pilot phase with 38 ministry employees kicked off last year to trial Collabora's suite with Office documents. However, this trial was terminated when elections took place earlier this year. A spokesperson confirmed that the experiment had concluded, and would not resume again. They also confirmed that no evaluation benchmarking Collabora's performance against Microsoft Office had taken place either.
So it was performance more or less, without any plan to actually switch.
There was no real change of power, Denmark is still ruled by their xenophobic self-declared social democrats busy teaming up with Italian post-fascists to undermine international rule of law. While there is little meaningful difference between Mette Fredriksen and Georgia Meloni she's pretty much as left as Danish politics goes, the only parties left of this mess (the Ø and Å lists, not kidding) are marginal and have never had real power.
Traditionally Denmark has had no political line for themselves, and have followed America completely. They are completely new to trying to think original thoughts in terms of foreign policy, and we should expect to see them stumble a bit. I guess it's refreshing to see them pretend to try.
It specifically says that performance wasn’t benchmarked.
The root cause is incompatibility with Microsoft’s proprietary document format causing fuckiness for LibreOffice based Collabora. E.g. formatting issues.
They could’ve tried the Russian alternative but I guess they’d prefer to gargle Microsoft’s fetid cock some more.
It seems they tried to ditch Microsoft Office but to keep docx. What they need to do is to ditch docx first and start using open document format, then let the software follow.
I don't think that's very likely as nobody seem to understand what file formats are or why they matter. So the second best option is probably to wait for Euro-Office to hopefully take off, and then hopefully Euro-Office can change default to ODT at some point in the future and we can finally get rid of docx once and for all.
I don't have much experience with Collabora but what I have wasn't great. I'm very much in favour of governments ditching MS for something like Libre Office. But I also know that the formatting errors can be a pain in the røv especially if you have 20 year old Excel sheets full of important information spiked with macros that civil servants who have long since retired made ages ago. It's minefields within minefields.
So I think many things can be true at the same time. Denmark would like to rely less on American software and services. It was in the interest of the government to communicate that loudly at a time when the mad orange hand was reaching for Greenland (and may do so again because what's in a treaty?). The Collabora trial could have been an earnest effort that failed for many reasons I don't have trouble imagining. Or it was a show piece, a signal to the Danish voters as well as American companies. Your contacts may not be as certain any more. It may have led to some increased MS lobbying bts. And this doesn't mean this is the end of the effort. Just this one, at this point in time.
The big problem is this: success stories of governments switching to something open source are rare. You don't win elections when people are fed up with long processing times in government services. They'd have to be sufficiently pissed off with the mad orange to tolerate that out of spite. And with the urgency of the Greenland crisis having subsided, the level of pissedoffness will have also declined.
1: Some senior bod didn't like that they had to learn where one new button was, and threw their toys out of the pram.
2: The macros thing you mentioned. So many of these were done back in the day, VBA code that no-one knew about until they tried to open the sheet in another office package and it exploded.
That last paragraph is interesting because in my opinion; Europe has been supporting the US, so they have no room to talk. I got tired of the why don't you protest bullshit. It's because you paid for it, with every arms, apple, google, amd, nvidia, intel, microsolp, etc purchase that the US made. This isn't a popular opinion but it should be recognized that you're indirectly paying in as well.
Back in 2025, the government of Denmark announced that it is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office in favor of open-source alternatives like Linux.
Denmark's reasoning was that it wants to reduce reliance on a U.S. vendor like Microsoft and also not be at the mercy of a volatile Trump administration. Now, it appears that the country has failed in its ambitious endeavor.
Adoption of this European software would have been an important step in Denmark's bid for technological independence from software made by a U.S. firm.
A pilot phase with 38 ministry employees kicked off last year to trial Collabora's suite with Office documents. However, this trial was terminated when elections took place earlier this year. A spokesperson confirmed that the experiment had concluded, and would not resume again. They also confirmed that no evaluation benchmarking Collabora's performance against Microsoft Office had taken place either.
Microsoft must have truly been shitting it.
38 whole people trying out other software.
I mean how hard would it have been for Microsoft to just pay a few of those 38 if any of them had been taking it seriously to begin with.
No benchmarking, and the attempt at switching ended with the elections.
Microsoft must have truly been shitting it. 38 whole people trying out other software
That's not the point, the problem for Microsoft is that when people begin to realize we don't need Microsoft products because open source solutions work, it will spread like fire.
The attempt was however half assed, and Microsoft never really needed to worry.
16 replies
sounds like they didn't try very hard
So it was performance more or less, without any plan to actually switch.
When elections took place could mean someone that won was pro America or Microsoft
There was no real change of power, Denmark is still ruled by their xenophobic self-declared social democrats busy teaming up with Italian post-fascists to undermine international rule of law. While there is little meaningful difference between Mette Fredriksen and Georgia Meloni she's pretty much as left as Danish politics goes, the only parties left of this mess (the Ø and Å lists, not kidding) are marginal and have never had real power.
Traditionally Denmark has had no political line for themselves, and have followed America completely. They are completely new to trying to think original thoughts in terms of foreign policy, and we should expect to see them stumble a bit. I guess it's refreshing to see them pretend to try.
It specifically says that performance wasn’t benchmarked.
The root cause is incompatibility with Microsoft’s proprietary document format causing fuckiness for LibreOffice based Collabora. E.g. formatting issues.
They could’ve tried the Russian alternative but I guess they’d prefer to gargle Microsoft’s fetid cock some more.
I think they meant that the whole thing was "a performance"... A theater. Not that the performance of the product had anything to do with it.
Performance as in performative
Ffs, ignorance and laziness aren't excuses.
It seems they tried to ditch Microsoft Office but to keep docx. What they need to do is to ditch docx first and start using open document format, then let the software follow.
I don't think that's very likely as nobody seem to understand what file formats are or why they matter. So the second best option is probably to wait for Euro-Office to hopefully take off, and then hopefully Euro-Office can change default to ODT at some point in the future and we can finally get rid of docx once and for all.
Says Microsoft propaganda site.
I don't have much experience with Collabora but what I have wasn't great. I'm very much in favour of governments ditching MS for something like Libre Office. But I also know that the formatting errors can be a pain in the røv especially if you have 20 year old Excel sheets full of important information spiked with macros that civil servants who have long since retired made ages ago. It's minefields within minefields.
So I think many things can be true at the same time. Denmark would like to rely less on American software and services. It was in the interest of the government to communicate that loudly at a time when the mad orange hand was reaching for Greenland (and may do so again because what's in a treaty?). The Collabora trial could have been an earnest effort that failed for many reasons I don't have trouble imagining. Or it was a show piece, a signal to the Danish voters as well as American companies. Your contacts may not be as certain any more. It may have led to some increased MS lobbying bts. And this doesn't mean this is the end of the effort. Just this one, at this point in time.
The big problem is this: success stories of governments switching to something open source are rare. You don't win elections when people are fed up with long processing times in government services. They'd have to be sufficiently pissed off with the mad orange to tolerate that out of spite. And with the urgency of the Greenland crisis having subsided, the level of pissedoffness will have also declined.
I would put some money on it either being.
1: Some senior bod didn't like that they had to learn where one new button was, and threw their toys out of the pram. 2: The macros thing you mentioned. So many of these were done back in the day, VBA code that no-one knew about until they tried to open the sheet in another office package and it exploded.
That last paragraph is interesting because in my opinion; Europe has been supporting the US, so they have no room to talk. I got tired of the why don't you protest bullshit. It's because you paid for it, with every arms, apple, google, amd, nvidia, intel, microsolp, etc purchase that the US made. This isn't a popular opinion but it should be recognized that you're indirectly paying in as well.
Open software should be pursued.
Microsoft must have truly been shitting it. 38 whole people trying out other software.
I mean how hard would it have been for Microsoft to just pay a few of those 38 if any of them had been taking it seriously to begin with.
No benchmarking, and the attempt at switching ended with the elections.
Could it even have been called an attempt?
That's not the point, the problem for Microsoft is that when people begin to realize we don't need Microsoft products because open source solutions work, it will spread like fire.
The attempt was however half assed, and Microsoft never really needed to worry.
They didn't even try. It seems it was all a show.