[abarwick]

This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.

[jcelerier]

Idk here in France there are cities and state-wide administrations with free/libre stacks based on Linux, LibreOffice, Zimbra and others and things seem to JustWork™. For instance the french Gendarmerie, the cities of Rennes and Arles...

[pyrale]

Arles is getting suckered by Microsoft, sadly [1]. Unfortunately all it takes is one idiot to get in office once to kill this kind of successful initiative that has been running for almost two decades.

[1]: https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carol...

[spoonjim]

Are there any high functioning large companies that use Linux/LibreOffice/Zimbra? I suppose governments rarely aspire to be high functioning.

[quadrifoliate]

Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run.

In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting.

With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.

[zhte415]

> Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting

That's unlikely, and if so I doubt Libre Office would liberate Brenda. It may be the reverse. On-boarding or moving Brenda between functions would mean provisioning her for internal ID, identity, email/communication, security, network/group access and permissioning, physical device(s), etc. Various parts of Microsoft 365 would just be part of the checklist and deployment, an integral part.

Microsoft make the above very smooth. I don't think someone slapping Libre Office on a PC makes any of that a thing of the past. Any realistic alternative needs to be all the way down the stack.

[hutzlibu]

"Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run."

Depends. When odf would be the standard maybe, but it isn't. Standard is microsoft office, and libre office is not 100% compatible. But you will still have to deal with lots of microsoft documents, from all the other agencies, ordinary people, companies, ..

Meaning, when Munichs government tried to switch to oss a few years ago, they did indeed lost a lot of time with broken documents, templates, layouts etc. so they ultimately switched back (direct microsoft lobbying with even Bill Gates getting personally involved might have played a role, too).

So I am all for an open standard, but this easier said, than done.

[PontifexMinimus]

> Standard is microsoft office

Then change it. By law if need be, and have all government departments go over to Libre Office at the same time.

[eggsome]

They tried that, but the question is how do you write the law? In the end they settled on requiring that govt. departments use ISO standards to store docs (which at the time was only ODF).

Microsoft then tried to get their format ratified as an ISO standard. But everyone complained that their spec did not actually specify how to implement, instead it said things like "In accordance with output from Word 2007". So after a bit of back and forth MS realized that they did not want to _actually_ document what they were doing. The solution? Pack the committee with MS shills to vote yes on every proposal by MS. Urgh.

One of the negative flow on effects was that these new committee members only cared about voting for things that MS had instructed them to vote on - so other standards and issues stalled due to a lack of a quorum. It was super disappointing looking at this from the sidelines at the time.

Here is a link that explains a small part of the history: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2618153/how-microsoft-was-...

[hutzlibu]

Well, that is one solution, but I would not want to have a urgent problem at that specific time.

[Melatonic]

I haven't had any issues with Libre Office in years. They even have a paid corporate version with (supposedly) good support.

What I have had more incompatibility issues with is Gsuite (or whatever Google is calling it these days) which a LOT of medium sized businesses and school are using now as an office alternative.

[PontifexMinimus]

> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure,

I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source.

> and more expensive to the tax payer

As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.

[stickfigure]

> As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible

After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?

[ehnto]

The assumption here seems to be that the government would be writing the software, but it would go out to market. This would be a fantastic opportunity for a local software company to put out something in the space. I'm foreseeing more of this kind of thing as data sovereignty becomes a more considered issue by governments.

The other undertone I'm getting from this thread is that people think America has a monopoly on building software, and that's simply not the case. It's not hard to find companies doing really good work outside of the US. There is also nothing special about Office 365, it doesn't have a technology moat, it just has a surmountable interoperability moat and a social moat.

[PontifexMinimus]

Zero. Start off with using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Then add stuff as needed.

[alsetmusic]

I didn’t read it as government can’t use commercial products. Just that the corps couldn’t influence politics. But I’m not the OP, so I can’t speak to what was intended.

[scale8]

More around the storing of data. This is why Scale8.com is on EU servers...

[einpoklum]

> are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365

Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?

[TurningCanadian]

Sharing a link to a document that others can edit in the cloud is much more convenient than emailing around a _final_v3(2).docx document.

[einpoklum]

Well... there's Collabora online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo

or Box/DropBox/other cloud storage services, which is less convenient than proper collaborative in-pace editing, but you can still get the file at the link, edit it and upload it.

[abarwick]

I obviously can’t speak for all, even most, but back in my consulting days I can say the many US federal and state agencies use Azure AD and a litany of AWS services that are core to vital work streams. Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.

[oska]

> Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.

You've just identified one very good reason that they shouldn't be dependent on a single, proprietary vendor.

Really, I was surprised to find your original comment on Hacker News, especially with you ironically fronting it with calling other people naive.

[itronitron]

Most developed countries have several offices/agencies that already run 'home built' solutions, they just don't get talked about much.

[jacquesm]

They get talked about incessantly at the local Microsoft HQ.

[ekianjo]

your whole argument is based on the assumption that proprietary software is superior in every single metric. thats just patently false.

[clairity]

ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard.

also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.

[mmanfrin]

> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument, e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.

[clairity]

arguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.

[wutbrodo]

None of the lines of reasoning were an ad hominem. From your other comment[1], it seems like you think "ad hominem" just means "being rude to someone". I recommend reading the GP comment's description of ad hominem again: it means making a logical argument that depends on the speaker's personal characteristics.

"You're European, so your argument is biased and wrong" is an ad hominem. "Your argument is naive, here's why I think that" is not. The latter is logically downstream of the argument, while the former is upstream.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31854644

[clairity]

no, an ad hominem need not be literal. do you really not understand nuance in language? we're not computers operating only on singular data and deterministic instructions.

see how those three sentences go together? that's a line of reasoning. the subject comment doesn't have that throughline. it's disjointed; the parts are only tangentially connected.

[wutbrodo]

> no, an ad hominem need not be literal

What on earth do you mean by "literal" here? Ad hominem refers to a specific fallacious style of argumentation. Being ignorant of the definition and then too stubborn to admit it is not pushing back against "overliteralism".

Especially because the rest of your comment (dismissing the rest of the argument due to "ad hominem") only makes sense if one assumes the correct definition!

[lovich]

But an ad hominem requires that the argument is thrown out solely based on the attack against the person. Laying out a logical argument against someone's belief, and then _additionally_ insulting him based on his beliefs is not an ad hominem.

[lovich]

A car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately

[clairity]

if you look carefully, the 3 sentences are disconnected. they don’t form a line of reasoning.

if it had been starter, engine, and transmission, maybe you’d have a point, but instead it’s corroded battery, door handle, and tailpipe.

[lovich]

I looked at it carefully, and I’m not seeing what you’re seeing unfortunately. I interpreted the naive comment as a separate summary of their opinion, and then the rest of the paragraph was the supporting explanation. He didn’t dismiss the idea because it was naive, it’s the reason it is naive is why he was saying it wouldn’t work

[jasonlotito]

Ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

[robertlagrant]

None of it was ad hominem.

[Jcowell]

> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

GP never says that you’re naive, but the comment was.

[clairity]

either way (intent can also be multi-modal), it signals a triggered response and is entirely superfluous and distracting. it's worth setting that aside, even after writing it, and examining the emotional underpinnings that led to the response in the first place. we learn a lot about our own subconsciousness that way.

[ska]

>, ... it signals a triggered response

This is, at best, a stretch.

[simonswords82]

I have no idea what it is you're trying to say but I did laugh that your username is clarity! :)

[clairity]

excellent, my diabolical plan to rule the world via dry humor is working as designed.

[scarface74]

The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s...

I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software.

Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?

[quantum_magpie]

And if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.

[scarface74]

Are you going to also train staff to use the new open source software? Where is the open source SalesForce equivalent? Workday? Concur? Device management? Email service? ServiceNow? Time tracking? Photoshop? Are you going to also force every employee to use Linux instead of Mac and Windows? Are you going to tell them to rewrite all of their software and business processes written on top of Oracle and SQL Server? Should they also rewrite all of their bespoke mobile apps to support open source mobile operating systems? Are you going to migrate all of their Office documents and SharePoint? Are they going to move all of their project management processes from Microsoft Azure DevOps (aka Visual Studio Online)? Are they going to move all of their call center software to open source? For school systems are they going to move their fuel procurement software? Many education systems are partially funded by the lottery. Are they going to move their backend systems from GTech? Their lunch programs payment systems for students use a third party, are they going to move that too? Their ATS? LMS? Grade tracking software?

[Dylan16807]

How long have they been using each one of those products on average? How about migrating off at the same speed?

[scarface74]

So let’s take the lottery systems. Most states including mine has been using the same back end for the lottery since 1991. Who is going to write the replacement? Who is going to audit it? How much is it going to cost to replace literally thousand of lottery terminals? And what benefit would it be?

I can’t think of the name of the company now. But there is one company that manage the school lunch programs. Who is going to write the software and you have to replace all of the hardware throughout the state.

[abarwick]

Simply training government workers to use open source tools would shut down governments for weeks.

[mensetmanusman]

Then this is a good argument to help convince Republicans to get on board.

[clairity]

not sure that it's relevant and 'large' is subjective, but yes, i stewarded the technology migration of a core product suite for a prior employer, which incidentally had government agencies as a prominent customer segment.

i'm not suggesting that governments can only use internally developed or open-source software, i'm saying corporate interests should be firewalled away from goverment. so a locally-installed office suite incorporating no surveillance tech doesn't have the ancillary corporate interests attached to qualify it for being firewalled.

[scarface74]

You migrated a product. Were you involved in migrating the entire infrastructure of an entire state?

Yes, I speak from experience, migrations and modernizations are kind of my job.

[rapind]

100 SaaS products in one org sounds like a security and logistics nightmare.

[throw827474737]

so just assuming you have an overpriced stinking pile of sh*t, is this an argument to stay with it forever?

[scarface74]

So do you think open source or the government producing their own software will be better?

[daniel-cussen]

Russia has that. Just typewriters and stationary.

[sam0x17]

Sounds like it would create jobs too, that's a plus not a minus lol

[tvink]

"Creating jobs" to inefficiently solve a solved task is not a good thing, it is society burning it's tax income. It is only good to create jobs when the output of those jobs is increased value.

[the_other]

Slowing the flow of money out of the public purse and into a very small number of barely accountable global megacorps and private equity funds, whilst improving the employment prospects of the local population, sounds like it's worth the cost of repeat work.

Also, nature loves a bit of redundancy. And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly.

[cscurmudgeon]

> . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly.

And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all.

Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised but if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok).

[tildef]

> Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised

By whom?

> if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok).

By whom?

[the_other]

> > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. > And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all.

I didn't say shut down the megacorps. Maybe they have use; I don't know. What I do know is they're unaccountable (like the shit bits of government).

If government had to use open systems, the quality of those open systems would improve and compete better with the similar commercial ones. The public (and companies and other countries) then have a choice between the tools from the megacorps and the open tools. The public also gains/improves a resource. More competition. Probably better for everyone.

[sam0x17]

If there isn't anything generally available that doesn't have telemetry, then productivity software w/o telemetry isn't a solved task. If you accept LibreOffice and the like, then it's a solved task but you'll still need someone to manage it, hence job creation.

[NavinF]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

[throw827474737]

less secure? can it get worse than ms, outlook and active directory foo? they incepted their own industry around their unsecurity, lol.

terrible and more expensive is also a joke, but not as big, you still could got to ibm or oracle if you want to pay more for less, admitted

[inopinatus]

The legal and moral question is one of data sovereignty, not tools vendor. I suggest the GP comment be read with that context in mind.

[Terry_Roll]

Rubbish, there has been a concertive effort by the US to undermine other countries including so called NATO allies in order to dominate the world, its been going of for decades.

I refuse to use the NHS here in the UK because of the widespread use of Microsoft everywhere.