"Any serious attempt at digital sovereignty needs migration tools that work without the cooperation of the Big Tech companies. Otherwise, this is like building housing for East Germans and locating it in West Berlin. It doesn't matter how great the housing is, your intended audience is going to really struggle to move in unless you tear down the wall." Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
"...the Eurostack’s proponents are really working on the preliminaries to digital sovereignty. It’s not enough to have alternatives to US Big Tech. There also needs to be extensive work on migration tools, to facilitate the move to those alternatives. No one is going to manually copy/paste a million documents out of their ministry or corporation’s GSuite repository and into a Eurostack equivalent. There are a few tools that do this today, but they’re crude and hard to use, because they are probably illegal under America’s widely exported IP laws.
Faithfully transferring those files, permissions, edit histories and metadata to new clouds will require a kind of guerrilla warfare called “adversarial interoperability.” Adversarial interoperability is the process of making a new thing work with an existing thing, against the wishes of the existing thing’s manufacturer"
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-11-26...
It's the rise of local tech. If I migrate off Amazon, where do I migrate to? My house is an acceptable answer for some, but also my local ISP has a colo. Unfortunately then you have to manage that, and have a person, and soon, you've reinvented the cloud, just on your terms. Which isn't a bad thing, but that's what involved.
According to the article the Agency for Digital Government (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen) initiated a pilot in spring 2025 to use Collabora[1]. A General Election was called (not related) which put the project on hold indefinitely. No plan to pick it up agian, and no evaluation is planned.
The article mentions that the (38) test persons had reported some frustrations with typography, and track-changes during the test.
I also love the idea of ditching Microsoft and I have done so for my personal life, but if your work day lives and breathes documents, spreadsheets, and slide decks, there really is no better option out there than Microsoft Office.
I’d even go as far as arguing that it’s priced very fairly and rather low compared to software of similar complexity. It’s priced low enough that pretty much any business of any size can justify the cost.
I use OnlyOffice to handle documents and spreadsheets when I need to, but if I was doing that on a daily basis I’d absolutely pay for an Office license.
(I am quite aware of the controversy around the suite but I don’t think the controversy has enough meat on its bones for me to care about it, especially when I barely use these applications as it stands. I just really don’t like LibreOffice by comparison in terms of the UI and overall experience.)
Not OP, but I like OnlyOffice for its keytips support (tap alt and then the whole ribbon gives you live hints for navigating and executing UI functions/buttons with the keyboard). Far ahead of LibreOffice, at least at the moment.
The main reason there's nothing better is just that everyone is using ms office.
Nothing is more compatible with ms office than ms office.
But in terms of features it's not really any different than office 2000. The ribbons were introduced and Excel sheets can be bigger but it's really just the same. There's hardly been any innovation. That's what Microsoft do when they own a market, they just sit back. It happened to internet explorer and it happened to office.
Anyone else would have made a better product if it weren't a non-starter.
As an example: in my job Excel is not used for numbers but abused as a database. It really deeply sucks at that, you need to copy paste vlookups and it chokes on a few hundred thousand rows. On a modern computer that's ridiculous. It doesn't enforce type integrity and sometimes people type over vlookups breaking the formula in that row.
"Formatting as table" is a bit of a workaround and changes a lot more than just "formatting" implies. But it doesn't solve the core issue which is that this is just the wrong tool for the job, period. It just smoothes over some of the ridiculous workarounds.
Any company that cared would either make it do databases better, or would find out why users don't grok the actual database product, ms access, and keep abusing a spreadsheet for this purpose. They would improve the database product so it would be great to use. And port it to all platforms, ms never bothered to port it to Mac.
Access is difficult because it's too closely tied to SQL concepts. And thus a complex 70s mindset hell bent on minimising data storage. This could be so greatly reinvented, wouldn't necessarily have to be an RDBMS. The only reason people screw around with excel is because they know it. Not because it's actually good for this purpose.
Another example: they never fixed the CSV-semicolon issue outside of the US or the ambiguity of translated function names.
Its an old classic using an election to kill off or stall projects in ministries or public institutions. I bet some bureaucrat or Statens It doesn't want the trouble of this moving along.
I work in the public sector in Denmark. Office 365 is the bane of my work day. I only have access to the web versions of the apps, but they feel like toys. It seems impossible to do anything even moderately complex with them. Especially form design. I've installed Linux+LibreOffice on a spare machine at work that I use occasionally, to keep from tearing my hair out.
As much as I despise Microsoft, I admit that their Office suite is pretty good. Or at least it used to be - the last version I used was 2010 I think. I can't belive that 365 has regressed so much. Seems like shoehorning an Office suite into a webbrowser wasn't a great idea.
But why do we have such a (imho unfounded) desire to be a be able to open a file in a proprietary format from 30 years ago and expect to be able to edit it like nothing happened in the mean time?
If we care so much about that it actually looks the same after all that time, why is it not a pdf?
I’m so confused that anyone would get hung up enough about this to let it block a migration of this size.
> But why do we have such a (imho unfounded) desire to be a be able to open a file in a proprietary format from 30 years ago and expect to be able to edit it like nothing happened in the mean time?
Also largely microsoft's doing. They're big on backwards compatibility/legacy support (except sometimes for when it gets in the way of greed) and in doing so have largely trained all those people using Office Products to expect just that. It's part of their entrenchment/momentum strategy.
Doesn't help that American corporate culture in general seems to have adopted (enforced?) that expectation as well. Though that's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation so not sure where to score the blame there.
Like the other commenter said, lot of companies depend on loadbearing spreadsheets because it's cheaper than a salary. Not saying it's necessarily a good idea, but it happens enough that it's a known market force.
It’s hard to parse the complaints in these transitions. Sometimes there has to be a change in process, sure, or even some genuine incompatibility. But a huge percent is social.
About 25 years ago Palo Alto bought a new email system. Exchange, a huge dual-processor HP system, about 100K in today’s dollars. I went to a council meeting to ask and was directed to the decision maker. He said the big cost would be training: outlook/exchange’s icons looked like the familiar Word/excel ones so few people felt they’d need training, while the Netscape buttons were larger and looked different and everybody felt they’d need a training course.
I ought this would go away as those afraid of computers aged out, especially since the arrival of smart phones with their different iconography. But it seems not.
in my experience there might be a few people for whom "the icons are different, i need a training course" is a legitimate concern. but for the vast majority of workers, it's not "i need a training course" it's "i feel like i can get away with demanding a training course" with the full knowledge that asking for a training course will derail the effort to make a change.
That's exactly what I've said when someone has suggested moving away from my favorite tool to their favorite tool. I've literally said "Uh, don't forget, we'll likely need an 8 hour training course for a dozen engineers.", saw the numbers crunching in the PM's head and then they'll say "Maybe we'll circle back on moving to X, I'll need to request more funding for next year."
I find that people who demand or complain about training tends to be a really good filter for people that are hard to work with or intellectually incurious.
Way back in the original dot-com boom some people where I worked were concerned about how we'd provide training for our web product. The CTO shut that down with "if users need training to use our website, we've already failed."
Stick to conventions, don't reinvent the wheel, and training needs should be minimal.
Very few people who know MS Office could not pick up LibreOffice and be fine with it.
Ya, honestly fuck training. People who demand training in order to fly an airliner or operate power tools or conduct surgery are just hard to work with and intellectually incurious. They should be able to figure it out based on YouTube videos and ChatGPT prompts.
- Hey, can you please answer my questions?
- No, I merely work here.
Yeah, there are people who think that they are being paid to be at work, not to do work, to apply themselves, to engage, to provide and produce. And it sucks to work with those kinds of people.
Have you seen CraftApps [0]? They are "clean room" implementations of MS Word (WordCraft), MS Excel (GridCraft) and MS PowerPoint (DeckCraft), among others.
bpalmerau 10 hours ago
bpalmerau 9 hours ago
Faithfully transferring those files, permissions, edit histories and metadata to new clouds will require a kind of guerrilla warfare called “adversarial interoperability.” Adversarial interoperability is the process of making a new thing work with an existing thing, against the wishes of the existing thing’s manufacturer" https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-11-26...
cyanydeez 9 hours ago
It's getting pretty close to a reality that cloud services are vulnerable regardless of tech. They might have to abandon all cloud hopes.
solyin 9 hours ago
cowlevel 5 hours ago
But people aren't looking for AWS, they're looking for Office 365.
cyanydeez 7 hours ago
Ultimately, AI will allow that. Going the other direction, AI will multiply the vendor lickin effect 100x.
So which way you going?
lowkeyokay 12 hours ago
The article mentions that the (38) test persons had reported some frustrations with typography, and track-changes during the test.
1: https://www.collaboraonline.com/
Grombobulous 10 hours ago
I’d even go as far as arguing that it’s priced very fairly and rather low compared to software of similar complexity. It’s priced low enough that pretty much any business of any size can justify the cost.
I use OnlyOffice to handle documents and spreadsheets when I need to, but if I was doing that on a daily basis I’d absolutely pay for an Office license.
lakeviewterrace 10 hours ago
Best Latvian office suite?
Grombobulous 10 hours ago
(I am quite aware of the controversy around the suite but I don’t think the controversy has enough meat on its bones for me to care about it, especially when I barely use these applications as it stands. I just really don’t like LibreOffice by comparison in terms of the UI and overall experience.)
sfRattan 10 hours ago
wolvoleo 5 hours ago
Nothing is more compatible with ms office than ms office.
But in terms of features it's not really any different than office 2000. The ribbons were introduced and Excel sheets can be bigger but it's really just the same. There's hardly been any innovation. That's what Microsoft do when they own a market, they just sit back. It happened to internet explorer and it happened to office.
Anyone else would have made a better product if it weren't a non-starter.
As an example: in my job Excel is not used for numbers but abused as a database. It really deeply sucks at that, you need to copy paste vlookups and it chokes on a few hundred thousand rows. On a modern computer that's ridiculous. It doesn't enforce type integrity and sometimes people type over vlookups breaking the formula in that row.
"Formatting as table" is a bit of a workaround and changes a lot more than just "formatting" implies. But it doesn't solve the core issue which is that this is just the wrong tool for the job, period. It just smoothes over some of the ridiculous workarounds.
Any company that cared would either make it do databases better, or would find out why users don't grok the actual database product, ms access, and keep abusing a spreadsheet for this purpose. They would improve the database product so it would be great to use. And port it to all platforms, ms never bothered to port it to Mac.
Access is difficult because it's too closely tied to SQL concepts. And thus a complex 70s mindset hell bent on minimising data storage. This could be so greatly reinvented, wouldn't necessarily have to be an RDBMS. The only reason people screw around with excel is because they know it. Not because it's actually good for this purpose.
Another example: they never fixed the CSV-semicolon issue outside of the US or the ambiguity of translated function names.
tokai 11 hours ago
encom 9 hours ago
As much as I despise Microsoft, I admit that their Office suite is pretty good. Or at least it used to be - the last version I used was 2010 I think. I can't belive that 365 has regressed so much. Seems like shoehorning an Office suite into a webbrowser wasn't a great idea.
keoneflick 6 hours ago
thomasahle 10 hours ago
But now with AI I guess you could just ask it to debug the issue and it would decompile Word in 5 minutes and pull out the fix.
Not sure what the frustrations with typography were, but I recon they're a lot easier to fix now.
spockz 10 hours ago
If we care so much about that it actually looks the same after all that time, why is it not a pdf?
I’m so confused that anyone would get hung up enough about this to let it block a migration of this size.
0manrho 9 hours ago
Also largely microsoft's doing. They're big on backwards compatibility/legacy support (except sometimes for when it gets in the way of greed) and in doing so have largely trained all those people using Office Products to expect just that. It's part of their entrenchment/momentum strategy.
Doesn't help that American corporate culture in general seems to have adopted (enforced?) that expectation as well. Though that's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation so not sure where to score the blame there.
Like the other commenter said, lot of companies depend on loadbearing spreadsheets because it's cheaper than a salary. Not saying it's necessarily a good idea, but it happens enough that it's a known market force.
ArcHound 9 hours ago
lowkeyokay 1 hour ago
gumby 10 hours ago
About 25 years ago Palo Alto bought a new email system. Exchange, a huge dual-processor HP system, about 100K in today’s dollars. I went to a council meeting to ask and was directed to the decision maker. He said the big cost would be training: outlook/exchange’s icons looked like the familiar Word/excel ones so few people felt they’d need training, while the Netscape buttons were larger and looked different and everybody felt they’d need a training course.
I ought this would go away as those afraid of computers aged out, especially since the arrival of smart phones with their different iconography. But it seems not.
notatoad 10 hours ago
in my experience there might be a few people for whom "the icons are different, i need a training course" is a legitimate concern. but for the vast majority of workers, it's not "i need a training course" it's "i feel like i can get away with demanding a training course" with the full knowledge that asking for a training course will derail the effort to make a change.
wildzzz 9 hours ago
nickpeterson 9 hours ago
SoftTalker 9 hours ago
Stick to conventions, don't reinvent the wheel, and training needs should be minimal.
Very few people who know MS Office could not pick up LibreOffice and be fine with it.
cowlevel 5 hours ago
nradov 9 hours ago
m11a 9 hours ago
machomaster 9 hours ago
Yeah, there are people who think that they are being paid to be at work, not to do work, to apply themselves, to engage, to provide and produce. And it sucks to work with those kinds of people.
icameron 8 hours ago
superdisk 9 hours ago
malfist 9 hours ago
KingOfMyRoom 9 hours ago
cowlevel 5 hours ago
plumeria 6 hours ago
[0] https://getartcraft.com/apps
j_w 4 hours ago
sterlind 3 hours ago
gnabgib 3 hours ago