as you can to minimize blowback when something inevitably has to be held to account.
Governments are usually inhabited by older folks, that aren’t too tech savvy.
Bribes, I’d venture.
I’m stuck with Teams in my job.
I fucking hate it.
It crashes, it loses things, it has a lousy search function, to automate messaging you need to learn one of the arcane and convoluted MS services because they deprecated the much easier webhooks…
When something fails (and it always does) we just say “Well… it’s Teams”, and that sums it up.
Same. I’ve come to terms using it in browser mode on Edge, same for Outlook. The desktop applications are so horrific, I uninstalled both. Half the time they wouldn’t work or force log me out.
Now I literally have a standalone screen that’s showing nothing but Edge with those two tabs on, and all my productive environment is on a nice large screen where I don’t have to see the crap.
Any suggestions on alternatives?
Slack is ok but proprietary.
Element is a new and eg fractal doesn’t have threading.
Sorry to say, but no idea.
We used separate applications for seven years (Jabber for IM and Asana for ticket management), and for me, that’s what I’m stuck with using Teams for, at least until Microsoft drops AI into and it eats itself.
I’m definitely in the minority, but i really never had or have any issues with Windows or Teams like everyone seems to complain so much about. With that said, I absolutely love that they are making this move. As someone who works in the area and sees the pricing and how much our company spends on Microsoft I find it appalling and absurd that anyone is willing to spend that much on licensing… I wish I could work on a project like this just to see what the savings could be overall.
The worst part for teams is if you do contract work and need to be a part of multiple teams instances… It’s a MASSIVE fucking pain. Microsoft’s login processes are absolute infuriating and even more so if you have to log in to multiple different accounts that all somehow have the same email address but different tenants without letting you know which account version is for which tenant.
We had to use slack for our internal stuff so we could always be in contact with each other because you could only be signed into one teams instance at a time without jumping through crazy hoops.
I initially wanted us to move to teams but that hurdle stopped us. I’m kinda glad in hindsight.
Used Teams for a bit. Seemed fine, just used it like any other IRC clone. Didn’t use it for video. Windows has a lot of annoyances; death by a thousand cuts. The Windows ecosystem also sucks: to the point where graphic card and mouse driver installers try to install spyware.
do France next
Why would we uninstall France?
Why would we uninstall France?
🤔
German state hits uninstall on France
😅
Aren’t French authorities quite ahed on FOSS adoption in their platform? I.e. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en
even the most sensitive information are collected through Microsoft and government sites use adobe too 🤷 Windows is the OS in almost all government computers.
not to forget all the WhatsApp use for official communication
facebook and xitter accounts of most government offices are still active
It’s a cooperation between France, Germany, and more recently The Netherlands.
You love to see it.
Working with information today could be hundreds of times better if there were serious open standards. Switching away from outdated proprietary junk, to an open source version of that junk is great, but late. And, let’s hope, its the start of real change. To catch up to where we should have been decades ago if we hadn’t been held back by lazy MS et al. Digital information should zip between people and have real meaning. Not have to go through a thick layer of IT, and files and formats, and redundant copies, and silos and having to know tech to get things done. Peoples expectations are so low, they are satisfied with the crap we have today.
hadn’t been held back by lazy MS et al.
MS is not lazy but working hard to maintain their lead.
edit: Just noticed that my phrasing is bad and could be seen as praise. OP is right, MS is holding everybody back.
I meant to say that they abuse their market domination to maintain their lead.
Look at MS Teams. It was free until Slack was done as a competitor.
MS did things but that’s inevitable. The crucial part are the things that they prevented.
It’s increadible that OP is even downvoted.
You’re way off here. Microsoft are the industry leaders in this space because they’re so far ahead of everyone else because they focus on this stuff. They’re far from lazy, they’re the opposite in fact. As someone who manages the whole MS suite from entra to dev ops all the way to managed instance dbs and defender and everything in between daily, their integration across everything and their pace of updates is insane.
What products specifically are you calling “outdated junk” and why?
I can also explain Microsoft’s straglehold on enterprise/government/institutional IT in two words: Group Policy. Nothing - absolutely nothing - from any other OS maker comes close to the granular level of configurability, customisation and flexibility that comes with Group Policy, not even ChromeOS or iOS.
Teams is just a copy of old functionality. It doesn’t offer anything new. Especially considering their funds and reach. Yet it just promotes the old document / paper world. I’m sure that is intentional. As they need to keep office going. The world should have moved on from documents by now.
What on earth are you talking about by “promotes the old document/paper world”?
Today, when people deal with information digitally, we should be in control in the way we need it. Individual pieces of information should be easy to send, edit, automate, consume and share, without IT getting in the way. Sadly the old files, silos, incompatibility, and systems designed for printing paper documents is still dominant. MS need that. To keep their dominance from the days when they grew powerful and got caught abusing their their monopoly position. We need to move past this mess as soon as we can.
You wrote all of that without actually saying anything.
How does any of…… that…… apply to this situation? Microsoft are one of the biggest pushers of “all digital” there is.
Their priority is sustaining profit. Which needs them to keep the status quo, not innovate. Teams is not innovation. If you are satisfied with what we have today, the next generation of digital information will really surprise you. Yet it would have been available 30 years ago if not for big business monopolies and lack of imagination among techies.
Again - you’re writing a lot but saying nothing.
What exactly are you talking about? Give specifics. What exactly are Microsoft “holding back”? How are they only keeping the status quo by having the most integrated all-in-one ecosystem on the market?
I’m not sure why you expect teams to be innovative in the first place?
I didn’t see what exactly they’re using for a Teams replacement?
Open desk, is the office suite they use, I suppose. Matrix chat, perhaps?
It has an inbuilt messenger based on element, apparently.
Jup, Matrix indeed. Thx
Many are switching to Nextcloud Talk.
It was barely tolerable, then they gated proper noise cancellation behind some AI privacy destroying BS. Excellent choice, fu Microsoft
I want to say various cities/regions in Germany make statements like this every few years? And they usually end up rolling back when it becomes clear the cost to retrain both existing staff and new staff isn’t worth it.
That said: This gets the national security bump so maybe it will stick. Also nobody on the planet likes to use Teams.
Yes, but: this endeavour comes after/along with the development of a unified “open desk”, a replacement solution for the office and collaboration tools from microsoft etc, backed by the federal government. This ensures a base layer of interoperability between offices and makes training probably easier.
And if it sticks, good. But it still has the fundamental problem of needing to re-train all your existing employees AND train new staff who haven’t been brought up in that system.
Its on a completely different scale, but plenty of tech youtubers have done the “Let’s get rid of all the Adobe in my life”. Some succeed. Most tend to come down on some variation of “I can do about 99% of what I used to do in these two or three tools. And these ten things are actually genuinely easier and more performant. But we can’t take a month off making videos to get all of our editors up to speed. And this also removes our ability to contract out an edit to someone with the industry standard workflow”. And from my professional experience in different fields, that is true. Hiring someone and then spending a week or a month so they can use YOUR tools becomes a huge burden in not too long of a time.
I really hope Germany pulls it off this time and more governments follow. But I also remember all the other times I have read this story.
It’s quite easy to use. France is working together with them.
https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en
The Netherlands have joined last year.
Meanwhile Belgium has bought extra copilot licences and digs itself deeper into the M$ pit.
I wouldn’t count on the federation they’ve been doing nothing all these years. Schleswig-Holstein law has favoured FLOSS solutions since 2009 (“where technically possible and economical”), and bits and pieces were introduced as early as 2012. ZenDiS exists since 2022, opendesk is based on dPhoenixSuite, work done by Dataport precisely for Schleswig-Holstein, and they’re still doing most of the development work. More importantly though I’m not seeing any political commitment on the federal level, the Bundeswehr switching over because they care about stuff doesn’t mean that the, what, finance ministry cares. The BND probably also cares but tough luck getting them to confirm or deny anything.
At my work all but me love microsoft. But … They started to complain about teams too. I only use the chat because it’s impossible to avoid.
Literally no one I work with likes Teams but we keep using it because that’s just what we do. Other options basically don’t exist simply by virtue of being either not Microsoft or not overwhelmingly the market leader.
So you’re saying that other options do exist but some companies don’t want to use them because Microsoft is very popular, which is kind of a circular thing, and I understand, but it’s a sign of laziness, not quality.
I’m not sure why you’re taking a oppositional tone. To be clear I’m complaining, not trying to justify it.
At mine the person in charge of IT procurement is an ex Microsoft salesman.
My work hate Microsoft but don’t see a viable alternative. Microsoft is safer because of their stranglehold.
Nice
