r/technology • u/waozen • 1d ago

Software Dutch tax authorities cancel Microsoft 365 cloud rollout - and turn toward open source

https://www.zdnet.com/business/dutch-tax-authorities-cancel-microsoft-365-cloud-rollout/
1.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

95 comments sorted by

182

u/piwikiwi 1d ago

About time, it is clear American companies and the us government can’t be trusted

16

u/Fitz911 1d ago

Meanwhile the people that elected the pedophiler rap(c)ist are totally trustworthy.

The whole country is super fucked up. They should start to get used to "X turning away from American Y".

They won't know it yet, but America #1 is so over. Trust was the one thing they had but couldn't touch. And just like the toddlers they are: If they can't touch it, it doesn't exist. Well, it doesn't exist anymore.

Nobody will buy their guns. So the US government will have to squeeze some more money out of the voters. Their cars were shit for decades, tariffs and stupidity gave them the rest. Nobody wants to drive those inferior shitbags.

Oh, did you know that every contract the US made with anybody included some extra steps?

"Sure, you get the Patriots! Funny story, my friend Zuckerberg told me you guys take those ... wait a second how did he call it... taxes? You guys want taxes from him? Naaaa. Those patriots don't like taxes. Not my words, it's theirs.""

Those times are over as well. They were small things. Carefully orechestrated things. They don't work anymore.

Every day when I read that those low IQ individuals have cancelled another public service I picture one of the few 100+ IQ Americans to lose it. "You canceeled WHAT???"

Like the fly thing where they cancelled the program to save what? 10? 20 millin? And just weeks later Texas was flooded with cattle eating flies. That was a good laugh!

3

u/JeffreyMarsalek 17h ago

I’m sure puppet states like Germany and other Israeli assets will continue to (be forced to) buy American stuff.

5

u/KirovNL 1d ago

We need to be treat countries like the USA, China, and Russia like the adversaries they actually are, instead of dubious allies, untrustworthy partners, and potential threats like we do now and did for the past 30+ years. This is not a new development either, it has been going on for many decades, pretty much regardless of who's in power in those countries. Perhaps Boris Yeltsin, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were the recent ones that were relatively reasonable to work with from a European perspective. Where did the 90s go? 🙈

-50

u/makumbaria 1d ago

Not a single government can be trusted.

38

u/Quantity_Lanky 1d ago

I'd trust the Swiss or the Danish governments a lot more than I would the current US administration.

4

u/KirovNL 1d ago edited 1d ago

The Danes are relentlessly trying push for chat control at an EU level, gobbling up whatever the (Anglo-American dominant) lobbyists, who are pushing for chat control, are feeding them under the guise of 'protecting children'. While the bigger names within those lobby groups are investors in the companies and sectors that develop the software needed for said chat control. So no, the Danish aren't a good example.

0

u/TheShenanegous 1d ago

Switzerland is kind of an ironic choice if you take issue with the trump administration.

Fwiw, the Swiss remained "neutral" in ww2 so they could serve as banks for the nazis amid their plundering for gold and other historical artifacts. Incidentally, after the Reich fell and was bombed to rubble, very little of the gold they stole made its way back to the original owners or their progeny.

They are practically the only country that benefited from the nazis existing.

-2

u/Fitz911 1d ago

Meanwhile America is supporting Russia in it's war. Soooo...

-37

u/makumbaria 1d ago

I would never trust any government. They would sell you if needed.

11

u/Inthehead35 1d ago

Need a hug bud?

-14

u/makumbaria 1d ago

Yes, but not from a government official!

4

u/Medical_Sandwich_171 1d ago

Pretty insane take if you just observe the last twenty to thirty years of decisions each government took, the Dutch or Swiss Vs the US.

0

u/makumbaria 1d ago

Let me explain: When I say that I don't trust any government, this includes USA too, and even my own fucking corrupt country. I'm not from US. why all you guys are concluding this?

Every government have at least one skeleton in the closet, including all European countries.

-1

u/Medical_Sandwich_171 1d ago

Sure. Name the ones from Switzerland and the Netherlands in your lifetime.

5

u/KirovNL 1d ago

Do you have a minute? The Dutch government is far from perfect. The (indirect) coverup of local pollution by the Tata steel plant, PFAS pollutions and dumping, and the use of toxic ferrous slag pretty much everywhere are a few recent examples.

0

u/Medical_Sandwich_171 1d ago

Nothing is perfect. It's a ridiculous thing to demand of a government to be perfect to be trustworthy. Truth is that the Dutch government, with all its flaws, is not systematically corrupt, anti democratic or whatever else untrustworthy governments do. It's hyperbole to say the Dutch government can't be trusted, just because it's imperfect

Although not specifically stated, I am referring to the state, not the local governing bodies. Though in my experience they too are generally trustworthy. Incompetent, sometimes, but not malignant

3

u/Vasquo 1d ago

Toeslag affaire

1

u/Medical_Sandwich_171 1d ago

44k people were mistreated, yes. It's preposterous to act like you can't trust the whole government of 18+million people over one case. That's not systematic throughout. The Netherlands has child support benefits, which shows the government on the whole is taking care of its citizens

1

u/Vasquo 20h ago

Yes 44k were mistreated, and we still don’t have a solution. It showed that government employees targeted certain groups and got away with it

Yes as a whole the Netherlands is doing fine but don’t pretend there are no skeletons in the closet

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4

u/makumbaria 1d ago

Dutch childcare benefits scandall

Swiss is all over Panama papers (country legislation protecting war criminals, international drug dealers and government corruption).

2

u/Medical_Sandwich_171 1d ago

Ridiculous. 44k people were indeed badly treated. No more on a population of 18+ million. "I don't trust the government" because of that is hyperbole. The fact that we HAVE child benefits shows we have a government FOR the people

2

u/makumbaria 20h ago

You asked for examples, but now you are trying to minimize all situations.

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11

u/Ok-Replacement9595 1d ago

Goddamn that both sides shit is old.

0

u/Fitz911 1d ago

I hate my government. That guy is an idiot. He is really an asshole.

But the one thing I have going for me is: He is super shit, but he is at least not raping children. Could be worse. Could be a pedophile anti democrat. He is just mega incompetent, but the dumbest perdon in his circle is still a genius compared to any American politician.

-1

u/Skensis 18h ago

The next step will be to move off American hardware, but that will be orders of magnitude harder.

63

u/sjaakhaakdraak 1d ago

Kinda funny to me that used a picture of Dutch flags hanging "halfstok".

9

u/Nielsly 23h ago

"Half-mast" or "half-staff" in English, same concept :)

35

u/Ok-Replacement9595 1d ago

Wise move. All these US tech corporations are working colluding with fascists, and dont deserve your money. The US tech industry is putting your into feudalism anyway.

61

u/Spez_is-a-nazi 1d ago

Microsoft maybe should have looked at its own balance sheets before embracing fascism. Roughly half of all Microsoft revenue comes from outside the United States, the US(or at least US stockholders) had a really good thing going before Trump but Trump was upset he wasn’t getting everything so now they will end up with less. The transition off of US big tech companies isn’t going to happen overnight but once those customers leave they ain’t coming back.

10

u/Drugbird 1d ago

It's not just tech companies. The world is also hesitant to buy American weapons because they're afraid the Americans will either remotely mess with those weapon systems, or spare parts/ ammunition could be denied making them useless.

You see this with the current rearming of Europe. Nato was basically convinced to spend 5% of their GDP on their militaries, which is a huge increase. But they're not spending this extra cash on American weapons. They're either building out European weapons manufacturing capabilities or buying from e.g. Ukraine.

This is also fairly unique. For the last 80 years, America has almost always used its massive soft power to ensure American weapons were bought and used by its allies.

But Trump doesn't understand soft power at all.

8

u/worst_brain_ever 1d ago

Soft power is a long term strategy.

Trump is all about the quick buck.

He knows he'll be dead when the bill for all his antics comes due.

1

u/BasvanS 1d ago

I don’t believe he thinks that far ahead. He just falls the marshmallow test on a daily basis

3

u/abloblololo 1d ago

It’s not because they’re afraid to buy US weapons, it’s only really France that tries to be autonomous. Europe still buys a shit ton of American weapons. Germany just bought F-35s, Sweden bought Patriot and HIMARS etc. However, since Europe is going through a massive rearmament it simply makes economical (and strategic) sense to spend that money “at home”. It boosts the economy and is a form of stimulus. 

1

u/TacosNGuns 22h ago

It’s normal for countries to build as much armament in country as possible. Turns preparedness into a jobs program. Also opens up export opportunities.

4

u/00GoBigOrGoHome00 1d ago

Only if Trump accounted for software and consulting services in his trade deficit calculations. Perhaps he wouldn’t have alienated much of the world.

10

u/Vasquo 1d ago

I don’t think Microsoft really has a say in this

The issue is that it’s an American company and can there fore be forced to cut off anybody the regime doesn’t like

28

u/Zomunieo 1d ago

It’s not being cut off. Lots of countries would love to cut off Microsoft.

It’s the Cloud Act. The US government can demand that cloud providers turn over data belonging to other countries, even if that data is stored in foreign data centers. It’s basically “all your database are belong to us”.

That means it’s not even a choice. You either share all of your government’s most sensitive data with the US government or maintain your sovereignty.

13

u/Quantity_Lanky 1d ago

“all your database are belong to us” lmao 

2

u/BasvanS 1d ago

If only they had a way to influence policy, then they could have argued for something to protect the company they are so expertly running.

1

u/EinSchurzAufReisen 22h ago

Germany will happily turn over all the data anf then look surprised if it backfires.

On the other hand a German data center ain’t more than some thousand fax machines connected in series with an overhead projector as admin terminal — not much we can do with that.

0

u/Altruistic_Age_6556 18h ago

And...let's not forget...Microsoft has been making shit products for decades. MS is to IT what McDonald's is to nutrition.

4

u/Spez_is-a-nazi 1d ago

It could refuse to comply, but that would require a spine and we sure as shit know the tech billionaires don’t have one. Microsoft gave a million dollars to the Trump slush, erm, inauguration fund. They are at best ok with fascism, if not an enthusiastic backer.

7

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

4

u/Vasquo 1d ago

Because they are good at what they do. There is not always a 1 to 1 alternative.

Because migration is very hard and expensive.
The us wasn’t a problem so why bother. Now there is a real reason why you want to move away from anything US based even if it’s hard, expensive and you give up features

3

u/Pandektes 21h ago

We should wean off US tech as fast as possible, even if the cost is bigger early.

2

u/moldyjellybean 23h ago

Yup look up Lidl spinning up their own version of AWS and EU companies are eager to get off US tech .

18

u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago

They're not even going Dutch about it and paying half

9

u/bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- 14h ago

Office 365 is the biggest load of shit I've ever had the displeasure of working with.

8

u/Enoxiz 22h ago

I work here and its weird to read the news on a foreign website before the news reaches us..

1

u/foo_fight3r 16h ago

This has been in the news for at least 2 weeks. So maybe that's why it's no longer showing up in US media.

4

u/airportakal 1d ago

This is great, but this news has been reported in the past months multiple times by different outlets. Every time it seems something new has happened but it's still based on the same single interview from September.

1

u/Mr_ToDo 18h ago

Looking through some of the sources, it looks like there's bits from 2022 as well

It looks like fun bureaucracy in action. They put a halt on the program and got the order to come up with an alternative by the end of 26'. The thing is, I'm not sure what the alternative would be. It sounds like they don't want single vendor, and they want viable exit strategies for whatever they do get. It's a bear to find software that can at all easily not only have your data exportable but usable in other software. I've got a bunch of old exports from things like ticket, chat, and documentation systems, but to put them in another product is like pulling teeth and will almost certainly lose parts of it in the process

I like the thought, but I want to see the plan before I get excited

5

u/Redeyti 23h ago

Good. Not enough public administrations think about the ramifications of entrusting the backbone of our societies to private corporations.

10

u/StrengthThin9043 1d ago

Using products potentially controlled by the American regime is a big security risk, as they are into authoritarianism and bullying. Europe is very exposed, and will be for a long time. This is a step in the right direction though, and may also over time prop up domestic software services.

17

u/Hrekires 1d ago

It's all fun and games until you can't port over Johanna's 2TB Excel spreadsheet that she's been writing to since 1993 and somehow breaks the wifi if anyone else messes with it.

22

u/duct_tape_jedi 1d ago

Someone needs to show Johanna what a database is.

8

u/squeagy 1d ago

Show Johanna the door.

2

u/philomathie 1d ago

Johanna don't care

1

u/L-Malvo 20h ago

Excel can be a database though

1

u/m0nk37 6h ago

So can my notepad. 

14

u/Quantity_Lanky 1d ago

Time for Johanna to finally learn proper information filing and versioning.

6

u/Rule322 1d ago

Nah, I'm pretty sure excel is an Altered Item that doesn't adhere to human logic. Versioning won't help, it'll just make it more confusing.

3

u/vacuous_comment 21h ago

This is the kind of thing you really want to break during transition.

Because it should not exist.

1

u/100is99plus1 1d ago

Come on! You know Johanna? Great person she does wonderful cinnamon cookies

0

u/No_Bad_4872yy 23h ago

Hahaha reminds me of my colleague who used a calculator and then manually typed the results into Excel. I love Johanna's!

2

u/number1pingufan 1d ago

The people implementing this seem competent. I hope this works out and gets traction, because even with my hatred for Microsoft aside, more options are better.

1

u/Toowb 3h ago

Seems fine, however after working for government agencies over the years, I see no way of them working with anything other than office. Anything else is so far behind and would literally cause government collapse. Should we be less dependant? Yes, but be careful what you wish for.

1

u/Altruistic_Age_6556 18h ago

Lol I recently started working for a new company that has chosen to start using Microsoft OneDrive etc. as their infrastructure. It'a a huge red flag for me and not because of any fascist lackey crap. It's just shitty tech. It literally made me think that the company is probably going to shit.

-4

u/blackhawkq820 1d ago

And soon they will be back.. this is a news that shows up every now and then

4

u/Rdtkeepsbanningme 1d ago

Nobody is going back 🤣

5

u/ZenX22 1d ago

Are there stories of similar organisations dumping MS/American products and then going back?

1

u/chlorine7213 1d ago

Munich had a pretty large fallout in the early 00's and changed to their own Linux distro. Microsoft eventually moved their German HQ to the region and they changed back. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

1

u/JEesSs 11h ago

Based on the wiki article the moving back seems pretty sus though? As in it was working fine, they saved tonnes of money, but one dude was really pushing for it right around the time Microsoft were moving their headquarters there.

1

u/chlorine7213 3h ago

That's more or less how lobbying works. It doesn't have to make the most amount of sense or anything like that. 

-2

u/Loki-L 1d ago

They are still using on-premise office tools from Microsoft.

Probably because there isn't really a good open source alternative for Exchange yet and nobody wants to go back to Notes.

3

u/Nielsly 23h ago

They are still using them because the government only announced they would be moving away from American providers last month

3

u/ClikeX 23h ago

It's a huge organization, they don't just switch overnight. It takes time.

-1

u/Alpa_NL 19h ago

Good, more European goods for European countries.

-6

u/lilacomets 1d ago

This is going to end in a mess. 😂 Mark my words. A mess just like the rest of the country. 😂

2

u/gta721 1d ago

They should try Euro-Office, which is much more compatible than LibreOffice is.

-6

u/sopertt 22h ago

Oh this story again.

I’m sure it will go just as well as it did the dozens of other times 🙄

Good luck eurotrash! Ms and Apple will be there to take your €€€ and clean up your mess when you inevitably fail and come crawling back (again) 😂

-51

u/VonVader 1d ago

They'll be back when they fully understand what that means.

6

u/Inthehead35 1d ago

Is this Eric Trump?

9

u/PistolofPete 1d ago

What do you think they’ll realize it means?

10

u/td_mike 1d ago edited 1d ago

They won’t, our Tax Authority is a slow moving bureaucratic mess, but when it has made a choice they will move forward regardless of anything.

(the only reason they stoppen wis MS products is because the ministry of Finance pulled the emergency brake and told them stop or else)

It might be actually good for the opensource community, our tax authority has a ton of highly skilled programmers and the frequently contribute to open source projects. They most likely will be contributing to the office suite they will pick.