- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Can Dutch higher education part ways with Microsoft? The sector is trying to break free, and alternatives are being explored here and there. At the same time, more and more tasks are being completed by Microsoft tools.
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There is a fucking ocean of alternatives. Yes, they can part with that predatory fucking pedo factory.
Correction:
There is an ocean of software alternatives, however there are few alternatives that offer a direct alternative to Microsoft when it comes to being able to put the blame on them.
With most open source systems, the buck stops with you.
Now, I know there are companies that offers to take that buck and accept the risk, though they are not plenty when it comes as a realistic competitor to Microsoft.
Then you need to consider what alternatives exist to all third party software you need to run a company, the vast majority only run on Windows.
I work in the IT department of a company in the finance sector, show me an open source alternative to the Bloomberg client that runs on Linux and is approved by Bloomberg with an add-in that is as integrated into Libre Office as the official client is with Excel.
I guarantee that it is the same in basically every company/sector, they all have workflows that are simply not possible without Windows/Office or Microsoft as a whole.
Ok, so you start a new company, with all computers running open source software, Windows/MacOS is banned, that will only last until you notice that you can earn more money, while wasting time and money, while hiring new staff easier by running Windows/Mac.
Would you rather shutdown you company than accept reality and use Microsoft software.
I want open source to win, but ignoring reality is dumb
Yes, yes they can. In fact, no one “needs” Microsoft or Google products for their work. If they think they do, it’s likely they’re not very competent and useful in the first place.
This would be a perfect sysadmin career pipeline if Dutch universities could move to FOSS tools and Linux; think about it - if the universities run on Linux, said universities could offer a sysadmin course and basically grow more sysadmins and open up a new line of work for people that may actually have some staying power.
They’d both get job training and a degree that could be used outside the school at the same time.
Yes and no; the main issues are:
initial disruption (e.g. ditching teams is harder than it looks, you also need to retrain all your IT staff)
User training (most staff can barely use Microsoft products - even light terminal use is seen as magic)
Industry demand (your average CEO conflates “computer competent” with “can you use ms office?”)
Functionality loss (mostly in easy document collab and cloud storage)
Existing 3rd party software contracts (yeah, DRM software hates Linux, also most are locked into azure)
Accountability (if OneDrive gets hacked, Microsoft pays out (i.e. no-one pays), if your cloud server gets hacked you pay out)
I’ve scratched the surface there, there are a lot more issues. The truth is that universities need to take this step, however the barriers are just too high during the perpetual crisis academia currently exists in - it would mean years of disruption they simply cannot afford.
Yeah Microsoft doesn’t just offer software, they offer an ecosystem. That includes hosting, support, training, SLA, legal liability and interoperability. They also do a LOT of customisation for large companies and governments, much more than one would expect for a company that’s perceived as rigid as Microsoft.
I’m sure for a lot of the software we can find replacements in the non-Microsoft sphere, but that just leaves a bag of assorted pieces of software. That’s not enough and I’m not sure we can find replacements that match the user requirements for everything. That means we need different replacements for different companies/governments, which would lead to a big mess that nobody could ever maintain. And how is anyone going to get it to the level they feel comfortable agreeing to an SLA and liability?
So in my ideal world, all the EU countries get together and invest big into some kind of standard on how software like this should work and how it all works together. That would allow different companies to build software for different use cases, smaller parts of the whole, and through the standard all work together in a way that actually works. Then we can have service providers that create and perhaps partly customise an environment for a company or government. They can provide the training, support, SLA and the legal stuff. There would obviously need to be subsidies available for all of these companies to get to work on this. I would like the standard to require the whole stack to be open source, but that might be hard.
Now I realise this is really naive and has a couple of issues. First of all, is it even humanly possible to create such a standard? Something that isn’t super complicated and not overly restrictive to completely kill any innovation? And how long does it take to create something like that? We don’t have 10 years to work on it, the world moves too fast for that. Second issue is what companies would be willing to work on this? Even with subsidies, there wouldn’t be a lot of money to be made, no vendor lockin, no competitive advantage. Which is good for the side of the user, but not as good for the side of the supplier. Third issue: EU countries working together? Well good luck with that, on a good day it’s like herding a bunch of cats. I’m sure in three years we can have proposal tabled to put to a preliminary vote.
So yeah I’m not sure how we get out of this mess. It’s a lack of foresight and the fact governments move slow and the world moves faster and faster that got us to this place. If we had restricted Microsoft back in the 90s, things might have been different. We should not have bought in to the whole “Safe Harbor” thing, but that’s easy to say after the fact.
I think there is another alternative to plain government spending, and that’s inter-university cooperation.
It’s pushing FOSS options for education on the comp sci departments, and collaborating to make it work there.
It’s is then gating every advance behind a “non-commercial, education only” license a bunch of law departments glue together.
From there, it’s universities actively allocating staff workload to help maintain key FOSS infrastructure.
From there you’ve laid the foundation on which things can be built.
Yeah, there is plenty of systems who do the things that Microsoft does.
But I don’t know anyone who does it all so integrated as Microsoft does.
Let’s say you start with the basic: you need office apps, email and storage. You have several who sell systems like that, many of them cheaper than Microsoft.
Then you want security for your email. Iyou can go out and find some supplier for something like that, or you can buy an extra license and get EOP.
Then you need client protection. You can go out and find a supplier, or you can buy a license and get endpoint protection.
And since you now have EOP and endpoint protection, you can just buy the security step up from Microsoft, and you get a whole bunch more security solutions, all integrate.
Oh and you need dataloss prevention and other such compliance solutions, so might as well go for E5, so you get whole compliance package.
I really wish that someone could give Microsoft proper competition, because they really need it, but as it is right now, there just isn’t any unless you want to do a lot more work than it is to go for Microsoft.
And on top of that these days we don’t want any software running locally, it all needs to be in the cloud. So we have thin clients connecting to virtual desktops for the end users. And guess what, that’s all Microsoft as well. So then you’d need a whole stack to replace that, which then includes hardware vendors providing something that works reliably with your own custom stack. Microsoft has so much of the needs covered, it’s so much harder to select a different provider for anything, as it complicated everything. Which is by design of course, but still the reality we need to deal with.
Look at Airbus.
The are in year 7 of an 18 month migration from Office to google workspaces.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/microsoft_airbus_migration/
Too many open source projects rely on GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft. Until something like Radicle (or my proposed “Project Zymogen” fork) takes off, the open source ecosystem isn’t quite a ticket to escape Microsoft.
Good to see some universities making what moves they can though
I hope that something flicker at EU level too, my country will hardly stop using tech giants shit without a little bump from EU
Wrong question to ask; it shouldn’t be CAN they it should be WILL they?
As more and more ‘MBA-type’ managers are drawn into management of universities (as in; those that want to run the university as a business not as an actual university) taking an ethical/moral stand becomes increasingly harder. Combine that with the reality that the (still to be formed) government is looking at putting even more budget-cuts on education it becomes a dire reality. In swoops Microsoft with big discounts and ‘free’ consultants, scans, reports, etc. showing that their stuff is “just right for you”. We’ll ignore that when you start implementing their advice it’s not uncommon to then hear that you’ll need to upgrade this or that, or agree to this multi-year contract etc.
So the options are:
- Chose the “easy” fix for which you probably get some financial support (for a while) and/or discount, staffing isn’t as big of a challenge (and people can be readily replaced if need be because ‘everyone knows Windows right?’) Reality is that in the future this will come and bite you but that’s for later
- Or chose option that WILL cost more upfront in terms of training, on-boarding, etc. and will ultimately detach you from big-tech.
So “upfront easy, later cost” or “upfront cost, later easy”. I’ll let you guess which one is most likely going to happen in this current climate.
PS: before any reply-guys want to go “but actually” - I have worked in an university IT department for almost 10 years. KTHXBAI
Require all submitted documents to be either odf or pdf.
Done.
LOL if only it were that easy
I am not saying it’s impossible, I am saying that it’ll need a complete plan and support on all levels. Universities, the employees, teachers, students, scientists, grant-commissions, local and national government, the EU etc.
Each and every one of these has a level of power and sway. And right now, they are swaying towards Microsoft (and Google) hard.
No no, it’s literally that easy. When you do your taxes, do you do them your way, or the way your government requires you to? Why? There, that’s your answer.
Ah right right. Please do tell me, what university do you work for? In what field again?
- Do you have experience in supporting researchers working under strict grant provisions that entail (at times) specific requirements in terms of data-format, reproducibility, output, methods, software used, etc.?
- Do you have experience supporting environments where exams are given, and thus require highly locked down, monitored, reproducible, environments in the terms of hundreds if not thousands workplaces at, potentially, the drop of a hat? Even if exams are generally planned well in advance, there can be last minute alterations due to weather, incidents, etc.
- Do you perhaps have experience supporting a piece of software that was used for research several decades ago, that interfaces with a piece of equipment that’s now old enough to vote and drink?
- Have you ever had the conversation with a researcher where you had to tell them that due to privacy, technical or legal requirements you have to upgrade the software and thus pretty much set them back if not ruin their entire research?
- Have you ever had to support thousands of students doing their research/study/course that requires HPC capabilities on a shoestring budget?
- Have you ever had to have a conversation with an ISV and get them to provide intricate detail on all of their libraries/dependencies used because of legal/technical/moral requirements?
So let me ask you again, is it really that easy to just “require all documents to be either odf or pdf?” in such an environment to achieve ehm… what was it again you wanted to achieve? Achieving some moral high-ground so that universities don’t use Microsoft’s format that is so entrenched in all of society, at all levels, companies and organizations and thus by not supporting/using it all of the students are put at risk of not being prepared for their future careers? Which is kind of the points people get an university degree.
But sure, I’ll see if I can get it added to the agenda in the next all-hands IT meeting.
EDIT: I’m sure of this comes across as rude or snide; it’s just that your reply seems to imply that we (IT staff, as well as the universities as a whole) haven’t already tried something like that before? Like HexesofVexes correctly points out - universities are in a near perpetual crisis for their very continued existence. Imagine having to cut millions from your budget that is already millions underfunded - and then decide to take a risk as something like this? How many jobs, livelihoods, careers, and so much more would they be putting at risk?
No, it’s not that easy. It’s an incredible risk - and universities can and will take it but they will need support. Financial as well as societal both of which right now are virtually non-existing. So they won’t as we are in pure survival mode, and have been for years.
The article is talking about officeware, so documents, file sharing, chat and e-mail. My comment was about documents specifically. I’m sorry if your work is frustrating, but as a non-academic, what am I supposed to do, except vote for candidates that promote education? That’s been my priority from when I was old enough to cast a ballot.
Your university’s leadership failed you in the decades before today when they went for closed-source, foreign-controlled options. I cannot describe the stupidity of hosting research data on American services, a choice that to me points either to stupidity or bad faith.But the crux is still this: the best time to switch was the previous 30 years, the second best is now. Saying “we can’t do it!!” only lets the tumor grow and grow. Nobody’s expecting change overnight, what should be expected, though, is action.
