Now if they also directed the license cost savings back toward funding their newly chosen oss projects, we’d be golden.
Imagine. Companies that instead pay X amount pay X*.25 or something. Small cost for the business compared to Microsoft and huge boost in revenue to improve OSS.
B-but a study funded by CCIA Europe (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta…) says EU cloud sovereignty rules would cost Europe up to €233 billion. (Conveniently, it doesn’t count the benefits of not depending on them.)
So considerate of them, worrying about our wallets out of pure altruism.
The general message I hear among enterprise architects is that there’s a price for IT sovereignty.
But that it’s a price worth paying.A price for switching.
Then it’s simpler and cheaper.
It’s even cheaper hardware wise in many cases.
I question if the price is really higher, once the transition costs are paid. Those cloud services by US big tech ain’t cheap and are highky profitable.
The price could be in costs, but it could also be in reduced functionality.
A standard response that a lot of Microsoft trained IT ops people give is that the other products are inferior, harder to use, require more administration, etc. And it used to be that this would shut down a lot of discussions about moving away from MS.But the message I hear nowadays is that this will be a price worth paying, and that disarms a lot of the usual naysayers.
Given the degrading quality of Microsoft products, I would not blindly believe statements that alternative options are rrally worse.
I’m not disagreeing with you on that :)
Personally I’ve been arguing for less Microsoft dependence within my organization for years, and have quietly been doing what I can without without making it too obvious.In any case, my point is that counter-arguments like reduction in functionality, increase in expenditure, and so forth, no longer hold the same weight like they used to.
Here in the Netherlands, there’s been a much stronger mandate given from top-down to look for more sovereignty. Because the risks that come with the alternative are becoming more clear with every passing month.
Even just a one-time monthly payment equivalent would be massive. I’ve seen companies that spend well over 60k a month on microsoft licenses.
Imagine they paid their licensing fees to a new FOSS project for a year, one which aims to functionally replace the core of these cloud suites. Like file sharing/hosting/email/chat all integrated similar to Google workspace and M365. That would be a huge win for the people.
I imagine most of those costs are probably redirected to implementation at first.
The Cyber Resiliance Act might actually do that. Because paying for support contracts covering every little piece of free software will be cheaper than the fines.
I agree. Digital sovereignty is important for the EU. The less we are in the pocket of the US the better.
Digital anarchy is important for the regular people. The more you take technology in your own hands, the less you are at the whims of centralised services.
Digital anarchy is important for the regular people
https://www.coryd.dev/posts/2026/become-worthless-to-tech-companies
Reading down those actions and it turns out I’m already doing most of those things.
Right on! Just thought I would pass it on in the spirit of your statement. There are so many things we can do.
First time I have seen “digital anarchy” and I love it. Except it sounds like a punk-techno band. Lol.
It is essentially the same as the Free/Libre software movement. Digital Anarchy is a term I really like though because rather than emphasizing freedom, it emphasizes the destruction of hierarchies of authoritarian regimes and big tech. Free/Libre software is the best example of Anarchism working in practice.
Microslop is a security risk. An OS with a backdoor isn’t useful for anything but gaming.
Why would you want a backdoor on the OS of your gaming machine?
Some anticheat systems require a backdoor. If those are games you want to play, you have to submit to it. Personally I see it as a reason to avoid those games, but if you really want to play them, you may not have a choice. Apart from pressuring the publisher to support saner anticheat and Linux.
I don’t and it sounds like I might not have to soon. Mslop had us by the balls for long enough.
Oh what did I miss there?
You don’t need no windows for no gaming, this isn’t 2015 jesus
I know, but I still do classes and they require you use garbage software. Eventually I’ll get it sorted out.
It might be worth checking if there’s really no alternative. I intend to do that for my son; his school requires Windows, but he’s starting to get increasingly annoyed by Windows (his laptop has Win11) so I want to check with the school why exactly Windows is so essential. Presumably, most is Web, so will work just fine on Linux. Specific software may have a Linux version, run fine on Wine, or have an open source alternative.
I know and for the most part that’s how it is. Some of the classes still want to use Respond-ass. Which I just end up going to the school library for. If I have to use Win11, I will just run a VM. That OS has been a nightmare.
I feel your pain. Hang in there!
Thanks!
No no no, the backdoor is useful for gaming, not the OS.
The game companies need backdoors for their Anti Cheat, you see.
Strange question perhaps – but is open source/linux supported tax filing software available where you are?
I haven’t found any that run reliably outside of Microsoft so far in Canada – tend to use a windows vm specifically for it, but it’s an example of software outside of gaming that’s pretty handy, and not typically easy to get / trust on linux yet as far as I’m aware.
I would assume your tax system works differently. I wanted to move to Canada since I have skills to contribute. But I live the greatest country on the earth, the U Ass of A (/s borat joke.)
Anyway, there is a simple free option for those that make under a certain amount; most people have w2 forms so those are pretty much automated; as in your employer already submitted them. But then comes in tax exemptions.
So then it gets more complicated because you don’t want to be paying the same tax in multiple ways. For instance, you pay a local tax and then pay a federal tax on your income. I don’t have an issue with taxes going to the right place, which is often not the case here.
I always pay the taxes whenever I’m in other countries even though I could get an exemption but I don’t think that’s right. I get the privilege of going somewhere then I should pay what everyone else pays and besides you don’t have to tip -_-
So taxes are complicated here if you’re outside of the norm. The amount of different forms I had to file before I quit my latest job was a job in itself, add in a death in the family and it’s even more complicated. Like it took months, with a delay, to sort out all off this. And it sucks, if you don’t do it right you end up with everything taken away.
Like you, I’m interested in some open source software.
I’m thinking that this step in life(quitting what I was doing) is a good choice because I’m tired. Yeah I can charge 100+ an hour but doing the math for the year, I really should work at a grocery store.
It’s always nice to see Microsoft get kicked in the balls.
Especially after they lobbied/bribed the ISO committee into approving the broken and closed-source OOXML as if it was an open standard
What do you mean, the Office Open Extensible Markup Language isn’t open source? That’s nonsense! Next, you’ll tell me OpenAI is some sort of opaque stock market scam.
OOXML is open source. It’s just that everything of importance for compatibility is in extensions. Fuck M$
I wonder if the tech companies will realize their bending to Trump is going to shoot them in the ass
Satya sure won’t. See his latest post on the super intelligence era.
No, it is not. They still get billions of American taxpayer money
De-dollarization is already happening. President Shits-his-pants is accelerating that.
They’re going to lose the rest of the world, but to Trump and many of his supporters, the rest of the world doesn’t matter and barely exists. Except for Russia which Trump seems to love somehow.
They don’t care about that, they only care about keeping their wealth tax free.
They should consider LibreOffice if they don’t need cloud features.
Thing is, cloud features are very good for being productivity. And also for minimising mistakes, because you dont have multiple copies.
Long before clouds was a thing we had servers and local networks and shared drives. We still have servers and private vpns to connect to them to access shard drives.
I agree. “The cloud” is just the same shit but someone else is running it and it has a web based UI. There’s also ways to make libreoffice collaborative too hiw m365 office is. We don’t need it.
I called this over a decade ago. Embrace, extend, extinguish, now all the prices hike what seems like quarterly or biannually. Such a joke.
But we used to have them too.
My org has been trying to shut off “the zed drive” (network mount) for like a decade and staff still hate Onedrive. If it was actually better, why would staff resist using it so much?
I 100% agree. But it didnt work like it does today.
You could not collab, because the software wasnt build to take advantage of shared drives, which will bring back all the following issues as before.
Best case is open source software with the same funtionality as Docs or Word, but you can hook it up to any servers at setup.
Build a Wireguard VPN inside the programs for making it just as easy for the masses to use them.
I dont want the “cloud”. I just want the same productivity.
There use to schemes to provide flexible locking to allow multiple people to edit documents located on the same local network. Never liked it nuch but others did. I expect that it is possible to develop and achieve shared documents and concurrent editing etc without Google. Maybe dust off old concepts etc.
Yeah, it’s very possible! And I firmly believe that you would need to bring these features for broad adoption.
It would require a server and open source software. You dont need anything crazy for it.
Most of the software already exists. You only need to put them together.
The copies of same excel with a bit of change by different users on my sharepoint site disagrees.
Just use OVH cloud or some other EU one, what do you think?
They can consider LibreOffice if they need cloud features, with collabora and nextcloud.
It’s way more complicated to deploy rather than just paying $60/user/month for Microsoft 365 E5, but nextcloud and collabora sell commerciale support, others sell managed instances, Germany is selling opendesk as a saas, and al on
Europe is making their own online suite Euro Office based on Only Office
Have you ever had a job where everyone relies on local spreadsheets?
Every organization seems to over-use spreadsheets. Fortunately, most people really do utilize a small feature set.
FUSE mounts are a thing…
More of this please!!!
The switchover’s been ongoing for years as some European governments have moved to Linux, and are going for FOSS for their operations.
Kudos to the Netherlands, the Oranje made the correct decision.
At first I thought you meant that “the Orange” (i.e. Donald) made the correct decision into ruining the US so much that the Dutch autorithies decided to ditch Office. lol
Oh my God! How are they going to work without MS Teams?
I love using MS Teams, because I hate getting work done.
who needs that shit anyone? work is about the community and MS Teams is all about the community!
Exactly, just think about all the networking you can do with teams so we all can grow together as one big family.
because that’s what companies are for!
Oh my god, how were they supposed to work WITH MS teams?
At worst, someone else will pick up the Slack. At best, they’ll find what Matters Most.
Ther’s only two things I hate in this world, people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the… no, wait! I love the Dutch!
GVD JA!!!
Laat ze maaris iets zien noorderburen! Hup holland hup!
One of those changes that requires and entire generation of workers to retire… <cough> boomers <cough>
Until that happens, they stand in the way of change. After they are put out to pasture, change occurs at a normal pace, according to logic and reason, as it always should. Even in normal times.
I expect to see a lot of shifts in things as the boomers finally begin to die off. Medical advances are extending their lives to freakish extremes, but so far not one of them has proven to be immortal. .
I worked at a health company as a manager and was told not to electronize records keeping because they couldn’t afford to hire computer literate people for the grunt work. I was told to use whiteboards and laminated printouts.
Get me out of this fucking shithole USA…
scary thought
Its not bomers most people are not good at tech. I’ve been to may training course and the amount of pwole who can’t set an IP address on a laptop is insane and this is INA tech agecent field.
Most people don’t know how a oc works and just know I click this icon for this and that one for that.
I don’t think it’s the boomers holding us back. It’s the lack of better alternatives to the junk systems we have today. We will see institutions switching from commercial crap to open source copies of that commercial crap. As if we’re still living in the paper world. The users are just the victims.
As someone whose job just switched to D365… It’s been a nightmare.
Interesting that the reasoning is reportedly about control and exit costs, not just price. That matches what I keep hearing from people who run large deployments: the lock-in tax shows up years later, when you discover your workflows, integrations, and data shapes have all quietly molded themselves around one vendor’s APIs. A tax authority is one of the few orgs with the patience and staff to actually pull off a sovereign-stack migration, so this will be a useful data point either way. Hope someone documents the migration honestly, because the failure modes would be more instructive than the press release.
