this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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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.
my money is on #1. Classic danish public sector story.
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.
There is this idea in international politics that the rest of the world should have a say in US elections. Because the outcome inevitably affects us all outside the US. Since we don't have a say, we still rely on you to be the instrument of checks and balances on your government. And when it is as erratic and boneheaded as your current one, no amount of trade we do with the US should abrogate your responsibilities as the aforementioned instrument. Nor do I think we should stop encouraging protest against the dumb policy of tariffs, which is hurting your own economy as well. Or the end of Roe v Wade. Or the illegal kidnapping of a not much liked head of state. Or the illegal war in Iran. And while this is not exactly the example to follow, the French are rioting for much less these days. It started with bad conditions in schools.
Capitalism works very much with countries' economies complementing each other. You have the IT sector, high tech military companies, and whisky. Europe has luxury brands, wine, and various niche industries. You buy our shit and we buy yours and then there is no need to produce your shit here as well and vice versa.
That's a result of decades of a transatlantic relationship that worked in everybody's favour. We invest in your economy and get security guarantees in return. It's in a way an extended payoff of the Marshall plan. Your tech sector would be much worse if Europe had built up parallel infrastructures. Which nobody thought necessary because we were all friends. And especially arms deals are often decades in the making. So this "you buy our slop and guns so stop telling us to protest our idiotic government" doesn't sound quite right to my ears. I think that's too easy an out.
Rest assured though that Europe will be spending less of its money in the US. The loss of trust as a result of 45/47 is nearly instant. Rebuilding it will take more than a couple of saner administrations. Meanwhile, the US's purchasing power is shrinking too. Europeans buy military equipment in South Korea and Canada looks to the EU for closer ties. And we haven't even talked about the bubble yet.
It's surprising really that you aren't protesting more.
There are no checks and balances. And per example, what would happen if all tech industries pulled the plug on Europe?--that could happen, look at starlink.
US tech industry hurt itself in confusion
US Big Tech is loyal, first and foremost, to mammon. Pulling out of a single war torn country isn't so bad. Pulling out of a rich and highly developed market, with over half a billion consumers, and many globally leading corporations, that will hurt in a different way.
Believe it or not these methods are already available and good thing no one told the orange man he can do it. And as in the news you can clearly see no fucks given when it comes to things like that.