- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Seems like they need to invade Schleswig again, to get some people who know how to do the switch.
😬 exactly what’s wrong with the world.
Still got a year left on their subscription.
Maybe this was a concession to Trump for Greenland? Its actually a strategic issue for USA.
Typical digital Denmark L.
Lol, how? Just use LibreOffice.
For a normal person that might be that simple. The issue is that there are a lot of add-ins and integrations of other software into Microsoft Office. That can not be easily replaced. You have to keep in mind that there are a lot of highly specialized programs running in governments and they probably do not offer the same sort of office integration. Also large organizations need administrated their entire backend. That is why most projects in replacing Microsoft Office use the LibreOffice Online version. That unfortunately lacks features. Nothing too bad for normal users, but a admin backend for organizations is just something a single user never uses.
That is to say, it is actually quite hard to switch. Obviously not impossible, but far from “Just use LibreOffice”
So they discovered they had locked themselves in harder than expected, and concluded they should stay locked in. That’s… one strategy you choose, I guess.
Exactly my thought. Every journey begins with the first step. If i give up on the first step, i just stay where i am. Good for MS though, their strategy to make transition to other formats as diffcult as possible is a success.
“it wasn’t perfect on the first try so we’re going to just give up” idiocy.
Microsoft needs to be dismantled.
you have no idea how government works. Change one setting in email and the whole government grinds to a halt. Hundreds have to take time off for emotional trauma and long term disability with PTSD.
Change an entire software ecosystem? Good luck.
This is a decision that needs to be revisited.
Libre office ffs
Wait, didn’t they?
edit:
Collabora Online (often abbreviated as COOL) is an open-source online office suite developed by Collabora, based on LibreOffice Online, the web-based edition of the LibreOffice office suite.
Hm. Depends on what “based on” means here - continuously, or once, when they first forked it.
based on LibreOffice Online
That bit is wrong. Yes, the underlying tech is based on LO but the web frontend is not. IIRC LO Online is about rendering the regular desktop GUI to web technologies whereas Collabora Office uses a new GUI written for the web and LO works in the background. I think not being true LO enough is what caused a rift between The Document Foundation is Collabora a while ago but I’m not too sure.
TDF actually announced to revive LO Online from cold storage to compete against Collabora. Fantastic…
https://assets.theregister.com/2026/03/02/libreoffice_online_deatticized/
https://itsfoss.com/news/document-foundation-collabora-feud/
Libreoffice online is kinda not a thing
EuroOffice is a fork of OnlyOffice
Libreoffice is working on online again
A big issue is that COOL is an electron app, they only support the web version basically. But for web stuff it is pretty good.
They just should make a fork of Libre for all EU goverments to use… give the developers of this fork a few million and you’re golden
I hope that they revisit this decision
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.
Huh. Politically/Lobby motivated? I hope there’ll be a follow-up.
It doesn’t sound like the formatting issues mentioned were the reason they abandoned this; that bit reads like filler to me because the actual new (the paragraph above) is so unsatisfying. IM/exporting from/to MS formats not working 100% is also nothing new. And other institutions succesfully made the switch, so this is clearly solvable.
Macroslop decide to build another big center in Kopenhagen?
While no evaluations were conducted for this pilot, there were reports late last year that the officials were running into formatting issues such as blank pages when opening Office documents in Collabora and vice versa.
MS Office document importers need to have similar backing as Valve did with Proton. Hopefully Euro Office gets it.
Importing works fine, issues arise after one person exports from LibreOffice, another edits with MS Office, and they repeat a few iterations of that. I thinking changing an office suite is many times more difficult than changing an OS, and am kinda hopeless about interoperability, but I also hope Euro-Office gets major funding from countries to give it a try.
Importing works fine
Quote says that it literally does not. The “and vice versa” bit of the quote is about both directions not properly working.
issues arise after one person exports from LibreOffice, another edits with MS Office, and they repeat a few iterations of that.
Tests for that can be automated since 15 or so years ago. Doesn’t even need any Claude or something.
Yeah, and that would work, if Microsofts format actually could be considered a standard in any way. But it doesn’t. Some random Microsoft update breaks stuff, you fix it, but IT does not patch…so you have a lot of users telling their bosses “LibreOffice bad”. When you’re playing catch up with somebody who doesn’t want to be catched and is setting the pace…you’re going to lose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I guess you can only escape, if somehow governments were forced to only accept open standards. Internally and externally. You send a docx or whatever? Screw you, odf or bust. But it’s too niche of a topic to gain momentum for that.
Yeah, and that would work, if Microsofts format actually could be considered a standard in any way. But it doesn’t.
Win32, DirectX, etc. aren’t standard either and yet Wine/Proton are proper clean room reverse engineered solutions good enough that >95% of the time users don’t see any difference.
Microsoft update breaks stuff, you fix it
Problem is that even legacy documents are not properly read.
so you have a lot of users telling their bosses “LibreOffice bad”.
Collabora is a commercial enterprise. Collabora Office is FOSS just like Proton but just like Proton there is a company behind it that bets their income on proper compatibility. Difference is that Valve works on that compatibility and Collabora doesn’t.
Collabora need to get their act together and automate document round-tripping.
Yeah, because I never have to switch Proton or Wine versions or use some launch options or something. I bet if the average docx opener was as willing to tinker as the average Linux gamer, we would not have a problem.
Plus your Steam stuff is not fleet managed. That is what I mean: if your company IT (as we’re talking government agencies here) is not providing updates, the current version can be as good as you want, it doesn’t arrive at the user’s computer, thus the user hates it.
And, come on, legacy documents don’t render correctly? Guess what, try to open old Microsoft Office shit in new Microsoft office programs: that shit breaks, like, a lot. Not even Microsoft can stay Microsoft compatible 😅.
Yeah, because I never have to switch Proton or Wine versions or use some launch options or something.
95% of the time they don’t. And that’s the point.
And, come on, legacy documents don’t render correctly? Guess what, try to open old Microsoft Office shit in new Microsoft office programs: that shit breaks, like, a lot. Not even Microsoft can stay Microsoft compatible 😅.
Well, if Collabora Office was as compatible as MS Office, Denmark would have switched. But it’s not and denial won’t change anything. I have an old .doc (not .docx) file that my employer needs for a weird edge case and the only way I can open it under Linux is the Office.com web suite.
Again, Collabora is a commercial enterprise. They need to act like it and throw resources at massively improving file format compatibility, no matter how messy MS formats are.
95% of the time they don’t. And that’s the point.
95% of the time Microsoft formats render fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. You write “edge case” yourself. And when you’re in the field of providing compatibility you’ll see that Microsofi is hostile. And they hava a good business case to be that hostile, can’ t really blame them from said business perspective.
But the way forward is not playing catch. What institutions need to understand is that there’ll never be a drop-in replacement. Especially not, as people have learned the quirks of MS Office. That is why users blame an alternative office suit but when MS Office breaks once again it’s just how it is.
If companies, really any institutions want to break free of MS Office they need to really treat it as the complicaten change process it is. That means allocating resources for changing and adapting said edge cases. When you just go to randomly install some flavor of Libre Office for 38 employees, but everything else stays the same…yeah, you gonna fail big time, no surprise there. But you would fail anyway, even if we had perfect compatibility today. Because tomorrow the next MS update will break compatibility and your 38 users are the idiots of the institution again, until the next update drops.
Bad news
