“FOSS vs. Microsoft”, the remake

Yesterday morning, our very likeable Minister for Digital Affairs, Caroline Stage Olsen, was invited to the radio show “Guest of the Week” on one of our national radio channels. Bo Fristed from the Municipality of Aarhus joined to talk about cloud services. The main topic was Caroline’s recent announcement that her ministry would “kick out” Microsoft and start using open source instead. Allegedly because we, as a society, are fed up with Microsoft’s total dominance and our total dependence on their services. Also, our local big-tech-disgust is in general somewhat amplified by Trump, his possible invasion of Greenland, the trade wars and perhaps even Netanyahu. Everybody agrees that something needs to be done.

At this point it may be worth pointing out, that some of us have in fact seen the movie before. This is a remake. And just maybe we should try to extract som learning from our past experiences.

A long time ago…

The previous movie was shot a long time ago, so many could be forgiven for thinking that this is an exciting, new story. However 20 years ago a very similar wave of open source enthusiasm rolled across the Danish public sector and much of Europe (see e.g. https://www.computerworld.dk/art/25015/gennembrud-for-open-source-i-det-offentlige). Initiatives trying to implement open source at various levels in the public administration were quite frequent during the 0’s and 10’s, until they just sort of vanished.

Back then it was also a mixture of arguments like fear of Microsoft-dependency, cost savings and the obligatory praise of open source as a superior “development model”. To make the symmetry with the situation back then almost perfect, this time around it is also LibreOffice (back then it went by the name OpenOffice) that is being dragged out of the open source stables and sent off to the races, presumably in the hopes that if you can get people to let go of their beloved Office, the “rest” will follow.

For those of us who followed the situation back then, it is sligtly confusing to watch a remake of the same movie with a new cast, but without any real changes to plot, story, props or location. We enjoy watching Caroline Stage, David Heinemeier, Bo Fristed and others perform on the big screen, but we don’t really have high hopes for a different ending (https://ing.dk/artikel/miljoeministeriet-fastholder-microsoft).

“The Rest”

One of the problems is, that “the rest” has grown a lot over the past 20 years. Things have not moved forwards towards independence and autonomy, but backwards. A public employee in Denmark in 2025 no longer opens documents from a file server running in the basement, or sends emails through the local Exchange-server. Almost all public employees in Denmark are more or less forced to use Office, Teams, OneDrive, Outlook and more, every day. All of this runs in Microsoft’s cloud. That will also have to change, if we want to get rid of Microsoft. No one really talks about this.

So why exactly would anyone expect a different ending to this remake? We are not in a better place than last time around. On the contrary.

For the past 20 years the public sector of Denmark has spent exactly zero DKK on improving open source productivity products or building open source cloud infrastructure (with the possible, a bit sad exception of GovCloud).

In the same period of time however, we have sent billions of DKK to Microsoft, courtesy of the Danish tax payers, to help them improve their products. On top of this we have, without hesitation, sent them even more billions of DKK to help them build and improve their cloud, while dismantling our own infrastructure, and moving a substantial amount of our critical services onto infrastructure that we do not control.

We’re not paying you a dime, now please compete

A Danish ministry now has the audacity to, once again, publicly, pit an arguably still “leading” (albeit somewhat jaded) open source product directly against the product portfolio and services of the world’s biggest software and services monopoly (which they themselves continue to support to the tune of millions every year), and evaluate if somehow, during the past 20 years, community-built LibreOffice has magically “overtaken” Microsoft Office in cool features and ease-of-use? Presumably they want to evaluate if their employees are as productive using open source products, as they are using the products they have been spoon-fed with since primary school. If they really prefer using Outlook through a web browser on Linux? Or if they appreciate having to upload their LibreOffice documents to OneDrive through a web browser and try to share them with their colleagues? If a spreadsheet using some obscure pivot tables feature can be opened without hickups?

If no one changes the plot and the dynamics of this story the ending is predictable: A report from a leading consultancy which shows that there is no viable “business case” for replacing Microsoft with open source alternatives. Assuming someone gets stubborn, and drags out Schrems II or GDPR, we also know how that ends. More work for busy lawyers and consultants.

How to make a new ending

Products and services require a market, not the other way round. Currently there is no meaningful market for European open source software or open source cloud services.

If we really want a new ending this time around, we need to change the narrative, the perspective and most importantly, the market dynamics. An ending where monopolies are kicked out and we end up channeling billions into creating a thriving European tech industry would, in my view, be a happier ending.

If, this time around, the Danish state actually has the stated, political goal of autonomy, data sovereignty, of actually being able to run our own country ourselves; and this is in fact supported by a parliament majority, we need to follow through with real financing and real directives to the entire public sector. Products and services from US tech giants should not even be considered, and as current contracts and obligations run out, they should be disallowed for all new public tenders. Public tenders should require all software used to be either European (i.e. owned and developed by a European owned entity) or open source, or both. All hosting and cloud services should also be European (i.e. owned and managed by a fully European owned entity) and be required to use only European/open source software because, yes, the situation in the server rooms is as dire as on the desktops, with VMware et al. running the show.

This would of course be a shock to “the market” (in my opinion a good one), but it would also almost instantly create a new market where none is today. In fact it would create a real market, a market with regulated trade, a market where corporate taxes are actually paid, a market with real competition.

Not free as in beer

For good measure, let me point out that open source software is not about saving money. Open source software is about freedom and free markets, as opposed to closed source and monopolies. Community-driven software like LibreOffice were all the rage last time the Danish public sector experimented with driving out Microsoft. The experiment failed. How about trying something different this time? Like paying real money for real products and services. Money that actually creates products, jobs and innovation in Europe.

A few pointers

To round off, let me point out a few exceptional open source projects that have, if not thrived, then survived while trying to create a sustainable business model for themselves. If someone in the Danish administration really wants to break free from Microsoft dominance, I would suggest directly supporting some of these projects, or companies trying to build a business around them, with real orders and real money.

• Rocket.Chat – a great chat solution from Brazil with good mobile apps.
• MiroTalk – a simple but great video conferencing solution from Italy.
• OnlyOffice DocSpace – a great Office solution with word processor, spreadsheets, presentations. Includes Windows/Mac apps, mobile apps and a web portal. From Latvia and yes – it has Russian ties but is open source.
• Stalwart – a great mail and calendar server from the UK.
• RoundCube – a great web mail client from Switzerland which can be extended with calendaring.
• Authelia – a community-driven single sign-on solution that may be used for consolidated login to all the apps listed above.

These are just a few of my favourite projects, and incidentally a short compilation of software that I think could be used to replace a typical suite of (Microsoft) productivity apps. Others of course have other favourites, that is the nature of an open, functioning market. Support those. The important thing here is to actually support and use something, instead of aimlessly continuing to donate billions of tax money to an eco-system revolving around a de-facto monopoly, while delivering empty talks about freedom and data sovereignty. Continuing like we have done for the past 20 years will in the end be much more costly than changing course.