French city of Lyon ditching Microsoft for open source office and collab tools The French city of Lyon has decided to ditch Microsoft’s Office suite and plans to adopt Linux and PostgreSQL. The République’s third-largest city and second-largest economic hub on Tuesday cited a desire to reduce dependence on American software, extend the lifespan of its hardware and therefore reduce its environmental …
Given M$'s approach to product quality appears to now be "oops, that broke, oh well" while handing yet more QC tasks over to an AI that likely hallucinates everything to be fine.
Plus enforced, totally arbitrary hardware upgrades for W11 compatibility.
Plus the on-going infestation of all their products with ClippyPilot.
Plus the increasing amounts of data harvesting and telemetry.
Then last but certainly least the fact that they're American.
Couldn't blame any organisation for deciding to give them the boot. It seems clear they can't be trusted on multiple levels.
It's interesting to compare the behaviour of commercial companies vs some large open source projects, in terms of "making decisions on behalf of our customer". Neither are immune. GTK / Gnome springs to mind; that project also seem minded to take decisions that users and other developers don't consider to be in their interests.
The "they're American" angle is getting interesting. There's effectively a massive dilemna for US companies abroad. The US gov can make their lives very hard if they don't play ball, but local laws in theory prevent them from doing so. I think that, ultimately, too much over-reach by the US would pressurise companies to move out of the USA. Better to lose the US market than the rest of the world, if push came to shove... For example, the EU's GDP(PPP) is about the same as the USA's.
The reaction to Trump's tarifs has been an interesting demonstration that when it comes to a US / everyone else choice, it's the latter that wins.
Microsoft could move to Vancouver, and maybe quite a lot of their staff would like that. Though not all US companies would make that choice. Google doesn't need to have a HQ in the USA. Nor does Facebook or Amazon. Apple though has a lot of shops...
Not using US mail systems is not enough. Thanks to various Acts and policies, you have to stop you traffic being routed via the US (coz Wire Fraud Act).
And the outcome of MS vs feds and the case of the mail box hosted in Ireland is that a company with a US TLD like .com is subject to US law enforcement demands irrespective of where the company actually is.
"do a fork and do it the way you want"
This may make sense to the readership around here. It doesn't make sense to a lot of businesses.
The place I work had a brief foray into the world of Linux. The big problem was that the stock control was spread across three geographic sites and a lot was simply vanishing somewhere along the way. This is a massive problem when your ISO accreditation requires competent stock management. The poor stock team was duplicating everything using paper records just to be sure. I understand that the company reached out to the developer of the thing, who basically told them the source is available if they want to fix it to work in their particular way.
We were fully back to Microsoft by the end of the week with a new stock control system. That system, too, had problems but some of the developers came to the company and watched what we were doing and how and they made the necessary changes. I'm sure it all cost many €€€€s, but ultimately the company just wanted something that works and not endless headaches. So, no, forking a project isn't really an answer.
The big issue is the number of open source foundations/projects HQ’d in the US. Plus remembering the issues with encryption software, the level of US developer input into open source projects.
Hence we really need the open source majors to move out of the US, and potentially fork their code so as to enable the continued (independent) development of the code within the US and RoW, to protect the US developers from being charged with crimes over the export of US IP.
Yes, "foundations" in the US are popular because of the tax treatment they enjoy: donations from companies can simply be offset against tax. Of course, other countries have similar arrangements but US companies can usually not make such tax efficient contributions. Now, it's arguable that companies could still support projects that they benefit from financialy – and I've seen smaller companies do this – but it's not the way big business works: they'll happily write a cheque for a couple of million but only if it can be offset against tax.
I would like to add a caution, re: "Better to lose the US market than the rest of the world ...". It dependes on profitability and risk in the market, which is now also impacted by tariffs. In some vendors' cases, the RoW market is smaller than the USA but, even if not, the impact of tariffs may make staying in the USA the better choice financially.
For example, MS total revenue (for 2022, so before tariffs were imposed) was split 51% USA and 49% RoW.
Also keep in mind the market segments that MS operates in and degree of cooperation or integration with other vendors. Does splitting off Windows development and moving it overseas make sense when that's a small part of MS's total business?
Anyway, good on the city of Lyon for choosing Linux.
Trump and his 'I will send you a letter stating 10%, 20%, 50% 100% tariffs and that's what you will pay' is doing a good job of doing that for you.
Never mind that it is those inside the US that pay the tariff... He does not care. His fav song must be 'If I ruled the world'. He acts like he does and when you dare criticise him, your exports to the USA are suddenly hit with a doubling of the import tariff. He is a baby who keeps throwing his toys out of the pram.
Canada is IMHO, taking the right line and looking for a world without the USA dominating everything.
Sadly, our useless government can't see that and continue sucking up to him much to the delight of Nigel 'I love Donald' Trump.
Or, companies that are becoming more commercial from an open source background? My efforts to get basic things working reliably on our Raspberry Pis with the Wayland default has not been an "entirely happy experience". The current version seems to be the last that will use Bookworm. Perhaps they could consider shipping the next version as two entirely separate distributions, one with Wayland, and one with X11?
Later news:
2023: Munich Is Ditching Linux For Purely Political Reasons
2024: After LiMux shutdown: How Munich is slowly getting closer to open source again
The IT department in Munich has largely implemented a 5-point plan to strengthen free software. Interested parties can still apply for "sabbaticals".
2025: Yet another European government is ditching Microsoft for Linux – here’s why
“We’re done with Teams!” declared Digitalisation Minister Dirk Schrödter
That's fine if you don't work for an organisation that's decided the easiest thing is to just take whatever MS tells us to use. So "Teams for everything" is what we are forced to use - and what a pile of steaming turds it is in many ways.
Latest revelation is that we're losing Skype - but Teams is utter turds by comparison. Can't have a separate window sat nicely down on the second screen giving at a glance status for your colleagues, and two clicks to cal or message them.
Ah yes, Teams (also forced to use in at $WORK).
The fact that Teams does not remember window positions between uses, and always just opens on a fresh boot in the middle of my main monitor! This has been a mainstay of Windows apps for decades, MS seems to be going backwards!
The Teams calendar, which in 5 working days mode is a perfect fit for my $WORK Laptop screen (which I use as a secondary display), and shows all 5 days and all my regular working hours all at once, very nice for a quick glance if I need to check availability etc. Except Teams automatically scrolls the window up and down, so the current hour of the day is in the centre, meaning in the AM I can't see what I have planned for the PM, and when it gets to the PM, I can't see what I'm doing in the following AMs, (without manually scrolling the page around)!! FFS, the entire calendar already fits on screen without a need to scroll, so why move it at all!!
The Teams built in spellchecker just stops working at seemingly random intervals, and seems to do this most days! A restart gets it working again, but why does this happen?
The integration with Outlook, for showing current Teams status in Outlook, also just stops, leaving everyone as a blank/white dot, but if you hover over the person in Outlook, and open a chat, which opens in Teams, the correct status (which is working fine in Teams) suddenly shows in Outlook, but only for that 1 user. Everyone else is still a blank/white dot! Again a restart of Outlook usually gets in working again, but it's only temporary, and will eventually break again typically within a day or two.
"I wish I could be done with Teams..."
I simply explain that for some reason Teams does not work on my computer (which is largely true due to a doom loop of needing to create an account (but I already have one??!) then that account doesn't let me in). When it has worked it's only been via the organiser's link, and then I get to remind myself how much I hate Teams.
Even Zoom is getting a little OTT. Google Meet works well, though one always questions who's listening in.
Teams has gotten better of late, now it allows me to switch accounts (on the Mac version, I previously had to log out and log in - inconvenient if you have decent passwords). I prefer Zoom but agree that it's starting to try and do too much. I don't want calendars and off-meeting messaging, nor the host of plugin apps - I just want something that does videoconferencing, and Zoom does that well.
One recent Zoom change that has proved inconvenient is removal of the ability to create ad hoc recurring meetings within the app (unless I want to specify a repeating period, etc.); I now have to go and log into the account portal on the web to create them.
Yep, on my Mac, it's one of the few applications guaranteed to get the fan to spin a lot. But I have a colleague and it just eats RAM on her machine until it no longer responds. This is way OTT for a chat application and I never have anything like the same problems with Telegram or Signal.
Oh god yes! We all have hot-deck laptops and home desktops, you try switching between home and office networks then between different makes of headsets for office and home, you'll be rebooting the entire bloody O/S just get a fricking headset working properly 'cos Teams has decided to sulk 2 mins before the first Monday morning stand up!!
I prefer Zoom but agree that it's starting to try and do too much. I don't want calendars and off-meeting messaging, nor the host of plugin apps - I just want something that does videoconferencing, and Zoom does that well.
This indeed. It all used to be a couple of MB. Nowadays the size of the update/ download I see is bigger than my kernel. Then again, there are more guilty ones in that same corner...
Well these days Hell isn't as hot as it used to be, what with Musk and Trump walking the earth, so anything is possible.
With a couple of million to chuck at an office suite, the killer app excuse looks increasingly thin. I can imagine the French will be their usual bulshy selves and their users will want to to flip the bird in the direction of Uncle Sam and I suspect this attitude may well help them make a success of it. I do hope so.
FYI my daily work rig is Mint and has just been updated from Mint 20 after about 5 years. It does everything I need and nothing I don't.
So somewhere between 112 and 444 degrees C.
That’s not actually that hot in the great scheme of things.
Oh hang on, that assumes that Hell has an ambient atmospheric pressure of about 1000mbar. Anything above that will push the temperature range upwards. We need more information!
Used to have Mint desktops then the order came down from on high, "NO NON-WINDOWS HOSTS! SECURITY RISK!", oh the irony.
So a couple of us asked for monster 128GB laptops with company Windows but admin logins ( which is allowed for tech staff and not consider risky!!! ) , we then run Docker and Linux in VMs and just use Windows to make them think we use it, we use Teams in host Windows to keep them quiet so they don't suspect.
> "the likes of Microsoft and AWS try to reassure European customers that their cloudy continental outposts can’t be caught up in US claims"
... at the moment. But if Twump wants that data he'll just sign an executive order demanding that they hand it over and they'll have no option but to comply.
Microsoft and/or AWS relocating their HQ to Canada would be the best way to reassure the rest of the world. It won't happen though.
Looks like a connections from outside the EU might be dropped - le doigt français au monde américain. ;)
Doesn't work from AU but does with a VPN with a EU exit point. All in French of course which it would be wouldn't it? Just be thankful it's not Occitan.
Newham (reported on by Elreg) is a shining example of the extent to which Microsoft will go to to bias and prevent informed consideration of open source.
With Newham, MS largely operated through an SI, who only used consultants from their Microsoft practise to do the evaluation. The documents make interesting reading; anyone with the slightest level of IT understanding will be able to see the flaws in the arguments and comparisons made.
The only valid conclusion that came out of the study was that for many years Newham would have to operate a combined Open Source/Microsoft environment, whilst systems (internal and external) were migrated. I.e. it wasn’t the instant cost saving the council was hoping for.
I think the project seems to have learned from what was a badly conceived and implemented project in Munich. For example, going with OnlyOffice for the clients will probably raise fewer heckles than LibreOffice, though I don't know how they're planning to do e-mail: Outlook still has a stranglehold where shared e-mail folders and calendars are concerned.
Support _by_ Linux distributions? vs Support _for_ Linux distributions
If Lyons / Munich / Barcelona etc. would only put some (most) of the saved cash into the Linux environment by supporting European distributions and other software, I'm sure the switchover would go more smoothly.
That can be...difficult, when dealing with public money. I'm sure there are ways around it, but it can be difficult to justify shoving money at FOSS projects when there's no legal requirement to do so and the IS legal requirements to not spend public money unnecessarily. No council official wants to be on the receiving end of public scrutiny over why they "gave away" a million of the 50 million saved to a bunch of freeloading FOSS hippies when Social Services needs more money to "think of the children". 'Cos you just KNOW that's how the opposition will frame it.
>” No council official politician wants to be on the receiving end of public scrutiny over why they "gave away" a million of the 50 million saved to a bunch of freeloading FOSS hippies when Social Services needs more money to "think of the children". 'Cos you just KNOW that's how the opposition will frame it.”
That was one of the reasons for the UK joining the EU; the EU could make that decision and fund stuff out of members contributions, the national politicians - especially those at Westminster, could simply shrug their shoulders and say “blame Brussels”. Obviously, this leaves the politicians vulnerable to attacks such as the “£380m a day” one…
I think Munich got around some of the problem by.using local businesses and labelling it local economic investment.
What I was implying was a few quiet discussions between lyon it and Linux experts. To figure out what 'distros' and Foss software are closest to there needs. Possibly some quick and dirty script to ease the path.
Some recommendations for decent os/Foss support. The intent being consultant that follow the plan and not gorge on the lyons budget.
It would be best done in private so microsoft pr cannot affect things.
If Linux as a whole can support this we may get more adoption of Linux.
I may have to change my Id to optimist.
...which is better and cheaper. I 'ave told 'im to get on wiz changing to it. Now, I must go, I have a lunch engagement wiz my Niece. I shall be back at 'alf past trois or maybe quatre.
Microsoft suit: Monsieure Mayor, if you stick with our stuff we might build a local office, take you and your Niece to warm foreign countries for conferences and give you a big discount on our services.
Monsieure Mayor: Ok sounds fair. Anyway I must go...
actually no...
The current Lyon Mayor is a Green ( as in Ecologist ), he doesn't need any advisor to take decisions that will make the life of the people that elected him miserable.
He makes this decisions alone and the rest of the staff just has to make it possible, even if it's just a wet dream.
I haven't looked exactly where he stand in the Green Mushroom, but he might be deep enough in to want to avoid buying stuff from multinationals that use nuclear power to feed electricity to their datacenters. ( yes we have a few that got elected that are that deep... we even have some that when you take into consideration everythig they say would like us to go back to the stone age. )
> “we even have some that when you take into consideration everythig they say would like us to go back to the stone age.”
So not that much different to those, generally on the right, in denial. Except those deniers want the return to the Stone Age to be achieved via a high-speed crash.
I would not be surprised if passengers in self-driving vehicles will do the equivalent of re-arranging the deck chairs in the event they see an upcoming disaster which the self-driving AI hasn’t spotted…
We need a few people that think differently, it’s why your car has an air bag in the middle of the steering wheel …
Seems to be a fair bit more that just replacing a few bits of dodgy MS software with open source components. There seems to be an identity management system (Identité numérique renforcée) based on LemonLDAP::NG which in turn was originally funded/started by the Gendarmerie Nationale.
If FR can integrate enough components into a seamless, supported software ecosystem which serves the system's users then MS might eventually be toast in EU.
The Frogs aren't afraid of decent scrap notwithstanding American cheese eating slurs. «Quoi ! des cohortes étrangères / Feraient la loi dans nos foyers ! »†
† Mireille Mathieu giving it a bit of welly. ;)
I've long thought that open standards are the key to the future. Really open, as in speech, not just as in beer (casting stink eye at FRAND and then outright glaring at The OSI) This really goes hand in hand with Open Source
This is how the EU could we drive openness and being able to (potentially) ditch US companies. Specifying a really open document standard (probably markup based, but could be anything) and perhaps even one for financial information exchange, AND THAT ANY OFFICE/PRODUCTIVITY APPS FOR THE EU* MUST SUPPORT THAT STANDARD AS A FIRST CLASS FILE FORMAT. Eg, not dropping features just because the software company could (or couldn't be bothered).
Shenanigans like the "MS binary blob" because it couldn't reverse engineer its own stuff would not cut it.
Of course, having set a standard, the EU would need to actually use it. And enforce its use (so far as it could).
Over time, several iterations, one then gets a "modern workplace" with defined Open Standards. Bonus points: No one is locked out of participating in society because information or submitting documents was locked behind paid for, proprietary software with opaque standards. Future generations would know how to read and process this information. (Bad guys too, but then that's a discussion for another day).
Piggybacking of that effort would then be a une tranche de gateau for the City of Lyon.
In reality, $$$$ and incompetence will get in the way and it will be a total dogs breakfast and the standards will be useless in anything except an ideal scenario.
*EU as an organisation, not EU as a political body.
Yes, truly open document standards would be a good start - but there's more to it than that.
We need open interoperability protocols. So, for example, Outlook is designed to only work properly with Exchange, Exchange is designed to only operate properly with Outlook. And then there's all the AD stuff that's designed to only work properly with other MS stuff. Even DHCP-DNS integration relies on proprietary stuff (technically it's open, but needs a closed licence). Then there's all the other inter-process stuff that (sort of) glues the 365 ecosystem together and is designed to stop anyone simply swapping out one or more parts.
Now at the risk of attracting every enraged downvoter on this site (and by all means downvote if you feel the need, but do please read and digest what I am saying before wading in); I do get your point and yes interoperability is attractive; but should it be mandated?
"So, for example, Outlook is designed to only work properly with Exchange, Exchange is designed to only operate properly with Outlook.”
OK yes, see what you mean, but it is possible to use Outlook without Exchange, be it on-prem or the cloudy version; similarly, you can use other mail clients with (a suitably configured Exchange setup). Yes you do lose some of the 'bells and whistles’. But it does work to some level.
If everything has to work perfectly with everything else, ie in your example I could replace Outlook with Thunderbird ‘with absolutely no loss of functionality’, then is there not the danger of things becoming ‘fossilised’? Leave it all alone, no improvements, no ‘new’ technologies because unless everything is FOSS, then whoever comes up with a new technology could never release it because, by definition it wouldn’t be replicable by everyone else.
So wouldn’t everything just get stuck at ‘lowest possible denominator’?
Or have I missed your point? Be fair, I’ve probably missed your point.
What about Web Browsers and Web Servers and the protocols between them? Do you mandate different http variations and different implementations of DOM?
I think this has been attempted in the 90s and early 2000s and was beaten down. There are still differences between browsers that require a case workaround.
When did "don't mandate total compatibility" turn into "mandate different implementations of everything"? Nothing says you can't have interoperability, but that mandating that everything be interoperable makes it really hard to build anything new because the new thing won't be supported by anything else yet. We have the standards we do because they're useful, not because they're mandated. If we decided that any short-range wireless transmission system had to be interoperable with WiFi, then we couldn't have Bluetooth or those custom 2.4 GHz autoconnect protocols for wireless keyboards or LoRa or the many incompatible things that are nonetheless useful for other purposes. Without that mandate, any number of people can still use WiFi, and it can be standardized so that people can trust that WiFi-enabled equipment will be able to use it.
Your argument sounds to me like "Embrace, Extend, Efflorescence". I think we all know what is more likely.
Imagine if every record label has it's own technology for encoding/decoding music onto various media. Even if those were open and unencumbered by patents it would still severely cramp your exploration and enjoyment of music.
Or what if every maker of radio equipment had proprietary and incompatible technology for transmitting and tuning into broadcasts? This is what early radio manufacturers first thought of, but fortunately more sensible minds prevailed.
In either of the above, did standards diminish or encourage development of new forms of music? Diminish or encourage improved listener experience?
Those standards were for interfaces, protocols, and encoding, thus enabling interoperability and lower barriers to entry into the industry. They didn't set standards for what styles of music were allowed, or what a consumer radio "user interface" should look like, which seems to be your concern regarding software.
Except we do, in fact, have tons of audio codecs and, as long as you use an open one, what actually happens in the real world is the software looks at what it is and picks the right decoder to play the file. People who work on compression can make a new one, like when Opus was created, with almost no visible effect on users except the benefits of better audio quality and smaller file sizes. If we decided that we needed to mandate that audio formats needed to be interoperable, then you could only make minor patches and we'd still be stuck with the first allowed ones, which were much less efficient than what we count on today.
Standards in software define what you can do. A radio standard defines what kind of data you get on the signal, and when you want to transmit pictures as well as audio, you need a new method. Most of the time, the benefits of standards are so obvious that people use them without being forced. I use HTTP to exchange data, not because someone told me that's the only allowed way to send API requests, but because it's easy for many things to use it. If I felt like it, I could implement a different protocol atop TCP and standardize only on that, or I could use only IP and do my own stream control, or I could eschew IP and build my own routing system. If I had a reason to think I could do those things better, then maybe I would.
There are a few cases where mandating a standard makes sense. Your radio example is a good one, but not because of user annoyance. It is a good one because the radio spectrum is a common resource which should be managed for the public benefit, not monopolized by any particular user. What I oppose in many cases is not standards, which are great, but mandated standards which makes it very hard to change anything no matter how better the new version might be. I especially oppose this when the environment makes it really easy to choose between standards. Mandating a standard on the phone network made sense because there's only one network, so it needs to work for everyone. I have a feeling that would have happened anyway because it's less work that way, but fine, mandate it. On the internet, it's easy to have as many different communication apps as you can fit on a phone, and they can have different purposes. You can have encrypted ones, ones that do file transfer, ones that are entirely decentralized, ones that are anonymous, ones with mesh networks, and if I don't like the idea of one, then I just don't use it. If they all have to be interoperable, then I either get none of that because you can't plug an anonymous mesh network app into one run by Facebook and expect them to understand one another, or I have to take all the features together even if I'd prefer not to.
OK, Opus is a good example.
The key part is that people can build an encoder to create the files, and people can create a decoder to play them. I'm not advocating that anyone should specify exactly which standard(s) to use - only that anything they do uses standards that others can use. So that rules out using proprietary interfaces so that your A works well with your B, but no-one can build a replacement for either A or B without losing a lot fo functionality.
What we have now is that MS pretends to support open standards (OOXML is only "sort of" open), but as I've already mentioned, file formats are only part of the problem. But most of their stuff is glued together with private standards & APIs deliberately to make it hard for anyone to muscle in. Where they do use "open" standards (like HTML), they still do their best to subvert things.
Remember MS make great use of their knowledge of Exchange, Outlook, Windows internals knowledge to increase the proprietary nature of their products including the use of private APIs…
There is no reason why Outlook/Echange could not be similar to other products with a Standard compliant integration and clearly defined proprietary extensions.
> I've long thought that open standards are the key to the future. Really open, as in speech, not just as in beer
We went quite a long way down this road in the late 1980s - remember MAP/TOP, UK & US GOSIP, BT’s ONA, all underpinned by IEEE, ISO, BSI and CEC-CELENEC Standards. Only real problem was a bunch of politicians (many US/UK) decided such work was best left to “the markets”… so it all got sidelined, with agencies such as the CCTA in the UK having their teeth removed and funding reduced.
About the only sector that has maintained any form of interop profile is networking: hence the rise of the 3GPP and WiFi Alliance. History here is interesting 3GPP grew out of the European competition model which developed GSM; US companies such as Qualcomm, took exception to this and lobbied the Whitehouse complaining how unfair it was that competing businesses were agreeing common standards so their products would interop…
Aside: those that say Qualcomm had patents the Standards infringed, should note this was never proven, in part because Qualcomm never produced a definitive list of patents etc. identifying where the Standard infringed, plus the few that were exposed, were laughable simple technology transfers of the sort “on a mobile computer”.
Here I am, asking myself the same question. I use Libreoffice and Openoffice since forever, and it's not perfect but fine. Onlyoffice has this whole online collab functionality that I usually don't need but it seems good. But it has AI which is a clear sign of enshittification.
Seeing the EU treat the USA like the USA treats China would be wonderful.
I wish the world outside the USA had bigger balls when dealing with the new US administration.
Get together to form a global trading bloc that entirely excludes the USA and put two fingers up to Trump and big tech oligarchs from the USA.
I know this story isn’t really linked to that sentiment, however it is implied in the article about a lack of trust of US developed software and services.
Pushing back at the USA on a global scale could help Americans defeat Trump far more rapidly before he turns the US into a dictatorship.
Alas, instead, at NATO they seem to be kissing Trumps feet out of fear.
Anyway, I applaud this small but significant movement away from US big tech products and hope it will become an avalanche that starts a no-US movement for EVERYTHING.
"Alas, instead, at NATO they seem to be kissing Trumps feet out of fear."
Mostly, I think, because Trump is just childish and spiteful enough to pull out of NATO at speed if he sees enough advantage to that move while the rest of NATO is finally facing up to that prospect but can't increase their spend or upgrade their military quite that quickly. Even todays announcements are talking about the 2030's, so yeah, sucking up to him for a few years is what it takes. And it's clear to everyone now, that stroking his ego keeps him on side, and fuck all the diplomacy, when it come to Trump. I hear he;s taken to calling himself "Daddy" after his recent NATO meetings. Big Daddy Taco?
Open source may or may not be as good as Microsoft's products but the calculus is not just about who's got the best product, most features, lowest price and so on. Software and so users' data is now not just a raw material for future product marketing but also a strategic material that could be controlled at a moment's notice. This makes systems that are not entirely under the control of an organization unnecessarily risky. For many users the risks are still very low but they'r there and they're steadily growing so the smart money might start migrating even if there's no obvious reason to do so right now.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trumps-sanctions-on-iccs-chief-prosecutor-have-halted-tribunals-work-officials-and-lawyers-say
> Trump’s sanctions on ICC’s chief prosecutor have halted tribunal’s work, officials and lawyers say
> THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.
> Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said.
I wonder if by now there is a good recent post-mortem on where Munich went wrong. Not from Linux haters, not from MS haters.
- Was it user resistance from losing programs they were accustomed to? How were they incentivized? How were they trained?
- Were the FOSS alternatives lacking? Have they improved since? (that's why recent is important here).
- Was it internal IT/consultant cluelessness? Overambitious, unclear decision making, too many "stakeholders" and nebulous targets (shhh, that never happens in the public sector)?
- Was it cost overruns? How much money was spent? How much money was saved on MS licenses?
- Was it MS pulling some dirty tricks? What were they?
- Was there any attempt to phase in replacements (first, ditch PowerPoint!). Or was it a Big Bang?
I mean it's nice to say "it was all due to politics and MS trickery". But if there were actual problems ignoring them and pretending it was all MS's fault will just run people into another brick wall.
FWIW I was listening to Risky Business podcast and what they were saying is that MS is addressing the sovereignty concern by proposing Azure-on-premises. I.e. self-hosted Office 365 and the like. It's kind of an odd idea, but they were not dissing it out of hand and them two are usually not huge fans of MS.
MS is addressing the sovereignty concern by proposing Azure-on-premises. I.e. self-hosted Office 365 and the like
Which is a half-assed solution because you are still tied to MS whims about licensing terms, costs, and a big kill switch that I'm sure exists in their on-prem sw. This is clearly a way for MS to show some small dose of condescension, a small step towards the users that may be fleeing their ecosystem, to win them back and keep them securely in their financial and political grip.
“One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.”
The podcast managed to simultaneously say that it was a reasonably mature technical solution, long time in the making. And appropriate to the narrow concerns of data confidentiality. And to state that, in their opinion, European governments were missing the point and lacking in ambition by actually asking MS, a US company par excellence, for this type of solution at a time when reducing dependence on US vendors might be a more appropriate response to US policies.
(this particular podcast is also where they were discussing the ICC's Khan being cut off from MS email).
> Microsoft takes the “aas” out of SaaS for Europe, leaving us with just software!
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/risky-business/risky-business-796-with-XCE_r0358lD/
'3 of the GNU Affero General Public License' this is the key, not necessarily the switch.
If you have sovereignty funds invest in core functionality (open, AGPLv3), then companies can build on top of that, but they can't hijack the core, because any changes to those libraries if used in a network setting means upstreaming those changes.
In a larger context, much as I am a fan of open source, this switch (and others) are likely more due to some very unhappy people in back rooms with the recent white house occupants.
And politically there's cover for this because
- the users are a fraction of the vote, so even if it doesn't work, doesn't matter much
- play it as No(n) to US, and you get groundswell support
I was interested so installed OnlyOffice - sorry, ONLYOFFICE - on my Mac.
First thing that hit me (almost literally) was the font rendering of DOCX files. Oh, my eyes, my eyes!
Maybe it's using non-native hinting libraries or something? Not sure, but when it can't even render Arial properly, it's not staying installed. Bye bye ONLYOFFICE, won't be seeing you again.
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