tl;dr: "digital sovereignty". "EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future."
Fair enough and makes sense. Every country should be trying to be as independant as possible IMO.
I always wondered how any head of state could feel like they were not being spied on if they were using windows.
Can governments really ensure that windows has been secured that well or is there always a possibility that Microsoft is spying for the United States?
When you can spend a lot on security staff, they'll probably convince you that your own installation of Windows is sterile.
They probably use Macs.
They might even only use air-gapped machines, with sufficient paranoia.
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...
Also Microsoft products have become enshitified beyond recognition.
Just earlier this week I created some Sharepoint folders for my father-in-laws business. I created the groups in Outlook and used the ”See files in Sharepoint”-button to access them. Next it required to ask for permission for him to the folder. I granted them using his own account. It was funny because the request was literally John Doe asked John Doe for permission, and the emails were identical too. So I granted him his own access with his own account.
The funniest thing though was that the process was different all of the four times, like different links opening to completely different tools. Now I’m not a Microsoft MVP and probably did it the wrong way, but at least I had fun doing it.
Today I tried to get some files from Teams that I hadn't used in a year or so.
Error.
Something went wrong [7q6ck]
Works ok on my phone for now though so at least I got past that road block for today.
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.
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.
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.
Important notice in this regard is that there is agreement on this among both left and right wing politicians.
So this is NOT something that will change with new administrations in either government or local communities.
When this is implemented, I don't see any way for Microsoft to get that business back!
Edit PS:
It's not just office, it's also mail and cloud services.
Can't happen fast enough.
If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don't only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.
If the EU invests massively in free and open source software, pretty soon all across the world countries will hop on the FOSS-train.
If FOSS catches on, it shows to the world the power of collaboration. A power we have mostly forgotten, thinking that competition is a better idea. But competition alone is shit. To give an example. Here in the Netherlands we're very proud of ASML, a company that makes the machines needed to produce microchips. They're famous because they're unique, in that no other company is able to produce these machines. It's a competitive success, but obviously it's holding us all back. If they'd share their knowledge companies across the world could try to improve on these machines, speeding up innovation. I'm supposed to think China's corporate espionage is a crime, but to be honest I feel like not sharing such crucial information with the world is the actual crime. The power of collaboration is easily underestimated, let's give it a try.
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 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.
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.
The ribbon was contentious but most people are familiar with it and it has advantages like taskcentricity and less clutter. LibreOffice has an experimental ribbon that I think should be worked on, mainstreamed and set during installation or in the settings.
UX in other areas should be improved. Lots of little annoyances add up for new users and can break their opinions. It's not hard to look over the UI and see things which have no business being there, or should only appear in certain contexts, or could be implemented in better ways. I think the project should get some MS Office volunteers into a lab and ask them to do things and observe their problems. I'd have power Word, Excel, Powerpoint users come in and do non-trivial things they normally do and see where they trip up or even if they can do what they need.
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
Lets go Libreoffice. I hope to see more FOSS projects embraced.
Good.
It’s because of that new update where they fucked up the task bar. Look what youve done, Bill
Surely you jest. Gates has almost nothing to do with Microsoft these days, let alone interface design. In fact, he'd probably be the one to roast any stupid design decisions if he was still active there.
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.
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.
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.
not really true. so 20(!!!) years later they as the last of the states woke up.
bavaria is pathetic. "LANGSAM" is their word for being backwards and ultra-conservative. i mean Freie Wähler? Aiwanger? What a shit place. And it is just SAD that they just NOW started to civilize. worst of the west.
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
Libreoffice for the fucking win!
More linux adoption is great. Steam deck and this will help push it forward. Next step would be something like the steam machines
The question is why not?
There are infinite undocumented "things" integrated with Microsoft solutions. Just of the top of my head, here are couple that i've encountered
SCADA software
Entire business critical database application written in access
Hundreds of tailor made order documents for logistics that are made with Excel
Accounting software that only runs on Windows
The immense cost of moving all of your projects from the web that is teams/sharepoint/OneDrive
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.
I’m a Dane and I approve this, massively.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
