[constantcrying]

Good, but this needs to happen on a much larger scale. These are "just" 1200 employees, but throughout Europe there are hundreds of millions of people working with Microsoft services and they all need to be torn out and replaced.

>As for the reasoning behind this move, it was prompted by a risk analysis that showed foreign cloud services failed to meet the ministry's privacy requirements, particularly regarding GDPR compliance and the upcoming NIS2 directive.

This also shows that they did it for the wrong reasons. It really doesn't matter if Microsofts services are GDPR compliant or not.

[embedding-shape]

I don't mind the reason being "the right reason" or not, getting rid of Microsoft will be a net-positive regardless.

And it's a process that will take years, and be step-by-step, you can't just "torn out and replace everything" in one go, not to mention how bad of an idea that would be regardless.

I'm happy we continue to do this step by step, making sure it's working alright and is the right thing along the way.

[criticalfault]

All this money saved should be "unsaved" until a decent alternative is made. Everything that the government should spent here, should be invested into pan-european organization to develop a new office suite.

Libre office in my opinion is one of the reasons Microsoft is so dominant. Unfortunately, libre office, even though useful, is one of the worst desktop applications to use.

Everyone I proposed this to tried it and said that its horrible and they don't want to use it. And I agree with them: because libre office is so sh*t, u use Google docs.

[thesuitonym]

> Libre office in my opinion is one of the reasons Microsoft is so dominant.

Microsoft Office was already dominant long before LibreOffice started. Hell, MSO was already dominant when StarOffice was renamed OpenOffice.org, long before LibreOffice was a thought in anyone's mind.

> Unfortunately, libre office, even though useful, is one of the worst desktop applications to use.

You only feel this way because you're used to MS Office. Ask anyone who's more well versed in Google Workspace and they'll tell you that MS is difficult to use.

[criticalfault]

Yes Microsoft Office was already dominant. Why didn't libre office affect this dominance being 'so good'? It's also free, so it should be interesting to companies, right? Wrong. I recently set up an SME who when saw it ran away and immediately bought a Microsoft license, which means they would rather pay and be spied on than use libre office.

Believe it or not, people like nice things. Microsoft Office looks nice. Libre office looks like a car accident. It's shallow, I know, but this is the response I get every time.

Everyone I know hates it. It is a small sample, true, but it says something. So I think, the fact Microsoft is so strong is to be blamed on the alternatives, or in this case only one alternative.

We need to look at this as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Turn it around. If it would be good, people would jump on it. Especially small companies.

Google workspace is a web app, no? So it being better than desktop is comparing different things. I use it and I like it, especially since I don't need advanced Features Microsoft offers

We have no good alternative. We have an alternative.

[thesuitonym]

If your criteria for a good alternative is people like it the very first time they see it, you'll never find a good alternative.

[constantcrying]

>Google workspace is a web app, no?

American company, no alternative at all.

Microsoft products are web apps as well.

[moooo99]

> You only feel this way because you're used to MS Office.

You are kind of proving the point. You point to a Google product as a good alternative, not to the OSS product. I really want to like LibreOffice and it is a good product for what it is, but it is far from being a great product.

[pessimizer]

Libreoffice is fine, better than we deserve. If they want it to be even better, maybe instead of throwing a few hundred million at MS, they could throw a few hundred million at Libreoffice. It's old as hell and kept up by charity.

The idea that Libreoffice is so bad that giving up your freedom to Google or Microsoft is unavoidable just shows your actual level of objection to being slaves to US companies is close to zero. You'll only be pried away from your dependence on the latest popular versions of US products kicking, screaming, and complaining the entire time. You wouldn't be satisfied with anything but a clone, and you'd complain that the clone lacked the most obscure features of the real thing.

And it's not just you, but a typical sort of aimless ridicule of FOSS product from people who feel guilty about not using them when their professed politics say they should. You'll talk a big game about independence, but your fictional pan-European office suite is far worse than Libreoffice, seeing as it doesn't exist. Couldn't be more feature-light.

[criticalfault]

I disagree completely. If libre office would be fine, it would be popular. And, as said, most of the people I know avoid it like a plague.

Also, im not trying to ridicule FOSS as a whole. if anything I'm a financial supporter for several projects and organizations. It's not a lot of money, but it's every month. So, no, it's not this.

The proposal would be to fund something like collabora, build on top of libre office or do something greenfield, but all this money that was supposed to go to Microsoft should be redirected.

Decision that governments did are not based on the fact that libre office is good. It's based on 1) political reasons called digital sovereignty and 2) price. Maybe 3) being pissed at trump. They didn't do it because LO was good.

Some american products have no good alternatives, yet. Some do, like windows can be replaced with gnome, but mobile phones cannot. Probably you are not typing or reading this from a European os on your phone, yet alternatives exist. Just not good ones.

Microsoft Office clone is not what I want, but what I would accept. Let's say UI should be very similar to Microsoft Office or even better Google office. That's it. Make it in a desktop suite and we are all good.

But do not ignore the UI part of the app.

[samus]

> Some do, like windows can be replaced with gnome, but mobile phones cannot.

> Probably you are not typing or reading this from a European os on your phone, yet alternatives exist.

Both Linux and Android are OSS, though admittedly the latter is becoming quite more a walled garden as we speak.

[rcbdev]

Calling NIS2 'upcoming' legislation at this point is as funny as it is sad.