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

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597 points doener | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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rocqua ◴[07 Dec 25 15:11 UTC] No.46182235[source]▶
I doubt that Microsoft has a kill switch. Though through automatic updates they still have pretty strong sabotage capabilities.

But the OS is not where Microsofts power lies. Its in exchange (almost everywhere cloud managed, including for many governments) and SharePoint, with a small amount of teams, where Microsoft is truly a scary prospect for sovereignty.

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karussell ◴[07 Dec 25 17:18 UTC] No.46183291[source]▶
> pretty strong sabotage capabilities

Via updates they can install and run anything they want ... aka 'kill switch'.

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1. rocqua ◴[08 Dec 25 13:13 UTC] No.46191823[source]▶
Not quite. Because that requires pushing an update and only hits those who have windows automatic updates enabled. A lot of companies run those updates on a slight delay, which means they have a decent enough window to block such an update. Microsoft is a big thing to worry about when it comes to independence from the emerging fascist government of the US. But not because 'they can shut off windows'.

The short-term fear should be in enterprise cloud (See ICC judges). The long-term pain lies in blocking security updates (As happened to Russia). One might worry about malicious updates being pushed, but the legal grounds for that are flimsy to non-existent, and Microsoft has very strong business reasons to push back. So even the trump administration would be smart enough to instead target the cloud solutions. Since the legal precedent is very clear and well lubricated "providing services to sanctioned entities", and the business impact is equally crippling.