117 points lowkeyokay 2 hours ago 66 comments
jruohonen 2 hours ago | parent
That says it all; that governments run with this "pakke".
my-huge-pony 1 hour ago | parent
ochrist 1 hour ago | parent
I al stilhed har Digitaliseringsministeriet droppet sit ellers meget omtalte pilotprojekt med et open souce-baseret alternativ til Microsofts Office-pakke, som ministeriet ellers anvender i stor stil.
Projektet blev søsat i sommeren 2025, da knap 40 medarbejdere i ministeriet gik i gang med at teste open source-systemet Collabora som alternativ til Office. Systemet blev dengang leveret af danske cBrain.
Dengang sagde daværende digitaliseringsminister Caroline Stage (M), at pilotprojektet var et 'kærkomment skridt i den rigtige retning' frem mod at frigøre sig fra afhængigheden af Microsoft opg at hun ønskede at hendes ministerie skulle være spydspids for frigørelsen fra amerikansk teknologi. Det kan du læse mere om her: Her er den løsning, som skal erstatte Microsoft Office for alle medarbejdere i Digitaliseringsministeriet
Nu meddeler en pressemedarbejder til Version2, at projektet blev droppet, da der blev udskrevet valg i foråret.
Og der er ingen planer om at genoptage det, hedder det. Projektet er ikke blevet evalueret som det ellers var planen.
Og det ærger professor Mikkel Flyverbom fra CBS.
"Det er en fin ide at afprøve alternativer i et pilotprojekt. Jeg ville dog ønske, at ministeriet benyttede muligheden for at lære af pilotprojektet og dele de erfaringer med andre dele af den offentlige sektor," skriver han i en mail til mediet.
Digitaliseringsministeriets departement er i dag lagt sammen med andre ministerier, så ministeriet i dag hedder Forsknings-, Uddannelses-, og Digitaliseringsminister med Christina Egelund som minister.
Med afslutning ved valgudskrivelsen i slutningen af februar 2026 nåede open source-piloten kun at være i luften i godt et halvt års tid.
Pilotprojektet koblede Collabora ind i ministeriets centrale sagsbehandlingssystem, F2, der leveres af danske cBrain, og det var planen, at de 38 test-ansatte allerede fra første dag skulle udarbejde ministeriets dokumenter, præsentationer og tabeller uden Microsofts Word, PowerPoint og Excel.
Særligt funktioner som ’track changes’ og konvertering mellem Microsoft-formater og open source-formater bliver noget af det, ministeriet vil arbejde med i testperioden, hed det dengang.
Pilotprojektet skulle afklare, om britiske Collabora overhovedet kunne understøtte ministeriets arbejdsgange og behov på tilfredsstillende vis. Det står i dag uklart, om det har været tilfældet, da projektet ikke er blevet evalueret.
Der var dog flere historier fremme om, at Collabora-projektet havde ført til visse frustrationer blandt ministeriet ansatte.
Blandt andet har der været med formateringer af typografier, afsnitsformateringer, blanke sider og udfordringer med track changes.
privacyishuman 1 hour ago | parent
pessimizer 1 hour ago | parent
We propagandize them against all alternatives, like Russian energy and Chinese everything, and employ all of their academics and politicians at our nonprofits and universities, sprinkling credentials all over them. Europeans love a credential; makes them feel superior. Money well spent.
cowlevel 1 hour ago | parent
card_zero 1 hour ago | parent
izacus 1 hour ago | parent
The opinion is that "the public workers don't need it" for every feature missing in Linux or LibreOffice. I can only imagine how a fight to upstream such features would look like even if someone took on a support contract.
With Microsoft at least the governments get shared fate with large corpos who also need enterprise features.
nikanj 53 minutes ago | parent
dvdkon 3 minutes ago | parent
I'm just a freelancer with FLOSS experience and some commercial experience, and so are plenty other FLOSS contributors. Nobody's going to create a company and hire staff just to have a chance at getting selected in the one tender a year that allows outsiders in.
The idea might be that only companies which have already proven themselves can enter, but 1) then why the "public sector work revenue" requirement? And 2) that's not going to work for industries where government interest is much larger than private interest, like FLOSS.
But I suppose governments prefer the certainty that Accenture or local equivalents bring - a price an order of magnitude too high for a mediocre result and a 25% chance that the project will be fucked up and shelved, over the uncertainty of a small startup, who could either deliver something great, or overexert themselves and not finish at all...
kromokromo 1 hour ago | parent
ben_w 1 hour ago | parent
People pay a lot of money for professional versions anyway.
NetMageSCW 33 minutes ago | parent
petcat 1 hour ago | parent
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-microsoft-teams-alternati...
> Absolute shit.
> The U.S. would “instantly” win a hypothetical tech war, an official moaned.
EU just has a long way to go. And the reality is that it will be so astronomically expensive that it is unlikely that they ever even truly try.
asanineassasin 1 hour ago | parent
fakedang 57 minutes ago | parent
card_zero 7 minutes ago | parent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_shopkeepers
It starts in Wealth of Nations, was picked up by a French revolutionary (still aimed at England, but in a more negative way), and Ben Franklin said something similar about Holland.
fph 54 minutes ago | parent
Everyone in Europe is saying that the CCP is illegally subsidizing EVs and solar panels to conquer the European market, and that we need to protect from them by imposing tariffs: but if you think about it, this isn't too different from what America is doing with tech.
Aurornis 6 minutes ago | parent
American big tech companies have to pay their workers a lot more than European tech companies.
Microsoft has to pay local taxes on sales in those countries. They are not paying American tax rates on European sales.
Even their American corporate tax rates, if raised to European levels, would still have ample room for profit.
Your argument is not supported by the data.
> but if you think about it, this isn't too different from what America is doing with tech.
It’s nothing like economic dumping. America is not pumping money into Microsoft to dump Microsoft Office into European markets.
Those European companies could come to the US, open an office here, and be under the exact same rules as Microsoft.
The situation is not alike at all.
Scarblac 1 hour ago | parent
But I think the hardest thing to replace is Active Directory, Outlook, all the integration with Windows, all the admins certified on Microsoft technology. It's not about the actual application "MS Office", it's about all of IT (that line was not AI).
hvb2 42 minutes ago | parent
Nah, it's the users. Those are resistant to change even more. When they miss deadlines that they can now blame, sometimes rightfully, on the software change
lunar_rover 1 hour ago | parent
oblio 44 minutes ago | parent
Despite what you hear techies say, "really bad software" didn't really exist before, except for some very small enterprise niches. Stuff like Windows, Photoshop or other categories that techies complain, has always hovered between "bad" and "above average" with some moments of hitting "quite good". Really bad software was software that barely did its main job.
Well, really bad software is now super cheap to create.
That won't really change software economics outside of corporate malpractice (those small enterprise niches) or regulatory capture.
Average software is probably only marginally cheaper and good software will be as expensive as always because expectations have shifted up.
jruohonen 1 hour ago | parent
I am not sure about the word choice, but they, ...
> European governments
probably like BDSM or something.
lowkeyokay 1 hour ago | parent
The article mentions that the (38) test persons had reported some frustrations with typography, and track-changes during the test.
tokai 49 minutes ago | parent
Grombobulous 5 minutes ago | parent
I’d even go as far as arguing that it’s priced very fairly and rather low compared to software of similar complexity. It’s priced low enough that pretty much any business of any size can justify the cost.
I use OnlyOffice to handle documents and spreadsheets when I need to, but if I was doing that on a daily basis I’d absolutely pay for an Office license.
lakeviewterrace 1 minute ago | parent
Best Latvian office suite?
sanskritical 1 hour ago | parent
I hate Microsoft. I hate having to use Windows. But nobody in the free software community has ever made this not a nightmare. I suppose I might take a picture of the fucked up product and ask Claude if it can fix my fucking labels. That might actually work.
toomuchtodo 1 hour ago | parent
apercu 28 minutes ago | parent
gavmor 27 minutes ago | parent
orangesilk 6 minutes ago | parent
that never existed. While Microsoft has published a specification of their file formats, the never described how to render them. So a clone cannot make it look like Microsoft Office.
Blame it on Microsoft. Stop the vendor lockin and leave Microsoft today
galaxyLogic 4 minutes ago | parent
wg0 1 hour ago | parent
stackghost 51 minutes ago | parent
realusername 11 minutes ago | parent
It's happening, although it's just the beginning
fn-mote 1 hour ago | parent
selimthegrim 39 minutes ago | parent
mentalgear 33 minutes ago | parent
JoeAltmaier 28 minutes ago | parent
quesera 19 minutes ago | parent
lakeviewterrace 7 minutes ago | parent
asanineassasin 1 hour ago | parent
nradov 57 minutes ago | parent
scosman 1 hour ago | parent
https://github.com/scosman/freecell
So far it’s GPU accelerated (GPUI), cross platform, supports 95% of excel functions, supports charts, is about 40x faster than Numbers, and can render 240fps.
I thought I’d leave this process with a new appreciation for manual dev/details. I haven’t found that yet. I’m getting more into architecture details, writing more benchmarks, testing more. I know there are limits, but I’m still trying to find them.
It would be absolute garbage if I wasn’t already an engineer. It probably is absolute garbage in ways I don’t know because I haven’t read the code. But the app is… quite good. If someone invested into something like this full-time for 6 months it's hard to imagine what you'd need excel for.
quesera 33 minutes ago | parent
But this collision seems inauspicious.
scosman 26 minutes ago | parent
The card game and computer version predate windows -- it's not a MSFT creation.
quesera 23 minutes ago | parent
(but I did not downvote, I suspect that's other peoples' opinions about your optimism :)
NetMageSCW 29 minutes ago | parent
nikanj 56 minutes ago | parent
Any day now.
Orygin 47 minutes ago | parent
NetMageSCW 35 minutes ago | parent
fsflover 31 minutes ago | parent
Orygin 29 minutes ago | parent
oskcwidjwjxjwjj 11 minutes ago | parent
kjuulh 24 minutes ago | parent
galaxyLogic 7 minutes ago | parent