Lyon Drops Microsoft to Boost Digital Sovereignty
digitrendz.blog
digitrendz.blog
The Microsoft vs ICC situation seems similar. IT independence is now taken serious at governemental organisations. Our ingroup got a problem.
There’s a Hacker News thread here that goes into more detail:
It looks and feels very similar to ms office (So easier to adopt than libre)
https://www.onlyoffice.com/document-editor.aspx?docs=downloa...
https://www.onlyoffice.com/spreadsheet-editor.aspx?docs=down...
(Edited to remove statement saying paid product, as it's free with enterprise offerings as below)
I think OnlyOffice focusing on web based collaboration only is on point. It is what organizations want today and what users expect.
Or at least the government could pay for security audits.
Also, in some cases there are research agencies doing some work as well (sometimes they have been doing it for a long time on not-so-sexy but vital projects like Inria and the open source tax code in France).
That said, Birmingham UK turned a £38 million Oracle Financials project into a £90 million failure after including re-implementation costs. That kind of stuff probably isn't replaceable, simply because they spent all the money.
The last thing we need is cheap consulting messing with open source projects. I don't want TCS and Accenture developing libreoffice or stuff like that and turn it into shit
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
What bugs are stopping you?
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/foss_funding_vanishes...
La Suite Numerique is a bunch of tools for a more global population. It's mostly for government workers I guess but it looks like anyone can use it. The most famous tool is Tchap (see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)>) which is used by cops in France as a secure messaging platform.
The French government has been investing in open source for quite a long time now, just not on sexy and high-visibility projects.
FWIW I’m no fan of Trump, but I’m even less of a fan of this bipolar tribalism.
https://lwn.net/Articles/1013776/
So it's not so easy, although yes, of course it's better to avoid depending on an hostile and powerful nation.
That for software/protocol/file formats (and hardware programing interfaces...).
It is much easier to say than done, and when you read that, often it is to apply pressure on microsoft pricing only without a real intent to start to "digitally assume themselves".
Keep in mind: there is ZERO, Z-E-R-O, economic competition with big tech as they are backed by funds with thousands of billions of $ and they their billions of $ too. They will spend anybody out of business (~usually 5-10 years, even longer), and "buy" anybody (then throw them away once lock-in is assured).
For instance: libreoffice is horrible (c++ grotesque syntax complexity is the culprit), PDF file format is insane (I cannot event download the specs with noscript/basic (x)html browsers!). Better write simple utf8 text files along with some PNG images mkv(AV1/OPUS) video if needed.
Basically, you need to generate programmatically the PDF files of the administration since there are no "reasonable" (as far as I know) open source software to do so (often c++, then excluded de-facto).
When dealing with an ultra-complex file format which cannot be dodged, usually a good way to deal with it is to only use a very simple but coherent subset and enforce this usage with validation tools.
For instance, the web, noscript/basic (x)html (or you are jailed in the 2.5 web engines of the whatng cartel).
With PDF, I dunno much of the format (since I did not manage to download easily the specs), but when I have to print some text, I have a very small PDF generator for that (written ~25 years ago, so no utf-8 for me).
But what's important: such attempt must be sided with re-assessing the pertinence of the usage of the information systems, and yes, it will annoying and much less comfy and that MUST be acknowledged before even trying.
And big tech is not the only one trying hard to do vendor and developer lock-in.
Hopefully, its API a C API bridge for interop.
But pydyf pretends to go up to PDF 1.7: this is kind of arrogant due to the file format complexity.
That's why such tools are not enough: what's important is to evaluate and to assess a subset of the PDF format, that to reduce significantly the technical cost of ownership and exit cost, and maybe use such tools to write also validation tools in order to enforce the usage of that subset of PDF.
Very often, complex file formats (open or not) end up being generated and consumed by one program.
A warning: big tech and its minions will fight super hard everything that is simple, stable in table and does a good enough job (like noscript/basic (x)html for nearly all online services as they were working a few years back).
> usually a good way to deal with it is to only use a very simple but coherent subset and enforce this usage with validation tools
You’re right, that’s exactly what we do. We support a growing subset of HTML and CSS that’s documented. We also use the W3C testing suite for HTML/CSS, and PDF validators, on top of custom unit tests.
> And big tech is not the only one trying hard to do vendor and developer lock-in.
We "only" follow open specifications and refuse vendor-specific features to avoid lock-ins (equivalent closed-source tools love that). And we even love the other open-source "concurrents": ♥ to Paged.js and Vivliostyle, try them, they’re great too!
It is _EXTREMELY_ hard to justify an honnest and permanent income writing software... REALLY HARD.
Microsoft had a technically strong alternative but it was far too late.
You are part of the problem dude.