I work in software development for Danish hospitals, and some regions already used OpenOffice, now libre office, for .. well over 15 years. At least in parts.
We integrate with an API into libreoffice, and it more or less did not change in well over a decade. But sometimes libreoffice crashes and you can't figure out why. There are just no logs. It feels like a black box at times.
But I don't think they will be switching away from Teams as quickly. Will be interesting for sure.
Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability.
my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should probably stop wiring the house through a burning building." Payments, cloud, office software, data infrastructure, all of it.
so Denmark moving to cut Microsoft dependence in the name of digital independence is basically the same story. When the US starts looking less like stable infrastructure and more like a chaotic landlord, everyone starts building their own exits.
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whh
I think a move to Open Source would be great in Europe, but only if the governments using the technologies are actively funding their development.
This doesn't just mean once-off grants, or a bit of cash donated here and there. I would like to see per-user per-year contributions to the organisations that develop these tools on-par with the current spend going towards Microsoft Cloud products.
It can be better than Microsoft, but you need to fund it to be better than Microsoft.
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bradley13
That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. If we (Europeans) really mean it - and we should - the top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die.
According to the CLOUD act, the US government can demand access to data from US companies, regardless of where that data is stored. That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government. I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this.
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ulrikrasmussen
And meanwhile the exact same agency spits out government Android apps that use Play Integrity so citizens cannot ditch Google for GrapheneOS. This is symbolism, the minister does not actually care about digital sovereignty for the citizens.
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dagaci
Its understated, but this kind move is now systemic in the EU due to the sanctioning of ICC & EU officials and random people who hurt the presidents feelings requiring Microsoft to remotely kill access to resources tied to Microsoft Accounts.
Without rules of law its literally irresponsible for EU to have this kind of heavy dependency on US corporations.
999900000999
The entire American software industry will feel the ramifications here.
Gotta stay polite for HN. No data stored on an American server is secure.
I really really do like Open Suse though, and I think an open source future is possible. Open Suse, Libre Office, etc.
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voxleone
I think an important point in this discussion is that adopting FOSS requires a level of institutional openness that is not typical of governments in general. It’s not just a question of switching vendors; it’s about embracing transparency, auditability, and shared ownership of public infrastructure. The question is: are governments fully aware of what FOSS adoption actually implies?
Brazil is an interesting case. On paper, we have a strong legal mandate. Under Art. 16 of Lei 14.063/2020[0], information and communication systems developed exclusively by public bodies must be governed by an open-source license, allowing use, copying, modification, and distribution without restriction by other public entities.
However, implementation tells a different story. Take PIX, the instant payment system developed by the Brazilian Central Bank. As of today, only the API is open. The core system code remains unpublished[1]. If the system was developed exclusively by the public administration, this seems difficult to reconcile with the letter - and certainly the spirit - of the law.
So the issue is not only whether governments should reduce vendor lock-in. It’s whether they are prepared to follow through on what real openness demands once they commit to it.
I do like this news, but I wonder why they choose LibreOffice. It's the most widely known MS alternative, but things like OnlyOffice [0] and Nextcloud Office [1] (which is based on Collabora Online [2], which in turn is based on LibreOffice) offer much more compelling collaborative features, imho. Just plain office (like it's 1997) is quite a step back, no?
Especially OnlyOffice looks extremely similar to MS Office, I have it on all our Linux laptops at home so the kids don't feel much difference between home and school envs. I think document interoperability (as in: Looks similar) is also better.
I know someone that works in the central government of an EU country and have persuaded her to talk to the IT department in the ministry where she works to try to move away from Microsoft products. The short answer: "It's not possible for us to move away from Microsoft". And it's not that they don't want to, but they have extremely low IT resources + the employees are very reluctant to make any change. Sometimes they introduce a new program, or update an older one and there's massive whining in the entire ministry. These public employees should really try to adapt more and understand that digital environments have become crucial for independence, privacy and self-reliance.
Emen15
The interesting question is not "can LibreOffice replace Word" but whether Denmark is restructuring identity, device management, and procurement to avoid recreating lock in elsewhere. Office is visible, but AD or Entra, MDM, compliance tooling, and vendor tied workflows are the real gravity wells. The success metric is not feature parity. It is whether dependency risk is measurably reduced over a 5 to 10 year horizon without fragmenting operational continuity.
piker
A lot of good behind this idea if nothing else than to keep Microsoft honest. The Azureware push is nauseating and such a transparent attempt to lock in its monopoly against disruptors. We’re hoping Tritium[1] can provide a free or commercial alternative for legal teams soon.
All that said, it’s easy to underestimate the quality of Microsoft’s office products. They handle millions of edge cases, accessibility, i18n. They are performant and in a lot of cases extended through long-term add ins.
Even Google hasn’t achieved real parity.
It’s Microsoft’s race to lose, but my bet is they’re too distracted by AI to even noticed those coming for them.
There are a number of US states that have moved off Microsoft (mostly to G-Suite) and a number more that are considering it. And yes it won't be EVERYone (you can pry excel out of accountants cold dead hands) or everyTHING (obviously mainly Windows) but it's at least a blow against the pricing and quality issues from MSFT
prathje
Happy to see Schleswig-Holstein switching as well and also it being mentioned in an article on the HN front page. Who would have thought?
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sublimefire
However you like it or not banning just one company is not a recipe for success. IMO the issue is in the procurement and how these tenders are worded. For instance, if the requirement is data residency backed by private keys and conf compute then put it in writing. The idea that some other vendor will come in and solve this problem without such a requirement upfront will not hold for long.
By and large MS problem is that our world gets fragmented and you need to have products that adapt, eg great firewall in China, strict data residency in Europe. It is difficult to achieve that without segmenting your products as well.
Denmark was literally the US lapdog for such a long time, open to provide access and info. Denmark was the first to follow US into Iraq, while the rest of Scandinavia was much more skeptical.
Guess just bad luck with Greenland turning them the complete opposite direction, since I was certain that Denmark would be the one of the last to go against US in any way.
JSR_FDED
Of all the Microsoft products, Excel is going to be the hardest to replace. Firstly, it's critical in many organisations. We all know you shouldn't run your business on a spreadsheet, but everyone does. Just a tiny difference in how data is handled, an unsupported macro, a missing formula...the whole deck of cards collapses.
Secondly, while people only use 20% of its features, everyone uses a different 20%.
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eitally
The problem isn't plain MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The more nefarious set of issues is around domain-specific software that is only compatible with Microsoft platforms and software.
For example, Veeva Vault is the industry standard content (and content workflow) platform for life sciences. It's a heavy, somewhat unpleasant platform similar to a Workday or ServiceNow, but it's ingrained and it compliant with all life sci regulatory bodies' regulations. It requires customers use SharePoint and Office under the hood.
Things like that can't just be ripped out and replaced because there are no FOSS options.
aucisson_masque
> If everything goes as expected, all employees will be on an open-source solution during the autumn
For once, it's very fast.
retired
Is there a European alternative to Microsoft 365?
Most platforms like Nextcloud focus on file storage, email, documents and video conference but don't do anything similar to the identity management, provisioning, policies and SSO that Office 365 provides.
A national government is large enough to run their own Keycloak instance but a regional branch of government would be better off with having a SaaS for that.
It would be great if the EU would subsidize a full alternative to Microsoft 365 and give every government worker in every EU country an account to that. Just grab a random laptop from the shelf, install EUnionOS, log-in to EUnionCloud and have all the required apps for their work install themselves, set all the rights correctly, mail works automatically, automatic access to the correct files. Full disk encryption, theft protection etcetera.
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Eddy_Viscosity2
What are the hurdles from any of the EU governments from:
1. Choosing the best open source options for the various MS replacements
2. Fund an office who's job would be to provide software support, continue development, and make customizations for various departments. They continue to host this as open source.
3. Expanding adoption of the new tools to more gov departments over time. Continue to expand software office accordingly.
4. Eventually, they will have a solution entirely within their control. The costs will initially be higher likely, but way less over time.
If this progresses, then other governments can also adopt those same tools and also provide funding to the software office so that the software is continuously updated for things like security, big fixes, etc. all remains gov sponsored open source.
Am I crazy?
capevace
I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to.
The fact they’re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.
trilogic
I wonder about Vatican policy in regards to similar compromising infrastructure.
embedding-shape
Bit old, from June 13th, 2025, this and similar stories been on HN a bunch of times:
I look forward to reading these exact same articles 10 years from now:
"EU contemplating debate over a draft proposal to definitely invest in a consulting contract to study the migration of a part of one agency to a homegrown office suite away from Microsoft"
mark_l_watson
Some degree of national pride and independence simply makes a lot of sense: slightly modified Linux distros set up for local information resources and banking, tuned open LLMs, local web site indexing and search, and parallel backup financial infrastructure.
I get that some of these things are difficult to do, but small steps lead to larger steps.
goldman7911
Sorry if I sound bit political but this whole trump/usa political issue (hope) helps push more and more opensource and decentralization.
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nunobrito
Very good news for open source, hopefully.
cs702
In the past, a small number of European cities or municipalities have tried to move away from proprietary software, but those have been isolated cases, lacking broader support.
This time, things look different. Anecdotally, more people in Europe now suddenly actually care about this. They no longer want their governments to rely on software controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust it. Many are shocked and upset about recent US actions that they view as "detestable," including "irrational efforts against NATO," "nonsensical tariffs against allies," "ICE raids that trample over human rights," and "missiles targeting boat survivors." I'm paraphrasing what others have mentioned to me here. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans. They don't particularly care for the open-source movement on its own, but they now view open-source software as a more desirable alternative.
In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies.
This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.
notepad0x90
Great for them. But are they just going too mooch off of open source software then? Nothing wrong with that, so long as they fund developers and projects.
bookofjoe
One of the driving themes of "Industry" Season 4 is precisely this: what happens to your data once big players ahold of it.
kakoni
Does somebody have the latest on how the Epic EHR is doing in Copenhagen/Zealand regions?
AtomicOrbital
take your abandon laptop which still runs and install Ubuntu on it ... you will see how easy linux is today ... there is no justification for microsoft windows in 2026
motoboi
Brazil’s free software initiative in 2000’s was all about technological dependency.
Brazil was hoping to leverage governmental spending to kickstart a national software development industry. Some sort of leap into the future, jumping over first the industrial era and then service-based economy we missed.
It was killed with fire by huge Microsoft (and American, I suppose) lobbying in congress, but then America had a very favorable public view as a nurturing and democratic partner. Some sort of older brother guiding you into adulthood.
Currently, at least in my bubble, the public view of America is more like a predator with Trump as a protodictator. Not necessarily true, understand me, just as that older brother view wasn’t. But it’s public perception.
A good part of that disabling of the Brazil initiative was simply free Google workspace for public universities (which were in the government plan).
I suppose that given the existencial threat level of anxiety caused by current developments will probably make Europe government immune to American lobby (at least in the short term), so I suppose this can actually happen.
Let’s see how it develops when they try to ban Microsoft from the universities. That would be the acid test.
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jl6
The European sovereign tech trend isn’t exclusively a benefit to OSS. SAP must be anticipating a significant windfall of Oracle refugees.
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rbbydotdev
An EU Linux distro could be interesting
miroslavr
I am wondering what EU was doing 20+ years in the digital world? Why doesn't it have own video streaming, cloud, email, social net... pretty much all that we use now Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft for. It is very difficult for fragmented Europe to have the central service in pretty much any domain. And its citizen and ruling classes were sleeping 20 years living cozy.
pu_pe
One aspect of the AI bubble that is not talked about very much is how the European market is a key factor in any serious calculation about future revenue. If Europe decides to, or is forced to decouple its digital infrastructure from the US, that essentially slashes the addressable market of a company like chatGPT by a third. And Europe has some of the richest customers too.
In other words, Sam Altman et al. should be hardcore Atlanticists at this point.
Ability to make certain kind of software is totally strategic for countries to be independent. Completely relying on some other 3rd party is truly stupid.
okintheory
How could any European govt use MS after Trump ordered MS to sanction an ICC prosecutor and MS complied? I imagine they're all trying to walk away
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m00dy
I lived in Denmark for quite a while, don’t ever believe that, because it’s never going to happen.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
huntoa
A token gesture. Europe is extremely dependent on foreign tech. I don't see the political will to really change that. I think the main causes are corruption, incompetence, extortion (negotiations on trade, etc.), and short-term thinking of politicians and managers. People did warn them, but they were ignored. They fucked the citizens long-term. Treason.
Critical infrastructure, such as energy, healthcare, or train service, runs on US software and services and thus only works as long as the US allows it. In Germany, the German Railway moved all of their software services into US clouds and shut down their own data center. That didn't protect them from a recent DDoS, taking down their main customer-facing site for hours.
Meanwhile, the local job market abounds with job ads from government agencies and private businesses, requiring administrating MS software (AD, 365, Exchange), cloud and doing "Power"-stuff.
The study "European Software and Cyber Dependencies" [1] (Dec 2025) from of the European Parliament explains the dire state. It's full of money quotes:
"Non-EU actors, primarily US companies, control nearly all critical layers of Europe’s digital stack. These dependencies are reinforced by vendor lock-in, long-term contracts, proprietary formats, & network effects that limit switching and suppress market entry for EU innovators"
"80% of European corporate spending on software and cloud flows to US vendors."
"Public administrations rely heavily on Microsoft and Google productivity suites, with only isolated instances of migrations to open-source alternatives"
"A case study of the EU’s energy infrastructure provides a further illustration of how its digitalisation creates critical cyber dependencies. Industrial control, grid management, and market-trading software increasingly rely on non-EU vendors and cloud platforms."
"Such heavy reliance on US tech and vendors results in [...] tangible sovereignty risks. The CLOUD Act, FISA Act and US sanctions regimes give US authorities legal reach over data of European citizens and institutions hosted by American providers."
"Dependence extends across the supply chain — from chips and hardware (90% of advanced semiconductors imported) to developer tools and standards (GitHub, Docker, and major programming frameworks are US-governed);"
"The EU’s digital trade deficit exceeds EUR 100 billion annually"
"These outflows finance US R&D and jobs: according to one study, retaining just 15% of this spending could create around 500,000 jobs in Europe by 2035;"
"Lock-in inflates long-term costs and undermines innovation, while dependence on external platforms diminishes Europe’s leverage in trade and security negotiations;"
"Europe’s software and cyber dependencies are becoming a structural strategic liability. [...] without decisive action, Europe risks becoming a “digital colony”- dependent on others’ platforms, standards, and priorities for decades to come."
"[EU]’s deep reliance on non-EU tech is a strategic vulnerability. It exposes the EU to geopolitical coercion (a de-facto “virtual kill switch”), with potential cascading disruption across finance, health, energy and transport if access to […] cloud or key software is curtailed.
"In the current geopolitical scene, technology interdependence is being weaponised. External pressure can push the EU to dilute rules or face retaliatory trade measures, while dependence reduces Europe’s geopolitical leverage."
"the EU already faces pressure to dilute its own digital regulations to appease allies or avoid retaliation – recently, trade negotiators even been softening EU digital rules (like the new Digital Markets Act) in exchange for avoiding US tariffs"
"if a major US platform suffered a prolonged outage, or if transatlantic relations deteriorated, leading to data access blocks, a large swath of European business and government services could grind to a halt."
"semiconductors account for about 80% of the strategic value of a data centre; building AI campuses without European hardware will therefore send most of the value abroad"
I mean they should be using open source software for this type of stuff, but every time I see these announcements they are either worded strangely or the governments just don't do it, because the end result is always the same.
Can we do a Polymarket bet? I'm taking the Microsoft side. Yeah they suck. Yup, nothing new there, but they'll find a way to keep all these dolts paying.
arbirk
Can we just use markdown already?
tokai
This is way overblown. Its parts of some ministries. All public IT in Denmark is still bound to Microsoft. Statens IT, the IT systems provider for the public sector, is right now in the middle of rolling out Windows 11.
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encom
>reduce dependence on U.S. tech firms
Let's have a look:
$ host -t A digmin.dk
digmin.dk has address 172.232.147.252
digmin.dk has address 172.233.57.17
$ whois 172.233.57.17 | grep -i orgname
OrgName: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
OrgName: Linode
Pathetic.
This kind of press release happens every so often. It's an election year, so that probably explains it. Nothing ever comes of it. As someone employed in the danish public sector, I'd love nothing more than to never have to use Outlook again, but it's unlikely to happen.
Beijinger
Well, not really surprising, considering that Trump wants to snap Greenland and Microsoft's founder likes to fuck Russian prostitutes on Epsteins island. Both is not really inspiring confidence to run a government infrastructure on such software.
daft_pink
Good luck. It’s just not really practical. Office 365 is cheap and training everyone on another platform will cost more and make it harder to onboard new talent than using another system.
I worked for a company that was fully Google and the executives who were highly effective all just paid for excel themselves. It’s just not really practical when you’re going to make a presentation to learn how to do pivot tables in a new software in the crunch time.
I’m not a fanboy. I prefer Mac, but in a high cost labor environment like Europe it’s not worth it to save less than 1% of your labor cost on new software.
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sylware
From an applications point of view:
They want web apps only running in whatng cartel web engines?
libreoffice? A massive piece of software you can build only with US c++ compilers (MIT and mostly apple)? (the mistake was to use c++ in the first place, well computer languages on an insane level of complexity).
To put it together: it won't be perfect, lines for compromises will have to be drawn, and it will feel like getting out of 'the matrix' for the time (normal "users" won't understand), if you see where I am going. Digital freedom has a "price", efty "price" in a digital world dominated by Big Tech.
Going for a strong independence will have to hurt, or it will be slatted as "posture" more than a real long term/strategic will.
It is not "against" the US, but "in the interest" of the danish people (well, should be EU though...)
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troad
I'm very happy for all the Europeans getting to use software they like and prefer, but honestly I'm a little tired of reading about it. There's been an awful lot of recent blogging and news about de-Americanising one's stack.
It seems very important to the Europeans that they let everyone else know they're leaving? It's got the air of a thirty-five year old threatening to move out of his parents' basement any day now. Go already! Stop telling us about it. We all
wish you the best. Good luck!
(Don't expect to get much say over how foreign tech platforms operate going forward, if you get the balkanised Internet you seem to yearn for?)
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mrweasel
> Copenhagen and Aarhus, which previously announced plans to abandon Microsoft software, citing financial concerns, market dominance and political tensions with Washington.
That's not going to happen, their infrastructure is completely tied to Microsoft Active Directory, it's going to be incredibly expensive to just plan a migration out of that. Trump will be out of office before anything serious can even get startet, and depending on the next US administration, someone will decide that it's not worth the spending.
Plus you'd need to re-train and army of Windows administrators to run, what... Linux and OpenLDAP?
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fbn79
Who remember the failed experiment of abandoning Micro$oft by Munich
An open source replacement of proprietary SW is very easy in the beginning but becomes hard quickly. You grab a Linux distribution and the App that match the functionality at best and call it a day. But the next day a bunch of problems arise: some features are not implemented, the UI is not ergonomic, the stability is not there and when updates come, the situation goes overboard. The billions of dollars don't start software, they end it polished and consumer ready.
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adornKey
Oh oh... Time to say goodbye to Greenland. Lets see what is going to happen to LEGO.. Freedom Bricks?
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fyredge
There's something about governments moving to open source software that doesn't sit well with me. The only advantage I can see is reduction in expenditure with free software.
I believe we should go a step further and institute open standards. Move away from .docx and to .odt in document submission on government websites. This gives users the flexibility of choice as long as they adhere to a specific standards. This would also hopefully alleviate some of the mess of inconsistent rendering of the same document on different software.
I work in software development for Danish hospitals, and some regions already used OpenOffice, now libre office, for .. well over 15 years. At least in parts.
We integrate with an API into libreoffice, and it more or less did not change in well over a decade. But sometimes libreoffice crashes and you can't figure out why. There are just no logs. It feels like a black box at times.
But I don't think they will be switching away from Teams as quickly. Will be interesting for sure.
Slightly off topic, but does anyone know why libreoffice stopped publishing artefacts to mvn repo? https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.libreoffice/libreoffi...
Europe’s reading the room and building exits. They’re also cutting dependence on Visa/Mastercard because tying your payment rails to a declining, unstable empire is a bad long-term bet. Wero, the digital euro, local infrastructure, all of it points to the same thing: financial sovereignty matters when America looks more like a geopolitical liability.
my read is that 2026 to 2027 is basically Europe saying, "we should probably stop wiring the house through a burning building." Payments, cloud, office software, data infrastructure, all of it.
so Denmark moving to cut Microsoft dependence in the name of digital independence is basically the same story. When the US starts looking less like stable infrastructure and more like a chaotic landlord, everyone starts building their own exits.
I think a move to Open Source would be great in Europe, but only if the governments using the technologies are actively funding their development.
This doesn't just mean once-off grants, or a bit of cash donated here and there. I would like to see per-user per-year contributions to the organisations that develop these tools on-par with the current spend going towards Microsoft Cloud products.
It can be better than Microsoft, but you need to fund it to be better than Microsoft.
That's great, but it's always just one agency, or one very local bit of government. If we (Europeans) really mean it - and we should - the top level of government just needs to make the declaration: as of X, all Microsoft licenses will be terminated. No exceptions. Adapt or die.
According to the CLOUD act, the US government can demand access to data from US companies, regardless of where that data is stored. That must be unacceptable to any sovereign government. I genuinely do not understand why other countries put up with this.
And meanwhile the exact same agency spits out government Android apps that use Play Integrity so citizens cannot ditch Google for GrapheneOS. This is symbolism, the minister does not actually care about digital sovereignty for the citizens.
Its understated, but this kind move is now systemic in the EU due to the sanctioning of ICC & EU officials and random people who hurt the presidents feelings requiring Microsoft to remotely kill access to resources tied to Microsoft Accounts.
Without rules of law its literally irresponsible for EU to have this kind of heavy dependency on US corporations.
The entire American software industry will feel the ramifications here.
Gotta stay polite for HN. No data stored on an American server is secure.
I really really do like Open Suse though, and I think an open source future is possible. Open Suse, Libre Office, etc.
I think an important point in this discussion is that adopting FOSS requires a level of institutional openness that is not typical of governments in general. It’s not just a question of switching vendors; it’s about embracing transparency, auditability, and shared ownership of public infrastructure. The question is: are governments fully aware of what FOSS adoption actually implies?
Brazil is an interesting case. On paper, we have a strong legal mandate. Under Art. 16 of Lei 14.063/2020[0], information and communication systems developed exclusively by public bodies must be governed by an open-source license, allowing use, copying, modification, and distribution without restriction by other public entities.
However, implementation tells a different story. Take PIX, the instant payment system developed by the Brazilian Central Bank. As of today, only the API is open. The core system code remains unpublished[1]. If the system was developed exclusively by the public administration, this seems difficult to reconcile with the letter - and certainly the spirit - of the law.
So the issue is not only whether governments should reduce vendor lock-in. It’s whether they are prepared to follow through on what real openness demands once they commit to it.
[0] https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2019-2022/2020/Lei... [1] https://d1gesto.blogspot.com/2025/06/brazils-pix-system-face...
I do like this news, but I wonder why they choose LibreOffice. It's the most widely known MS alternative, but things like OnlyOffice [0] and Nextcloud Office [1] (which is based on Collabora Online [2], which in turn is based on LibreOffice) offer much more compelling collaborative features, imho. Just plain office (like it's 1997) is quite a step back, no?
Especially OnlyOffice looks extremely similar to MS Office, I have it on all our Linux laptops at home so the kids don't feel much difference between home and school envs. I think document interoperability (as in: Looks similar) is also better.
[0] https://www.onlyoffice.com/
[1] https://nextcloud.com/office/
[2] https://www.collaboraonline.com/
I know someone that works in the central government of an EU country and have persuaded her to talk to the IT department in the ministry where she works to try to move away from Microsoft products. The short answer: "It's not possible for us to move away from Microsoft". And it's not that they don't want to, but they have extremely low IT resources + the employees are very reluctant to make any change. Sometimes they introduce a new program, or update an older one and there's massive whining in the entire ministry. These public employees should really try to adapt more and understand that digital environments have become crucial for independence, privacy and self-reliance.
The interesting question is not "can LibreOffice replace Word" but whether Denmark is restructuring identity, device management, and procurement to avoid recreating lock in elsewhere. Office is visible, but AD or Entra, MDM, compliance tooling, and vendor tied workflows are the real gravity wells. The success metric is not feature parity. It is whether dependency risk is measurably reduced over a 5 to 10 year horizon without fragmenting operational continuity.
A lot of good behind this idea if nothing else than to keep Microsoft honest. The Azureware push is nauseating and such a transparent attempt to lock in its monopoly against disruptors. We’re hoping Tritium[1] can provide a free or commercial alternative for legal teams soon.
All that said, it’s easy to underestimate the quality of Microsoft’s office products. They handle millions of edge cases, accessibility, i18n. They are performant and in a lot of cases extended through long-term add ins.
Even Google hasn’t achieved real parity.
It’s Microsoft’s race to lose, but my bet is they’re too distracted by AI to even noticed those coming for them.
[1] https://tritium.legal
There are a number of US states that have moved off Microsoft (mostly to G-Suite) and a number more that are considering it. And yes it won't be EVERYone (you can pry excel out of accountants cold dead hands) or everyTHING (obviously mainly Windows) but it's at least a blow against the pricing and quality issues from MSFT
Happy to see Schleswig-Holstein switching as well and also it being mentioned in an article on the HN front page. Who would have thought?
However you like it or not banning just one company is not a recipe for success. IMO the issue is in the procurement and how these tenders are worded. For instance, if the requirement is data residency backed by private keys and conf compute then put it in writing. The idea that some other vendor will come in and solve this problem without such a requirement upfront will not hold for long.
By and large MS problem is that our world gets fragmented and you need to have products that adapt, eg great firewall in China, strict data residency in Europe. It is difficult to achieve that without segmenting your products as well.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
Related
Denmark was literally the US lapdog for such a long time, open to provide access and info. Denmark was the first to follow US into Iraq, while the rest of Scandinavia was much more skeptical.
Guess just bad luck with Greenland turning them the complete opposite direction, since I was certain that Denmark would be the one of the last to go against US in any way.
Of all the Microsoft products, Excel is going to be the hardest to replace. Firstly, it's critical in many organisations. We all know you shouldn't run your business on a spreadsheet, but everyone does. Just a tiny difference in how data is handled, an unsupported macro, a missing formula...the whole deck of cards collapses. Secondly, while people only use 20% of its features, everyone uses a different 20%.
The problem isn't plain MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). The more nefarious set of issues is around domain-specific software that is only compatible with Microsoft platforms and software.
For example, Veeva Vault is the industry standard content (and content workflow) platform for life sciences. It's a heavy, somewhat unpleasant platform similar to a Workday or ServiceNow, but it's ingrained and it compliant with all life sci regulatory bodies' regulations. It requires customers use SharePoint and Office under the hood.
Things like that can't just be ripped out and replaced because there are no FOSS options.
> If everything goes as expected, all employees will be on an open-source solution during the autumn
For once, it's very fast.
Is there a European alternative to Microsoft 365?
Most platforms like Nextcloud focus on file storage, email, documents and video conference but don't do anything similar to the identity management, provisioning, policies and SSO that Office 365 provides.
A national government is large enough to run their own Keycloak instance but a regional branch of government would be better off with having a SaaS for that.
It would be great if the EU would subsidize a full alternative to Microsoft 365 and give every government worker in every EU country an account to that. Just grab a random laptop from the shelf, install EUnionOS, log-in to EUnionCloud and have all the required apps for their work install themselves, set all the rights correctly, mail works automatically, automatic access to the correct files. Full disk encryption, theft protection etcetera.
What are the hurdles from any of the EU governments from: 1. Choosing the best open source options for the various MS replacements 2. Fund an office who's job would be to provide software support, continue development, and make customizations for various departments. They continue to host this as open source. 3. Expanding adoption of the new tools to more gov departments over time. Continue to expand software office accordingly. 4. Eventually, they will have a solution entirely within their control. The costs will initially be higher likely, but way less over time.
If this progresses, then other governments can also adopt those same tools and also provide funding to the software office so that the software is continuously updated for things like security, big fixes, etc. all remains gov sponsored open source.
Am I crazy?
I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to.
The fact they’re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.
I wonder about Vatican policy in regards to similar compromising infrastructure.
Bit old, from June 13th, 2025, this and similar stories been on HN a bunch of times:
- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I look forward to reading these exact same articles 10 years from now:
"EU contemplating debate over a draft proposal to definitely invest in a consulting contract to study the migration of a part of one agency to a homegrown office suite away from Microsoft"
Some degree of national pride and independence simply makes a lot of sense: slightly modified Linux distros set up for local information resources and banking, tuned open LLMs, local web site indexing and search, and parallel backup financial infrastructure.
I get that some of these things are difficult to do, but small steps lead to larger steps.
Sorry if I sound bit political but this whole trump/usa political issue (hope) helps push more and more opensource and decentralization.
Very good news for open source, hopefully.
In the past, a small number of European cities or municipalities have tried to move away from proprietary software, but those have been isolated cases, lacking broader support.
This time, things look different. Anecdotally, more people in Europe now suddenly actually care about this. They no longer want their governments to rely on software controlled by US companies, because they no longer trust it. Many are shocked and upset about recent US actions that they view as "detestable," including "irrational efforts against NATO," "nonsensical tariffs against allies," "ICE raids that trample over human rights," and "missiles targeting boat survivors." I'm paraphrasing what others have mentioned to me here. Whether you agree or disagree with these concerns, they are valid for many Europeans. They don't particularly care for the open-source movement on its own, but they now view open-source software as a more desirable alternative.
In an ironic twist of fate, the US government's actions could end up causing long-term damage to US tech companies.
This is all based on anecdotal evidence, so I could be wrong, but I have to call it like I see it.
Great for them. But are they just going too mooch off of open source software then? Nothing wrong with that, so long as they fund developers and projects.
One of the driving themes of "Industry" Season 4 is precisely this: what happens to your data once big players ahold of it.
Does somebody have the latest on how the Epic EHR is doing in Copenhagen/Zealand regions?
take your abandon laptop which still runs and install Ubuntu on it ... you will see how easy linux is today ... there is no justification for microsoft windows in 2026
Brazil’s free software initiative in 2000’s was all about technological dependency.
Brazil was hoping to leverage governmental spending to kickstart a national software development industry. Some sort of leap into the future, jumping over first the industrial era and then service-based economy we missed.
It was killed with fire by huge Microsoft (and American, I suppose) lobbying in congress, but then America had a very favorable public view as a nurturing and democratic partner. Some sort of older brother guiding you into adulthood.
Currently, at least in my bubble, the public view of America is more like a predator with Trump as a protodictator. Not necessarily true, understand me, just as that older brother view wasn’t. But it’s public perception.
A good part of that disabling of the Brazil initiative was simply free Google workspace for public universities (which were in the government plan).
I suppose that given the existencial threat level of anxiety caused by current developments will probably make Europe government immune to American lobby (at least in the short term), so I suppose this can actually happen.
Let’s see how it develops when they try to ban Microsoft from the universities. That would be the acid test.
The European sovereign tech trend isn’t exclusively a benefit to OSS. SAP must be anticipating a significant windfall of Oracle refugees.
An EU Linux distro could be interesting
I am wondering what EU was doing 20+ years in the digital world? Why doesn't it have own video streaming, cloud, email, social net... pretty much all that we use now Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft for. It is very difficult for fragmented Europe to have the central service in pretty much any domain. And its citizen and ruling classes were sleeping 20 years living cozy.
One aspect of the AI bubble that is not talked about very much is how the European market is a key factor in any serious calculation about future revenue. If Europe decides to, or is forced to decouple its digital infrastructure from the US, that essentially slashes the addressable market of a company like chatGPT by a third. And Europe has some of the richest customers too.
In other words, Sam Altman et al. should be hardcore Atlanticists at this point.
Previous post on this subject--
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636445
Ability to make certain kind of software is totally strategic for countries to be independent. Completely relying on some other 3rd party is truly stupid.
How could any European govt use MS after Trump ordered MS to sanction an ICC prosecutor and MS complied? I imagine they're all trying to walk away
I lived in Denmark for quite a while, don’t ever believe that, because it’s never going to happen.
(2025)
Story from June OP?
Lots of discussion then:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44234552
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44255352
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
A token gesture. Europe is extremely dependent on foreign tech. I don't see the political will to really change that. I think the main causes are corruption, incompetence, extortion (negotiations on trade, etc.), and short-term thinking of politicians and managers. People did warn them, but they were ignored. They fucked the citizens long-term. Treason.
Critical infrastructure, such as energy, healthcare, or train service, runs on US software and services and thus only works as long as the US allows it. In Germany, the German Railway moved all of their software services into US clouds and shut down their own data center. That didn't protect them from a recent DDoS, taking down their main customer-facing site for hours.
Meanwhile, the local job market abounds with job ads from government agencies and private businesses, requiring administrating MS software (AD, 365, Exchange), cloud and doing "Power"-stuff.
The study "European Software and Cyber Dependencies" [1] (Dec 2025) from of the European Parliament explains the dire state. It's full of money quotes:
"Non-EU actors, primarily US companies, control nearly all critical layers of Europe’s digital stack. These dependencies are reinforced by vendor lock-in, long-term contracts, proprietary formats, & network effects that limit switching and suppress market entry for EU innovators"
"80% of European corporate spending on software and cloud flows to US vendors."
"Public administrations rely heavily on Microsoft and Google productivity suites, with only isolated instances of migrations to open-source alternatives"
"A case study of the EU’s energy infrastructure provides a further illustration of how its digitalisation creates critical cyber dependencies. Industrial control, grid management, and market-trading software increasingly rely on non-EU vendors and cloud platforms."
"Such heavy reliance on US tech and vendors results in [...] tangible sovereignty risks. The CLOUD Act, FISA Act and US sanctions regimes give US authorities legal reach over data of European citizens and institutions hosted by American providers."
"Dependence extends across the supply chain — from chips and hardware (90% of advanced semiconductors imported) to developer tools and standards (GitHub, Docker, and major programming frameworks are US-governed);"
"The EU’s digital trade deficit exceeds EUR 100 billion annually"
"These outflows finance US R&D and jobs: according to one study, retaining just 15% of this spending could create around 500,000 jobs in Europe by 2035;"
"Lock-in inflates long-term costs and undermines innovation, while dependence on external platforms diminishes Europe’s leverage in trade and security negotiations;"
"Europe’s software and cyber dependencies are becoming a structural strategic liability. [...] without decisive action, Europe risks becoming a “digital colony”- dependent on others’ platforms, standards, and priorities for decades to come."
"[EU]’s deep reliance on non-EU tech is a strategic vulnerability. It exposes the EU to geopolitical coercion (a de-facto “virtual kill switch”), with potential cascading disruption across finance, health, energy and transport if access to […] cloud or key software is curtailed.
"In the current geopolitical scene, technology interdependence is being weaponised. External pressure can push the EU to dilute rules or face retaliatory trade measures, while dependence reduces Europe’s geopolitical leverage."
"the EU already faces pressure to dilute its own digital regulations to appease allies or avoid retaliation – recently, trade negotiators even been softening EU digital rules (like the new Digital Markets Act) in exchange for avoiding US tariffs"
"if a major US platform suffered a prolonged outage, or if transatlantic relations deteriorated, leading to data access blocks, a large swath of European business and government services could grind to a halt."
"semiconductors account for about 80% of the strategic value of a data centre; building AI campuses without European hardware will therefore send most of the value abroad"
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/7785...
I mean they should be using open source software for this type of stuff, but every time I see these announcements they are either worded strangely or the governments just don't do it, because the end result is always the same.
Can we do a Polymarket bet? I'm taking the Microsoft side. Yeah they suck. Yup, nothing new there, but they'll find a way to keep all these dolts paying.
Can we just use markdown already?
This is way overblown. Its parts of some ministries. All public IT in Denmark is still bound to Microsoft. Statens IT, the IT systems provider for the public sector, is right now in the middle of rolling out Windows 11.
>reduce dependence on U.S. tech firms
Let's have a look:
Pathetic.This kind of press release happens every so often. It's an election year, so that probably explains it. Nothing ever comes of it. As someone employed in the danish public sector, I'd love nothing more than to never have to use Outlook again, but it's unlikely to happen.
Well, not really surprising, considering that Trump wants to snap Greenland and Microsoft's founder likes to fuck Russian prostitutes on Epsteins island. Both is not really inspiring confidence to run a government infrastructure on such software.
Good luck. It’s just not really practical. Office 365 is cheap and training everyone on another platform will cost more and make it harder to onboard new talent than using another system.
I worked for a company that was fully Google and the executives who were highly effective all just paid for excel themselves. It’s just not really practical when you’re going to make a presentation to learn how to do pivot tables in a new software in the crunch time.
I’m not a fanboy. I prefer Mac, but in a high cost labor environment like Europe it’s not worth it to save less than 1% of your labor cost on new software.
From an applications point of view:
They want web apps only running in whatng cartel web engines?
libreoffice? A massive piece of software you can build only with US c++ compilers (MIT and mostly apple)? (the mistake was to use c++ in the first place, well computer languages on an insane level of complexity).
To put it together: it won't be perfect, lines for compromises will have to be drawn, and it will feel like getting out of 'the matrix' for the time (normal "users" won't understand), if you see where I am going. Digital freedom has a "price", efty "price" in a digital world dominated by Big Tech.
Going for a strong independence will have to hurt, or it will be slatted as "posture" more than a real long term/strategic will.
It is not "against" the US, but "in the interest" of the danish people (well, should be EU though...)
I'm very happy for all the Europeans getting to use software they like and prefer, but honestly I'm a little tired of reading about it. There's been an awful lot of recent blogging and news about de-Americanising one's stack.
It seems very important to the Europeans that they let everyone else know they're leaving? It's got the air of a thirty-five year old threatening to move out of his parents' basement any day now. Go already! Stop telling us about it. We all wish you the best. Good luck!
(Don't expect to get much say over how foreign tech platforms operate going forward, if you get the balkanised Internet you seem to yearn for?)
> Copenhagen and Aarhus, which previously announced plans to abandon Microsoft software, citing financial concerns, market dominance and political tensions with Washington.
That's not going to happen, their infrastructure is completely tied to Microsoft Active Directory, it's going to be incredibly expensive to just plan a migration out of that. Trump will be out of office before anything serious can even get startet, and depending on the next US administration, someone will decide that it's not worth the spending.
Plus you'd need to re-train and army of Windows administrators to run, what... Linux and OpenLDAP?
Who remember the failed experiment of abandoning Micro$oft by Munich
https://www-sueddeutsche-de.translate.goog/muenchen/muenchne...
An open source replacement of proprietary SW is very easy in the beginning but becomes hard quickly. You grab a Linux distribution and the App that match the functionality at best and call it a day. But the next day a bunch of problems arise: some features are not implemented, the UI is not ergonomic, the stability is not there and when updates come, the situation goes overboard. The billions of dollars don't start software, they end it polished and consumer ready.
Oh oh... Time to say goodbye to Greenland. Lets see what is going to happen to LEGO.. Freedom Bricks?
There's something about governments moving to open source software that doesn't sit well with me. The only advantage I can see is reduction in expenditure with free software.
I believe we should go a step further and institute open standards. Move away from .docx and to .odt in document submission on government websites. This gives users the flexibility of choice as long as they adhere to a specific standards. This would also hopefully alleviate some of the mess of inconsistent rendering of the same document on different software.