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The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source

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597 points doener | 5 comments | 07 Dec 25 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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GnarfGnarf ◴[07 Dec 25 13:48 UTC] No.46181666[source]▶
I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all national governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic sovereignty. I'm sure Microsoft, under orders from the U.S. government, could disable all computers in any country or organization, at the flick of a switch.

Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit.

Apart from a few niche cases, the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software.

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crazygringo[dead post] ◴[07 Dec 25 14:32 UTC] No.46181927[source]▶
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homarp ◴[07 Dec 25 14:40 UTC] No.46181988[source]▶
indeed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44336915 - Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342 - ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

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crazygringo ◴[07 Dec 25 14:45 UTC] No.46182023[source]▶
Yup.

Microsoft pledged not to intervene like that again, reclassifying its legal interpretation of its own services, and added language to its contracts to guarantee that it would fight future US attempts to do so:

https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

When the US manages to force Microsoft to do something, it responds by trying to protect itself from the same scenario in the future. Because it wants profits. The ICC leaving Microsoft is the last thing Microsoft wanted.

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dietr1ch ◴[07 Dec 25 14:50 UTC] No.46182052[source]▶
oh, pinky promise? sure, let's keep sovereignty at stake then, all good.
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crazygringo ◴[07 Dec 25 14:52 UTC] No.46182070[source]▶
Lengthy contracts between nation-states and corporations, developed and reviewed by teams of lawyers, and enforced by judges, are not exactly "pinky promises."
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1. zelphirkalt ◴[07 Dec 25 15:24 UTC] No.46182347[source]▶
They will become pinky promises, once Microsoft gets ordered to do something by orange man or some three letters. There isn't really anything Microsoft can do about that, unless they decide to move headquarters and lots of employees out of the US. It basically doesn't matter what they have in contracts, as US law or just political power with access to enforce that power trumps (ha) any contracts they can sign.
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2. crazygringo ◴[07 Dec 25 17:07 UTC] No.46183183[source]▶
> There isn't really anything Microsoft can do about that, unless they decide to move headquarters and lots of employees out of the US.

Actually there is, that's what the entire point of the sovereign clouds are. They reside physically in Europe, with legal control by Europeans, and European employees that can't be bossed around by the US. If the US orders Amazon to retrieve data from S3 servers located in a European sovereign cloud, Amazon employees in the US don't have the technical capability to do so, and the European data center employees are legally bound not to.

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3. homarp ◴[07 Dec 25 19:55 UTC] No.46184567[source]▶
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_c...

"Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty: Under oath in French Senate, exec says it would be compelled – however unlikely – to pass local customer info to US admin"

4. homarp ◴[07 Dec 25 19:57 UTC] No.46184583[source]▶
and in reverse https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/27/canada_court_ovh/
5. zelphirkalt ◴[07 Dec 25 21:18 UTC] No.46185248[source]▶
If those employees were working in a vacuum, then sure, but in reality they are not.

Employees have bosses and those bosses have bosses, and those bosses have bosses in the US. If not direct bosses, then at least people higher up in the context of all of Microsoft, who can pull strings, criticize them, categorize them as unreliable, and make their life hard, or even bring into motion that they are made to give up their position or are let go. Most people don't want a hard life at the job and be bullied. It is likely, that people joining Microsoft don't have the strongest moral compass anyway, so them sticking their neck out for European data protection, and losing what comfy life they have, including probably exceptional ...

Company politics are not to be underestimated. The question becomes who selects and vetoes higher ups in those sovereign clouds.

European governments cannot trust US companies, even when they have inner-EU parts, because influence from the US cannot be rules out.