I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, ministries, municipalities, private companies etc. in both Denmark and other European countries looking into switching to non-American software.
"Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. Everybody asks about it it. Everybody plans around it.
Although the weaning off will take many years, and although European companies and governments will probably never be entirely without American software, and why should they, the American dominance will disappear, little by little. For better or worse, the American Century is coming to an end, also in IT.
I hope you're right! I'm a backend dev and engineer, and I would love to specialize in helping companies off US cloud. Haven't found a lot of interest here in Norway so far..
I guess that's fine for now, but it would be better if we could get European alternatives to AWS or GCP.
> companies are perfectly happy with US companies, as long as the data doesn't leave Europe
I think it's pretty clear they can not guarantee that, see the CLOUD act.
Also, they could shut you out or turn your whole business off if you, or your country, offends the orange fuckhead
Same with Atlassian Confluence / Jira.
(Source: Working in a state owend company in a EU member country)
It's maybe harder in Europe, because you also have fragmentation. For example, Californians are fine using software from New York. Same, same. But Germany prefers to use German software, so far. This makes it even harder, I would guess, for EU developers to establish a thriving standard.
OVH, Telecity, Hezner, Bahnhof, Tele2 etc;etc;etc;etc;etc; are all valid suppliers without the need to buy from hyperscalers.
I think what tends to work though is the idea that someone in redmond can't arbitrarily decide to shut you down as an individual or exert pressure. So it goes in order of importance:
A) Can we buy the software and use it in perpetuity
B) If we can't buy the software in perpetuity, do we at least control who has access to the software and our data
C) If we can't control who has access to the data then can we at least ensure we always have access to it?
D) If we can't ensure we have access to our own data then what are we even doing here?
Depending on where you fall on this line (which is a decision each government must make) you'll have to claw back something because right now we're all on D.
If you want to change pace, ask your dns sw provider to turn on local root by default.
(One of the things being defined is how to get a root zone trustably out of band using the new ZONEMD checksum)
A bigger question might be why there are no ICANN HSM outside the USA to generate root zone signings. ICANN has offices in Geneva and Singapore, it would not be hard to find secure DC locations for the signing ceremonies.
Those offerings are garbage for anyone outside the US.
Everyone banned Huawei products despite the ability to pass laws saying Huawei must respect data sovereignty. They didn't ban US firms, because unlike China the USA was championing the rule of law at the time. Data sovereignty only works if the USA respects the laws of other countries, even though, just like China, they could coerce / bribe citizens and firms to bypass them. Such activity would be largely undetectable. Who is going to know if someone peeked at a secret document stored in Azure? There was a huge amount of trust involved in the arrangement.
The USA has now denounced the rule of law, is withdrawing the the institutions set up to champion it, and has shut down the ICCC's access to some services. The trust has gone.
This is all well within the realm of what governments can and do regulate. Want to do business in a country with their laws or not is the choice.
The EU (nay, perhaps every country) should be prepared to deal with Microsoft or AWS completely cutting them off from access to all their systems - what would be the cost and impact?
We are rapidly heading to not one Internet, but country-specific internets that may or may not bridge to other ones in some cases.
Realistically a US executive could be legally required to give an EU engineer a command that they legally couldn’t follow. At that point I guess we find out if the engineers’ national or corporate identities are dominant. I suspect the former in most cases, but who knows?
Google, AWS & Microsoft all nullroute the countries of Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Google also nullroutes Crimea.
So by using a cloud provider, you are participating in the embargo of Cuba.
Can we have fully decentralized mesh networking yet?
I love how some hyper-sci-fi settings have the concept of a "datasphere" (analogous to atmosphere): an actual physical cloud of ubiquitous nanorobots that provide connectivity, storage and computation.
Wouldn't that also be ideal for AI too the way it's shaping up to be? Any device anywhere would just need to connect to a signal "neuron" of the global brain (possibly becoming a neuron itself) and it should theoretically be able to fetch anything.
It won’t be long until the rest of the public sectors follow along. There has already been plenty of consideration and desire to follow through. What’s holding them back typically is not the desire to stay with Microsoft et. al., but the investment needed to make the switch away from a live system.
The parent comment didn't complain that Denmark or its overall government is small. They complained that this agency represents a small fraction of their government.
Seeing an agency doing it is good, but still less than the French ditching Teams and Zoom altogether as country-wide policy.
Transforming the public administration is the logical next step. Something different happening here, not the town hall big fuss approach.
Plan A: Just burn it down and rebuild FOSS in the ashes.
Plan B: The tech modernization agency can make the transition, document and enhance the process, and then guide less savvy users.
I dunno. Tough call.
Model A: some visionary gets a great idea and everyone across the board stops whatever they’re doing all at once to prioritize this one initiative, budgets and contracts and laws be damned.
Model B: the modernization department sets standards, those standards are mandatory in the governments procurement process. All suppliers know to update, everything swaps out as-planned over time, no one goes to jail.
I dunno. Danes are weird.
This is a different - the agency has more scope and with the ridiculous confrontation between the US and Denmark there’s no doubt active espionage targeting Denmark from the US.
For example detailed plan for next 5-10 years how gradually everything moves. Now it feels like 1 step ahead 3 steps back, nice pat on the back for doing something, while overall transition will take 2 centuries unless magic happens. Not enough, not at this point when all cards are on the table.
Maybe because there is no drop in replacement of microsoft and microsoft dependant tools?
So yes, one can (and should) build them. But the market right now is not offering this yet.
If you look at the features you actually need and are willing to explore different ways of doing things that are not exactly like M365 there's more options. France and Germany are also working on freeing themselves from M365.
This kinda thing sounds a lot like those RFPs that were specifically written so they could only be fulfilled by Microsoft because it was just a list of their feature tickboxes.
This is missed in so, so very many discussions out there.
You can reproduce about 50-75% of what MS offers with FOSS and work on writing the rest in-house/in-EU.
Would a bunch of workflows suffer initially? Sure, but not even trying is just preseving the status quo.
But yeah, it probably depends on what you're trying to do with any one software package, some people will be affected more than others and sometimes most stuff will just work!
Also, the "there's no drop in replacement" line is just making up excuses for not acting. Yes, you will not get 100% of the Office 365 features out of the box. There will be some friction.
It's simply ridiculous seeing EU bureaucracy preparing e.g. to ban russian oil [3], making life more expensive for all people, and balking on being forced to switch their stupid word processor.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923736
[2] https://github.com/suitenumerique
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-propose-permanent...
- Group Editing - this ones hard to get right - Reviewing Tools - Automated document generation - Embedding of data-backed images from 3rd party tools
Looking at my wife who works in government, they use it even more heavily, with a lot of complicated formatting, numbering, standards etc going into each document, plus OneDrive collaborative features on top of that.
I suspect office-user people are where most of the features get used. Agreed, most people only use 15% of the features, but which 15% that is likely changes quickly person to person.
If you claim, that this is my position, please read at least one more sentence
"So yes, one can (and should) build them. "
That’s beside the sibling comment’s point that this suite is not complete enough (yet).
I worked for a startup that was all OSX desktops and Google Docs. Then when we hit 100 employees, the finance department required MS Office, so they used Office for Mac, then as we grew, they needed real MS Office running in Windows, so they ran Windows in Parallels, then as we continued to grow they moved to full Windows laptops. When I left the company (at around 1000 employees), almost a third of the company was on Windows (mostly in Finance, Sales, and other business departments). And the team supporting the 2/3 Mac desktops was about 1/3 the size of the team supporting Windows.
Though I suppose it's easier for a government to move off Microsoft. When an investor tells you to use their financial modeling software that only works with MS Excel, it's pretty hard for a small company to refuse, but a government has more power to force others to conform to their choice.
The CFO just preferred Windows, that's it, I'd bet money on it.
What was driving that requirement at the investment house doesn't matter, when the company that owns over 50% of your company wants something, you don't say "Hey, we don't want to buy a Windows license with your money, how about I send it to you in this similar, but different format and then you guys can figure out how to make it match what you're looking for?"
Excel has gone downhill massively.
Of course no product will be an identical replica of the Microsoft tools, but both get the job done.
The second best time is now.
The Quality is also Shit. I get some stupid Errors when trying to Access OWA every other day. Then I have to reset cookies/cache and can login again
Email in a large organization requires things like central management, compliance with retention policies and other regulations, data loss prevention, encryption standards, auditing and ediscovery capabilities, etc.
When it's set to Firefox attachment uploads don't work and ever morning it jumps to "please wait while we're signing you out..." when i never asked for that. When it thinks it's edge it just stays signed in.
Not to mention the huge amount of telemetry I need to block with ublock origin.
Microsofts advantage is ActiveDirectory integration. Centrally managed users and machines, every user, every application, every service authentications through the AD.
Organizations opt for Teams all the time, because it's part of the package and fully integrated. There's no reason they couldn't pick something else, but why deal with it when Teams just work (sort of).
https://www.univention.de/loesungen/alternative-zu-microsoft...
OAuth enabled systems aren’t enough, central management of users and machines are huge. If that core matures, it opens up the market for replacements in other areas. Teams, Outlook and the Office Suite need first grade replacements.
The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and should be in the EU. You simply cannot trust an American company anymore after Trump.
I think this is a little superficial. There will be mountains of existing Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents that would need converting, as well as configured permissions structures and remotely managed laptop configurations that currently are working well. Of course anything is possible given enough time and money. The real issue isn't to do with your ageism. It's whether that time and money is best spent on this particular area.
Well, they are not working well right now, because they could be rendered inoperable at any moment through Microsoft flipping a switch. That risk is real and has precedent (ICC having their Outlook access revoked).
>The real issue isn't to do with your ageism. It's whether that time and money is best spent on this particular area.
When European sovereignty is on the line, it's never too expensive.
They are literally working well right now, because Microsoft hasn’t flipped that switch and may never do so.
And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.
They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has". It's easier to deal with a single party than it is to get licenses and support from 20 other suppliers that then blame each other when there are issues at the border between 2 of the products. You can talk to anyone else who has Teams, your files are always fully compatible, all of the rest of your software integrates, single identity, etc. A lot of good it is that you have Google Meet and Libre Office when the partners you work closes to have Teams and MS Office.
Users are proficient with the products, you can find skilled admins everywhere. Incumbency has a lot of inertia.
So you have to pay millions in support contracts every year, it's the cost of doing business. So MS gets hacked every other day, what could you have done about it better when even MS (!!!) couldn't?
This is the same Microsoft we're talking about right?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-pays-25-million-end...
https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr...
https://www.wsj.com/tech/former-microsoft-employee-alleges-b...
Any fines that allow profitable operations are no more than a tax.
That’s someone who read a couple of articles on corruption and just extrapolated to “all of it must be the same”.
Since you quoted Microsoft, remember this? https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/04/02/cyber-safety-rev... you have other companies that have a much better track record on Security.
If you browse HN everyday, at least once a weak, you'll see security issues related to Azure and Microsoft product, to the point that Microsoft stopped bounty programs or don't include some products.
Is Google’s search engine used just because they give money to those who do? Because they pay Apple and Mozilla. Just set Google as default and the check’s in the mail right?
The last paragraph was obviously a diss at MS for costing a lot in support and having shitty security. Anyone with first hand experience (as opposed to hearing the stories) with MS contracts and heard the justifications again and again doesn’t need the joke explained.
Which is why governments in the EU need to lead this change to open source so others can point and say "hey even the big guys use it now".
I personally don’t love thunderbird, but what is it missing?
Gnome through their online accounts supports most major corporate providers which has calendars showing up in evolution, the dedicated calendar app, and in the status bar of gnome shell.
I can't enter a pin to authenticate, so I can't use it.
Same with SharePoint here. I've never seen it not turn into a steaming pile of shit within months of deployment where nobody can find anything.
The way teams and yammer auto create groups left right and center in it doesn't help. And its search function is less than useless.
This is in fact the main thing I use copilot for, to find stuff in that mess.
Entra? (User management and policy)
Office 365 Exchange?
Excel? (Finance runs on custom Excel macros and sheets)
Teams?
Office 365 in general, security, DLP, MFA?
Fleet
>Entra? (User management and policy)
LDAP
>Office 365 Exchange?
Dovecot, Postfix
>Excel? (Finance runs on custom Excel macros and sheets)
Libreoffice calc, R and Python were needed. And if that doesn't work, finance needs to work around the vendor lockin
>Teams?
Matrix, Jitsi, Bigbluebutton, Mattermost
>Office 365 in general, security, DLP, MFA?
Authentik, Keycloak for MFA/security, OpenZFS with Nextcloud/Opencloud for DLP
It's possible, though of course less integrated and more work involved than just selling your soul to MS. But I am sure that time will also solve that, now that people are more interested in open source.
I did not, but as far as I know, they require a bit more more than some office solution, shared drive and some email client.
(How do you imagine how it works internally if you apply for a new passport, they just send some office documents via email around?)
If processes depend on some crappy excel table (created by somebody 20 years ago) or even worse, sharepoint app (commissioned by people who shouldn't be deciding things like this), the processes suck and need to be rebuilt anyhow.
The people in the middle can ensnare and kill anything that doesn’t have that support and engagement - their incentive is to encourage consistency.
That's special software developed for one customer only anyways. So it's perfectly possible to target another Platform or do this as some kind of WebApp.
And until then run some Windows Desktops for those special applications/services
Yes, it is possible to rewrite software. But currently most of that software was written and licenced for windows.
Just choosing another plattform might, or might not work. And if it doesn't, many people will be angry for not getting tax refunds back, or getting a new passport, or being able to register a new car etc.
Bugs are real. And there is a saying, never change a running system.
So yes, I do agree that the system is not running so well being dependant on Trump and change is required, but this is not just some webapp for fun that needs replacement. We are talking about critical government services, with lots of custom made software, that was often exclusivly written for windows.
Just because you can't replace 100% tomorrow doesn't mean that you shouldn't begin today, or never try at all
We shouldn't have waited until Trump, we had clear signs of distrust when the Americans were spying on Angela Merkel and other European officials [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...
Transitioning every system wholesale at once, is not gonna happen.
I rather have our governents and agencies do it step by step than not at all.
I want to see (sincerely) a whole government ditch MS
They have an extensive history in this too. The gendarmerie even has their own Linux distro for their workstations.
All change starts small. If these small agencies or very local bits of government successfully pull it off, larger ones may well follow.
The Minister shut this up with "Software is a decision by the employer, the employee has to accept it"
Which then got blown up by the tabloid media, which ran BS Headlines like "OMG Courts and Police not working (because they're childish and refuse to learn another E-Mail Client)
Also Microsoft is playing dirty and lobbying very hard behind the scenes to obstruct it, in Munich they changed their German HQs to Munich and started to pay Taxes there. So suddenly the city changed back to MS
TL;Dr: It's a thankless and tough battle for politicians, because they face lobbying and media pressure against them. Also they will be blamed for any roadblocks, and there is no real upside for them in it, as no one except for a few nerds cares about this
Overnight ICC officials couldn't access email, documents etc, all because the U.S. government leaned on Microsoft. If they can do it to a United Nations court they can and will do it to anyone.
Spending money on a system you don't have any control over doesn't make sense. The public understand this.
I think this may have changed a bit within the last year or so...
It's no longer true. There's a huge public moment to move away from all things American since Trump and his tariff wars and putting NATO at risk. A lot of people I know are now factoring this in to their purchasing choices and there's a lot more empathy for employers changing things.
Awwww, poor babies.
Edgy! But it sounds like really terrible government. As if the failure of a government agency which cannot adapt to losing all its computer systems and therefore "dies" will not negatively effect those who are governed.
"put up with this" implies they have a choice.
Yeah, no. That's not how government works - thankfully. I don't want my water to stop flowing just because someone decided to be drastic about software changes.
I agree with you in that all governments should be using open source software, for the record.
But governments are big machines and you can't steer them like a sports car. In some cases, the massive inertia they have can even be a good thing - a crazy guy can't just be elected one day, start issuing presidential mandates, and then expect them to happen immediately, for example.
They're far more than just patient care in the moment.
No, but almost everything is a potential DDOS. And slight modifications to emails, documents, and calendars can cause a lot of havoc that may be hard to detect.
Hospitals or Police aren't guarding state secrets too, but if they would loose access to their IT Infrastructure because Donald had some strange brainfart this morning like the Judge of the International Court of Justice it would impact the State critically
Either your main architecture handles something or it doesn't get handled.
Is it OK for a French sovereign government if a German government can demand access to its data?
This is unrealistic populism. The type that gets upvoted on HN, apparently. It's not possible to just ditch all Microsoft licenses in a year, or in 5 years, or in 10 years. There are hundreds of critical systems that can't just be migrated to Linux overnight (or ever). And "just dying" is... not an option for a government branch. What is this even supposed to mean.
But we can limit American bigtech by 90%, and we should. Especially everything in the cloud.
See https://www.exoscale.com/blog/cloudact-vs-gdpr/
( Though note exoscale, as a European provider has skin in the game here ).
So fund it!
Governments burn billions of dollars on defense which really is just an economic waste outside of the deterrent effect it does from getting invaded.
Investing in open source to enable you to be software independent and protected, not only is it providing some measure of electronic and economic defense, it improves software for you and your allies.
You get return on your investment.
The US recently doubled down on using US corporations as vehicles of coercion, sanctioning ICC judges for judging against Israel.
https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions
This is beyond insane, and every American company causing grief for the staff of a criminal court in which every single civilized nation but the US and Israel (I guess I didn't have to add that but) belongs needs to see enormous fines, and to be marginalized and removed. Microsoft, Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal...either they can domesticate in another nation, or get relegated to provincial US operations.
It is absolutely untenable, and every single nation needs to purge all American operations as rapidly as possible.
And...it's happening. This criminal US administration filled with pedophiles and self-dealing garbage overextended. They overplayed their hand, and the result is not only the rapidly accelerated decline of the American empire, it invariably has redoubled China's influence.
I keep seeing prophesying about China invading Taiwan on here. Surely HN knows that won't be necessary, right? Taiwan recently re-engaged in diplomatic unification talks with China (not overtly, but the feelers are obvious to anyone with any sense of the moment), and they're going to make that choice themselves. Now that the US is relegated to worldwide joke/idiocracy, and it really is rapidly becoming a unipolar world, it's really the only rational choice.
But I guess the US has the pathetic joke of the Board of Peace, or their close allies El Salvador and new puppet state Venezuela. What a disgrace.
That's news to me, got any good articles on the topic?
ICC members make judgements that are abided by ICC member states. They have every authority to make those judgments, and it does not matter what the busted idiocracy US of A, acting as a pathetic supplicant state for their boss Israel, thinks about it.
Maybe Trump can complain to his unbelievably pathetic Board of Peace. Christ.
The war criminal Netanyahu can stick to the rogue shitholes he is welcomed at. The US -- which btw is currently engaged in BLATANTLY criminal activities in a number of venues -- can get fucked. The US has *ZERO* authority to tell members of the ICC who or what they can declare a warcrime, or who members of the ICC will hold to account if they enter their country.
What a bizarre take.
And yes, the US can sanction whoever they want, but such actions are far from free.. When every American firm is sent packing, enjoy the results. And yes, American payment processors are discovering in super-rapid quicktime how this rogue cabal of war criminal, paedos and criminal grifters are destroying their future.
- The Palestinian Authority claims to represent 'Palestine'
- UNGA Resolution 67/19 "Reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-
determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian
territory occupied since 1967"
- They consider Gaza "Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" (despite the fact
that Gaza has certainly not been occupied by Israel for decades and a completely
separate entity from the PA exercises sovereignty there)
Beyond the absurd sophistry and incoherent reasoning, Israel is--once again--not a signatory to the ICC. Asserting jurisdiction over a sovereign entity without their consent is a violation of state immunity[1], a legal concept predating the ICC by over 600 years.
I'd say that qualifies as an overstep.
[0]: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/p... [1]: https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/97801992316...
"Beyond the absurd sophistry and incoherent reasoning"
There is literally nothing incoherent about the reasoning. "Palestine" is a member since 2015, and literally no one aside from Israel-bots have any confusion about what that means. The fact that Israel, a rogue nuclear armed global pariah, isn't is *utterly irrelevant*. Netanyahu is to be held accountable if they step foot in any Western nation beside its partner in crime Idiocracy supplicant.
Regardless of the US's willingness to ignore customary international law, the "International Criminal Court"'s willingness to ignore customary international law is worthy of reprimand, and their facially ridiculous claim to jurisdiction over Gaza was fairly characterized as overstepping their authority.
> literally no one aside from Israel-bots have any confusion about what that means
"Palestine" probably includes Area A. What about Area B? Probably not Area C. How about the settlements? Gaza--which is actually controlled by a totally different government? East Jerusalem? "From the river to the sea"?
It seems to me that there is actually a great deal of confusion about what exactly "Palestine" means. It certainly doesn't refer to any specific area with defined borders and a single sovereign.
> Israel-bots
> rogue nuclear armed global pariah
> partner in crime Idiocracy supplicant
Conversing with you is a chore and I doubt there is any value to be had continuing our discourse. Have a good one.
But...I didn't. The members of the ICC observe the findings of the ICC. Another bizarre non-sequitur. No one is demanding that the US honour the ICC's warrant.
The ICC has no authority in Israel. Nor do they claim to. But they do in the member countries, which thoroughly angers the Idiocracy.
>willingness to ignore customary international law
Absolutely delusional nonsense. The hypocrisy in the claim that state immunity is some overarching thing -- when neither Israel or the US honour such a ridiculous notion -- is amazing given the context.
>It seems to me that there is actually a great deal of confusion about what exactly "Palestine" means
Absolutely no one but Israelis and Americans have any (convenient) confusion on this. Palestine is the non-Israel parts of the former Palestine. Playing incredibly stupid is unconvincing.
>Conversing with you is a chore
Ah, the "you're all butthurt Europeans" American-exceptionalism guy thinks it's a chore. Good god.
Except that the people who joined on behalf of Palestine have never controlled Gaza, while the government that actually controls Gaza never accepted the ICC's jurisdiction.
I can similarly declare myself the king of Gaza, and decree that Gaza is under the jurisdiction of my newly invented Court of Daniel, and it would make about as much sense from a legal perspective.
They literally, directly controlled Gaza until 2006. So what's with the lies?
There is good evidence that they lost control because Netanyahu covertly supported Hamas. Riling up fundies to do vile things is good business when your goal is getting a massively armed idiocracy simp nation to do your bidding.
Honestly the biggest problem that's coming out of all of this is the US is finding out most of its actions actually are free... Like everyone know the US was "stronger" and better positioned than Europe 10 years ago but it's just gotten ridiculously skewed.
With Europe losing basically all ability to push back against the US because of their poor decision making we've lost a critical moderating influence on the USA.
You forgot Trumps best butt-buddy: Putin.
Wake me up when they actually do it.
Ok, and what will be the alternative? I am not talking about the easy part, like documents creation, although I don't see walking away from Excel as LibreOffice alternative is a bit of disappointment. But what about the whole security/networking/permissions area? What is the viable alternative that can scale?
Remember Covid times? In Poland all schools got access to Office 365 (overnight ) and education kept going. 500 000 teachers and a few millions of pupils. Tell me who else except Microsoft or Google have ability to support that?
There are also ready made solutions available for purchase
The global, liberal hegemony philosophy is that you can trust other countries, and countries are just economic zones with mildly different food and weather. Country dividing lines for any other purpose are bad. The UK was evil for wanting more sovereignty vs the EU; what's the difference? Open the borders. Let anyone vote. This has only recently been philosophically countered in the popular left-leaning consciousness by the war in Ukraine, where at least one border is seen to be worth defending, and in the mainstream as sovereignty and related conservative ideas are taking hold again, although with a few extra steps to make it palateable to non-conservatives.
The practical philosophy is: we already save a huge amount of money we can spend on benefits by depending on the US for defence; might as well do the same with tech. They probably know everything anyway, and what's to know? This isn't exactly countered yet philosophically, but Donald Trump is making people realise they should at least pay their own way in defense, which is helping to gradually override the prioritising of short-term vote-buying.
I don't think many thought the UK was evil.
I think many thought the UK had been sold a bag of lies, and that exiting based on a very slim majority of voters on a referendum was a bad idea.
Anyone still using OpenOffice probably doesn't realize they would likely be much better off using LibreOffice instead.
OpenOffice doesn't support docx or xlsx but LibreOffice supports them much better.
I will weep on the day when the great Europe is defeated by people being unable to use a slightly different spreadsheet program, word processor, or a file sharing solution.
But yeah, the argument about "adapt or die" is also way off base. Ideally it'd be a gradual migration, all low hanging fruit first, seeing what works and what doesn't.
You make it sound like the current Microsoft stack is so insanely great it will be impossible to replace.
Yes, change is hard, but there are also massive upsides in switching to something better.