
Europe is living under Microsoft’s digital killswitch - andmarios
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/05/10/europe-is-living-under-microsofts-digital-killswitch/
======
danarmak
Although it's not said explicitly in the article, there's an interpretation of
the subject that is both literal and true.

Microsoft distributes constant opaque silent updates to all modern Windows
systems. With Windows 10, some editions cannot even postpone installing those
updates for long. An update deliberately bricking Windows computers, targeted
to all of Europe, a country, an organization, or an individual's home. That
is, quite literally, a digital killswitch.

Of course Microsoft the company wouldn't do such a thing as long as it's
following its own interests. But, being an non-EU entity, it could conceivably
be forced by US authorities. Or, of course, the secure distribution channel
could be hacked. It's far more likely that an attacker would distribute an
update that merely backdoors all systems; but if done as an act of war (or
terrorism), bricking is a somewhat plausible goal.

As the article correctly notes, the same problem affects most other software;
it's just that Microsoft Windows is both so widely used and so infrastructure-
critical (you can't replace it with a different OS and keep running your
native Windows applications). OSX and iOS have minority market shares and you
can buy competing products. Android phones and Linux distributions don't have
a single update channel for all of them. Non-operating-system software
generally isn't installed on most computers and has alternatives for most of
its users. Windows is in a pretty unique position.

~~~
zanny
> Android phones and Linux distributions don't have a single update channel
> for all of them

This is pretty much saying that, because an OS is open source, that means
anyone can put it on almost anything and sell it, so the fact that the
original developer can't control _all possible_ distributions of the software
that said software is untenable.

In practice, that is not how it works. You don't approach broad deployments of
Android or, say, RHEL while getting supplied by a half dozen different OEMs.
You pick one and stick to it. In much the same way Windows shops work - you
normally either go with just Dell or just HP.

Hell, you can't lump Linux and Android in the same boat either. Vendors never
guarantee perpetual phone OS updates on Android, because they always abandon
their devices. The exception might be Google, maybe, with one of their device
series from the last 5 years _since_ the Nexus 4 which did get dropped, but
you might be able to get a perpetual update contract with them for an extended
support period. I have no idea.

But for something at Government scale, adopting Android is actually really
trivial. At least it used to be - you could have just approached Cyanogen to
support _all_ devices with a guaranteed support period. Now I'm not sure if
there is a corporate entity to barter with backing Lineage, but the same
principal applies. There _are_ ways around Android's horrible update model.

For desktop Linux, though, its no competition. You will always be going to one
vendor, using that one vendor, and getting consistent updates from that
singular vendor. Be it Dell or Red Hat or Canonical or whomever you plan to
contract with. They aren't going to be throwing Gentoo randomly on a couple of
your thousand Ubuntu boxes, and if you want they will certainly preconfigure
the images to point the update servers to your own self hosted ones to control
updates if you really want to.

~~~
Qwertystop
True, but there's still a difference: One organization will homogenously use a
single distributor/vendor/update channel within itself, sure. But different
organizations might use different vendors, or even different sections of an
organization if they're bureaucratically separated enough (e.g. not sharing
budgets and IT staff).

If you're running Windows, you're getting it from Microsoft, end of story.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> If you're running Windows, you're getting it from Microsoft, end of story.

You talk as if nobody ever bootlegged Windows.

~~~
jdbernard
In the context of a large government agency that wants support and ongoing
updates, yeah. Nobody bootlegs Windows.

~~~
thaumasiotes
That can change, once you've assumed that Microsoft can't legally deal with
them.

~~~
i336_
So... the reason it's so trivial to locate Windows and Office, and the reason
why KMSPico et exist... is so that the latest version of Windows - and updates
- actually propagate, er, _fully_.

Presumably so that Microsoft doesn't get bad press, and maybe due to (shady
but arguable) legal implications.

Oh _wow_.

------
Osiris
This is a poorly written article. Under the heading "What's the problem":

> IT systems of European governments mostly run on Microsoft software and OS
> [...] that means that almost all of the data of European citizens — tax
> information, health records, etc. — along with security related data, are in
> proprietary file format...

> The problem with the proprietary file format is that Microsoft’s software is
> made to be incompatible with open source, which effectively forces all
> communicating departments within a government to use the company’s products,
> in order to ensure compatibility of files and ease of communication.

The operating system that runs on a system has no bearing on how the data for
various applications is stored. As far as I know, Microsoft isn't providing
the applications that store "tax information, health records, etc.", unless
the governments are using Excel and Word to keep all that information rather
than a database.

Even so, if they are using Excel/Word, the Office Open XML file formats are
ISO/IEC standards, not proprietary.

There may be some problem of vendor lock-in here, but this article seems to
have no idea what the real problem is.

~~~
Maarten88
> This is a poorly written article.

This article seems to originate from the Netherlands, drumming up anti
Microsoft rhetoric that was very prevalent a few years ago here.

It is important to understand with these types of articles, that Microsoft and
their local partner companies (disclosure: such as the one I work for) has
competitors who stand to benefit from stories like these. Other companies
(like IBM, Oracle working with local ISV's and service companies) want to sell
their, also propriety, but non-Microsoft based solutions. They promote
independence from Microsoft as a feature of their software, and have budget to
hire PR firms and run a lobby too, just like Microsoft.

But their solutions often come with a worse type of vendor lock-in. The Oracle
type. In the Netherlands, most public backend administrative software is not
based on Microsoft technology, and it is completely closed, unable to
integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's.

The article states that Microsoft makes 2 billion in the EU public sector, I
don't know if that is true, but in the Netherlands spending on Microsoft
software is somewhere around 1-2% of total public IT spending, and I'd say
they provide relatively good value for that.

~~~
djrogers
> unable to integrate with (Microsoft based) front end systems or web api's.

It's not 1992 - Oracle databases can integrate with all sorts of web APIs and
front end systems. You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but
it's a little over the top to claim that it can't be done.

~~~
nickpsecurity
" You may not like how its done or how much it costs, but it's a little over
the top to claim that it can't be done."

It can't be done in a business if the vendor decides it costs too much or will
be done in a way unsupported for good reasons. Whereas, with FOSS, they might
pay someone to fix that or someone might do it themselves. The arbitrary costs
and limitations the proprietary vendors can force on locked-in users is an
important risk of their model for users.

------
kardianos
I have used Linux as my primary desktop system for over ten years. Usability
really sucks. I'm not talking about a new UX model, systemd vs sysv, or
wayland vs xorg. I'm talking about not needing to know about unix-isms to run
a desktop operating system. Gnome and KDE are okay-ish now.

Honestly the best desktop system for linux I've seen is Deepin
[https://www.deepin.org/en/](https://www.deepin.org/en/) , which is produced
by a Chinese based group and marketed mainly at Chinese audiences.

It installs updates on reboot, which removes many corner cases for desktop
users. It has a nice dedicated admin panel that feels like a single interface
rather than 20 different panels glued together. It focuses on efficient
desktop use rather than some new hotness UI concept which Unity and Gnome3
both got infatuated with. The desktop interface is fast and gets out of your
way, but providing useful quick tools to open, close, and switch apps.

Why do I think governments haven't used more open source? Because we care more
about systemd vs sysv then a single good consistent UI. Because we think
writing desktop components in javascript and python will give good (enough)
performance that won't feel sluggish; hint, they won't. Because coders (often)
care more about how their code looks, using the slow interpreted language they
know, or "getting the job done" (as they define it), then they do about
concrete performance evaluation, benchmarking, and end user use cases and long
term person off the street testing.

Sorry, that was kinda a rant. But seriously, checkout the deepin desktop. New
users can be really productive in it quickly and maintain it themselves.

~~~
morsch
I use OS X, Windows 10 and Gnome 3 pretty much every day. They're all okay. I
like Gnome best, and Windows least. But they all do the job, and they're way
more similar than they are different. In contrast, 10 to 15 years ago, the
user experience was wildly different on each of them.

But it's moot anyway. Browser apps will continue to displace desktop apps, and
they don't really care which operating system you're running. European
governments would be well served to somehow supply their administrations (as
well as the general public) with a first-class alternative to Google Docs.
Extra requirements: self-hostable, (even more) extensible.

~~~
rossng
So, Collabora Online[1]

[1]
[https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/](https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/)

~~~
qznc
Also, Open Xchange [https://www.open-xchange.com/](https://www.open-
xchange.com/)

------
andmarios
Imo the thing with the public sector, is that it is so large that it probably
could fund both an OS and a productivity suite easily and that would be a net
gain, both from a freedom perspective and for the economy at large.

I am all for entrepreneurship and I do think that companies and competition
create progress. But when one company reaches the level of Microsoft, where
every year we learn how many billions Bill Gates' bank account increased —I do
know that he helps with his money but still, his bank account does increase—,
it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.

~~~
gnode
> it just takes money off the market. Hoarding is bad.

Like anyone with significant wealth, Bill Gates's wealth is mostly in non-cash
investments, whereby the capital is used for enterprise.

A more sensible argument might be that Microsoft is successful because of
anti-competitive practises / exploiting a monopoly, rather than adding value.

~~~
enugu
Even if it was hoarded as cash, this shouldnt matter. Less meal tickets
floating around means that the each ticket gets more food. If Bill Gates is
using the money for consuming resources(say making a huge building), this
affects the economy as there is an opportunity cost(the consumed resources
could have been used elsewhere). One exception is monetary crises where
hoarding has a negative impact, but thats not the usual situation.

There is a strong case for redistribution of wealth on its own terms and
social good.

------
bradford
[disclaimer, MS employee here]

Question: If governments could inspect and audit MS source code, would the
concerns brought up in the article be addressed?

This is a clarifying question, not a loaded one. To avoid any surprises:
governments, including the EU can and do audit MS source code (public source,
for example: [https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-
gover...](https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/microsoft-lets-eu-governments-
inspect-source-code-for-security-issues.2433915/))

~~~
jlg23
The code review opportunities are joke. The only chance to review a mere
million lines of codes thoroughly is to throw a million eyes on it and open
communication about findings.

The way those are done now, they are Valium for politicians and a cash cow for
those doing the "audits".

~~~
tormeh
>a million eyes on it and open communication about findings

That's what the Chinese government does internally. Ba-dum-tssh.

------
eksemplar
The thing people in technology forget is that the most expensive resource in
government is the people who work there. Every person in my IT department is
top of their game, everyone of them has been continually honing their skill
sets and are following their interests.

This has put us a head of a lot of other municipalities and a lot of private
companies. We've had to send ADFS and Azure consultants back because our crew
was better, as an example.

Those people live and breathe Microsoft. Those people are the reason we didn't
have to renew our server room, when we decided to go own-cloud in a major
hosting center instead, and they are they reason we'll soon be able to move
our cloud from rental to Azure.

Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an
unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce. I'm certain
we could retrain our current staff, but a lot of them wouldn't want to,
because the truth is, if they wanted to be working with non-Microsoft
technologies then they would have been snatched up by our "competition"
already.

I think open source should play an important role in government, and I think
that role should increase steadily going forward, but I also think people and
reason should come before an ideology.

With 370 different IT-systems of various magnitude we already have some that
run on Linux. JBOSS and Wildfly are big in government, but out of our entire
system portfolio only a fraction of the systems even have non-Microsoft
alternatives. Other systems are on 8 year contracts, making it impossible to
swap them out overnight even if we wanted to. Which we don't because we would
need to replace every system, and get every employee on board with open source
alternatives in order to save the insignificant Microsoft licensing fees which
make up less than 1% of our IT budget.

Sure, Europe is bound to Microsoft and that can be problematic. What if Trump
truly goes apeshit for instance? Then we would be royally fucked. The truth is
that there is no viable alternative that won't be ridiculously exoensive and
take up to 50 years to fully implement.

With everything heading for the cloud it might not even make sense. The only
cloud options for a huge part of the European public sector are labeled with
Google, Amazaon or Azure - and none of them would make the legislative
challenges or licenses any less of an issue. At least with Microsoft, we have
a company who has been really open to quickly and efficiently meeting European
demands.

~~~
shmerl
_> Sure we could have used other technologies for it, but it would cost an
unimaginable amount of money to replace the entire IT-workforce._

It's worth doing it, to get rid of the sick MS lock-in. Breaking the catch 22
needs to start from somewhere.

~~~
eksemplar
Our tech guys are absolute wizards, most with a fair business understanding.
Replacing just one of them is around $500000 with no guarantees that we could
find someone suitable.

We're a medium sized municipality in Scandinavia sitting next to the largest
one in the country, meaning that getting good tech staff is already extremely
hard with the popular technologies.

The staff who work here now do so because of benefits or ideals, not the pay,
where we will never be able to compete. On top of that it's taken more than 25
years and five different middle managers to build the right kind of culture.

I'm sorry, but why would we ever want break that? And why on earth would we do
it to possible break free from the Microsoft lock-in 25 years from now, when
Microsoft licenses are less than 1% of our IT spending?

And that's just the tech perspective. We'd also have to reschool 7000
employees on everyday software considering how integrated the office365
platform is here. And where is the open source alternative to 365?

(I'm sorry for the wall of text if you were being sarcastic)

~~~
asdfgadsfgasfdg
> We'd also have to reschool 7000 employees on everyday software considering
> how integrated the office365 platform is here.

I'm confused did you educate them in using office365, or even in using Office
2007 (which was a big change)? I.e. were there courses they all attended? Or
did you just update them and them and they had to learn? Similar with the OS,
did they go on Windows 8 and windows 8.1 and windows 10 courses or did they
just get the update?

I agree that FLOSS lacks a great office suite alternative. I totally disagree
with the concept that if there were your users would need to be re-schooled.

~~~
eksemplar
Yes we reschooled people from 2007 to modern office.

You can't imagine how many man hours teaching one drive for business cost us.

We did a comparrison of open office and google docs vs ms office when we did
our business case of course. Open office lost by around 1400% with some
employees never learning it.

We don't just use office365 though, we use addons. Like automatically sending
electronic mail through APIs that integrate with the national platform while
using a custom template and journalizing into our record system.

Hell, we've build two word adding ourselves allowing citizens to digitally
sign documents with their public identification.

~~~
asdfgadsfgasfdg
> Yes we reschooled people from 2007 to modern office.

As in actual classes? How did this work? This sounds like an epic waste of
money and everyone's time.

> We did a comparrison of open office and google docs vs ms office when we did
> our business case of course. Open office lost by around 1400% with some
> employees never learning it.

Yeah we've all done reports like this. They are usually an epic waste of time
as usually everyone knows the answer they want before they start... I'm
surprised that you managed to get results that were that favorable for the
desired answer though - openoffice.org and the more recent Libre Office kept a
similar UI to MS office 2003.

> We don't just use office365 though, we use addons. Like automatically
> sending electronic mail through APIs that integrate with the national
> platform while using a custom template and journalizing into our record
> system.

Sounds like 10-30 LOC each if you ran on FOSS systems (although obviously it
is hard to tell without knowing what your exact requirements were) - I'm sure
office365 saves you time/money in other ways though.

> Hell, we've build two word adding ourselves allowing citizens to digitally
> sign documents with their public identification.

Did you build libreoffice extensions as well? Or do you expect citizens to
subscribe to your software choices? I don't mind what you do for internal
software but forcing everyone to use the same software as you is a bad use of
tax money.

~~~
eksemplar
Every citizen who doesn't opt out of it, is a digitized citizen.

That means they have a two-factor identity and an secured electronic mailbox
hosted by us in the cloud.

So what our addons do is it allows a caseworker to send a document as a PDF
directly to a citizen, who can then follow a link to our document signing
server and sign it online. They don't need any kind of software to do so,
because everything is supplied by us.

If they don't have a computer they can use one at a library our at our town
hall. (Which run ubuntu by the way)

I get that you think we wanted office to win in our business case. That's not
true, we simply show the political level the facts and they act accordingly.

------
submeta
I tried to migrate to Ubuntu in 2011 and gave up because I was missing apps
like Evernote or Visio. - I moved away from MS products in 2015, replaced my
Thinkpad + Windows 7 with a Mac, replaced MS Visio with Omnigraffle, abandoned
Visual Basic and migrated to web Apps (Django mainly). The only MS product I
use is MS Office (via a subscription) on my Mac.

This article made me think: Do I really need MS Office? Occasionally I use
Word for 1 to 10 page documents. Then there is MS Excel. I used to use it to
do data analysis with it, used Pivot Tables extensively. But now I mostly use
it for simple tables. Finally there's PowerPoint. I have created many
businesses plans with it. (I used MS Access as well, to create quick line of
business solutions, but I'm trying to do this in Python + Django now.)

Now I'm considering trying to move away from MS Office as well. Because
actually all that keeps me using it is a vague feeling that I might miss
something if I don't. Or others expecting me to send them Office documents
(instead of Libre Office) - Germany is MS Office land.

~~~
Lev1a
Another German here. I have abandoned MS Office in favor of
OpenOffice/LibreOffice years ago and when I have to send documents I just send
.pdf's but if I REALLY had to send .doc, .xls etc. LibreOffice can im- and
export those formats too.

------
lucb1e
There is lots of truth in this. I've been saying all of this for years and am
trying to raise awareness whenever I get the opportunity, while not trying to
be pushy (that just doesn't work, people need to want to). Two highlights of
the article:

> European children are educated in Microsoft Office, which is given to
> schools and universities for free, which some call the “crack model” —
> getting people hooked for free and then start charging them.

God this is so true. Every year emails go out "you can get office for free via
$ourSchoolName!" What do you mean indoctrination and free advertisement? I
wanted to reply to all with a message in a similar tone (about libreoffice
being free and not a trial) but never found a good phrasing that would do
anything beyond provoke a backlash (also when discussing it with like-minded
friends).

> Security risk

All eggs (not just "all your eggs", no, _all_ eggs) in one basket is a
terrible idea for obvious reasons.

------
cmurf
I'm not overly sympathetic, governments should be doing more to support open
source software. Public money should be used to make public software. The idea
of using public money to support proprietary software and formats really bugs
me. If you want to do this for your own personal or business reasons, fine.
But public resources should be used to make existing public owned (effectively
we all own free open source software) software better.

------
amiga-workbench
Government systems simply should not be running proprietary software.

~~~
batrat
I agree with you, but... There is a HUGE problem with this statement.

90% of the devices that are bought require windows. Every single microscope,
ID reader, card reader, access system, detection system, defence devices,
advanced cameras, radars, etc. provide drivers and/or software, that I know,
offer drivers/apps only for windows.

Even they make a plan to move from windows, it will take years, in this time,
every acquisition will be made for windows. A common use for these
devices/pc's is more than 5 years. Heck i've seen tools that are used even
after 15 years because they worked and no money/desire to replace them.

Of course you can negotiate, or request support for other operating systems,
but that means extra money, training, etc. Even in the current state it's hard
to get good IT people, programmers, sysadmins, etc. It will be harder to get
linux admins. Also it will take years to teach people to use another OS.

And to end: have you seen custom software made for governments? 50% just slap
a program that requires x version of .net, some c++ redistributable and
requires to run only as admin or only xp, 40% just slap a java abomination or
applet and call it a day, 9% make a nice piece of software but just like
everyone else after they deliver the software they forget about the support or
patch 1-2 things and they are gone. ALL OF THIS is happening mainly because
the state doesn't have trained people and they don't know what to ask from
devs & because they don't give a shi*t about they money they spend.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I've often thought that the British government should have an in-house team of
developers to work on services for local authorities and public facing
institutions.

It seems every time a contractor gets involved the tax-payer gets a good
fucking, think of all the accrued billable hours taken up by redundant layers
of manglement pontificating, the endless reworks and finally the extortionate
support contract to keep the end product limping along.

------
alphabettsy
I would much rather see governments embrace and contribute to Open Source
software available to all, they could even pay 3rd parties to maintain and
service.

~~~
Osiris
Some have tried and have gone back to Windows[1]

[1] [https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-
of-...](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/02/11/1930217/the-city-of-munich-
now-wants-to-abandon-linux-and-switch-back-to-windows)

~~~
hutzlibu
But there are som hints, that the decision to "go back" might have been
politicaly motivated. Like relocating the microsoft central in germany to
munich ...

But on the other hand, there were many flaws in the system, but many in the
OSS-community did not want to acknowledge, because it is easier to shift the
blame to evil conspiring microsoft, than to admit, that linux and libre office
is not perfect. Which is really, really stupid, because how can it be
technically as good and polished as microsoft products, given there is so much
more money behind them. And even though the linux kernel might be now even
better than microsoft - that is not at all the case for Desktop, Drivers,
Stability, Programms, etc.

------
OldBlueBear
This shows just shows how stupid the guys who contract for (EU) government IT,
and their political masters who are supposed to be directing them. Any
software that not built from the ground up to be secure is unlikely to be, it
is not something that can be bolted on. Various version of Windows needed to
be heavenly hacked to meet even the most basic DoD-CETCS (RedBook) standard
back in the 1990s. And I doubt it is any better now. That some public services
dumped Microsoft years ago suggest this lock-in problem is almost as old as
commercial computing.

~~~
ordu
I cannot believe they are stupid. On the contrary they are clever enough to
side with MS.

------
fimdomeio
When this news circulated around one month ago in Portugal it was put in more
harsh terms as somewhat a form of digital colonialism.

------
jagermo
I watched Munich trying to change to Linux, they even created a LiMux, a
special distribution.

In my opinion, the biggest problem was UI and design. LiMux and all its
programs just look like something that has been thought up in the 90s. No
modern UI, no sleek design.

In addition, the interoperability is horrible. Its just not fun to work with
something like that, not when you come home to an iPad oder a Windows 10
machine.

If there was any chance to roll out something other than Microsoft (or Apple,
for that matter), government bodies must invest into the UI. If people have to
fight with the OS and its applications every step of the way, it will never be
accepted.

------
amelius
For other industries, roles may be reversed.

For example, another headline could be: the US is living under ASML's digital
killswitch

------
shmerl
Time to ditch Windows for Linux.

~~~
wil421
Large Organizations like Microsoft, Oracle, and the like because they have
support numbers to call when things go wrong. Oracle is the top offender I
dislike integrating with their products but it's hard to get decision makers
in IT to look elsewhere. No ones lost a job buying oracle as the saying goes.

I'm not familiar Linux support. Not sure what Red Hat has going on for desktop
support.

~~~
danieldk
_Not sure what Red Hat has going on for desktop support._

If you are a reasonably large government body with a budget, I am pretty sure
that Red Hat will provide desktop support if you pay them.

Moreover, it is likely that desktop support will become more and more trivial
as administrative applications will probably move towards web apps as well.

------
Taek
If I were a country that was not allied with the US, or otherwise feared
potential power plays by the US against my nation, I would not use any closed
source software originating from the US.

Same applies to China, to Russia, and any other nation with a well funded
cybersecurity division.

A nation could order a software producer under their jurisdiction to write an
automatic updater pushing malware to collect:

National secrets

Credentials

Access to critical systems

And who knows what else if we are being creative. We use our computers for
everything. Coded source software, especially with automatic updates, is
systemic risk and it's going to bite a lot of people really badly if a cyber-
competent nation ever decides to initiate WW3

------
msabalau
Amusing that this article is going out as Europe is being hammered by
ransomware on unpatched Windows computers.

If the US wanted to take out all EU computers, presumably they'd use an
airburst nuke, and target all the electronics, not just the Windows boxes. Of
course, if things got that bad, presumably the "logical" course of action
would be to scour the continent, rather than let a pissed off high skilled
population live to join Putin.

~~~
sqeaky
War is not about killing your enemy and breaking his things. That is the job
of warriors, but not how you win a war.

It would immensely benefit the US in a war with Europe to silently snoop on
all those systems and act like we couldn't. Use the information to perform
lower cost higher gain military operations.

Killing the populace En masse makes nothing but enemies, but leveraging
information can make you friends. Imagine if the US used is massive
infiltration to find people sympathetic to its cause and gave them guns and
bombs with Russian labeling. Those people do most of the damage in the country
and we swoop in with targeted precision bombing and cost effective troop
deployments to arrest huge amounts of heads of states and legislatures. We
could defeat Europe in a year and at least some portions of Europeans would
thank us. Then we move on to the part the US sucks at, occupying.

------
nebabyte
Micro "It's not like we can just flip a switch" soft

(Though I guess it requires a broader umbrella of 'MS dickery with networks'
as the Xbone debacle was you being forced to be online at MS' behest, and this
is sort of the opposite)

------
partycoder
And most countries on Earth are living under Monsanto's food killswitch.

------
keth
I always wonder why the european countries don't work together to build their
own software. Or at least a single country looking at germany, where each city
seems to brew it's own stuff.

------
Xoros
Well, regarding today's massive ransomware attack based on a Microsoft
security flaw, it's a little bit ironic

------
nom
Hm, what operating systems are used by governments outside of Europe? Doesn't
everybody have to rely on Windows?

------
booleandilemma
Is there any possibility that China has a hardware backdoor in our iPhones?
(and whatever other devices they make?)

------
ps28
i went thru all the comments here and maybe it's a dumb question - but I'd
assumed that the situation described applies to all/most governments? Is the
situation vastly different e.g. in the U.S.?

------
Theodores
I think there is a bigger problem - using Microsoft Office means that an
organisation is stuck in 1990's ways of working. The web should replace these
tools that were developed for personal computers that came with floppy disk
drives instead of ethernet connections.

Companies 'stuck' on old-fashioned Microsoft Office also have to present
information to customers and internal stakeholders, so they hire a 'web
department' that then becomes the new typing pool. Instead of dictated or
hand-written things that get typed up on 'Wordperfect' (MS Office killed the
typing pool for good), we now have Word documents or Excel spreadsheets that
some 'web person' has to then copy onto some CMS or other system powered by a
SQL database.

I did open a 'legacy spreadsheet' today so I appreciate that there is still
some life in having data that way, however I cannot remember the last time I
had a use case for a wordprocessor, Microsoft or otherwise.

I also know Microsoft do 'sharepoint' and a few other web things but not many
'real' websites have gone for the Redmond solution, 10% according to the
survey I just Googled:

[https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-...](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/02/27/february-2017-web-
server-survey.html)

Although 10% isn't quite into Windows Phone territory of pointlessness, I
can't imagine setting out today with a new project and instantly thinking
'Microsoft'.

I think the Microsoft problem will cure itself much like how the old typing
pool died - people get old, they retire, new people come along and learn how
to do stuff with the new tools, the more efficient processes and the demands
of the time.

~~~
SCHiM
I honestly can't imagine using any other tools to do my job than office. As a
student I tried the Google suite/docs and years of usage has me relieved that
I could leave them behind. Thinking back the only thing I remember about them
is the instances of them not working or not working correctly. Printing was a
mess. Left/right clicking to open more complex interfaces would often
interfere with native browser/system functionality.

There are no true alternatives in my opinion. Everything else just does not
cut it. Websites are slow and more often than not come with all kinds of
garbage. Such as advertisements and the latest and greatest font or version
1.25.2.3 of whatever.js (that developers insist must not get cached because
they use continuous integration! (note '&t=' parameters when GETting a
script)).

No please, PLEASE, let me keep my efficient clean familiar office
applications. They are everything I need, I think it's great not much has
changed about the basics since they were introduced. I love the fact that I
can sit down behind office 2016 and office 2000 and be just as productive when
working with simple documents. I love the fact that my dad, whom I often
support with computer related stuff, did not even notice the update from word
2003 to 2010.

~~~
sqeaky
I am surprised to hear that you say that the difference between office 2000
and 2016 is not so big.

I find that sharing files between them is huge pain and that the UI is totally
different.

Have you considered LibreOffice, it is at least as fast as ms office, but can
work with files from any version of ms office or other programs. It also
doesn't cost money, which you didn't mention, but is a concern for most
people.

As for letting "your software", as the article made clear it is not yours. You
keep them at the pleasure of microsoft. If they ship an update that breaks
them you are screwed. If they decide that your version of office is too old
for your new version of windows they can ship an update that breaks it and
they are financially incentivized to do so.

