Comment: Jutes revolt against Redmond: Minister for Digital Affairs aims the longboats away from Vinland
Comment The boss of Denmark's Ministry for Digitalization says her department will move away from Microsoft – starting with LibreOffice.
In an interview with Danish broadsheet newspaper Politiken [Danish], Caroline Olsen, the country's Minister for Digital Affairs, said she is planning to lead by example and start removing Microsoft software and tools from the ministry. The minister told Jutland's Nordyske [🇩🇰 Danish, but not paywalled] the plan is that half the staff's computers – including her own – would have LibreOffice in place of Microsoft Office 365 in the first month, with the goal of total replacement by the end of the year.
English-language site The Local is also carrying the story. The move follows similar ones by the city governments of Copenhagen and Aarhus.
Given that earlier this year, US President Donald Trump was making noises about taking over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, it seems entirely understandable for the country to take a markedly increased interest in digital sovereignty – as Danish Ruby guru David Heinemeier Hansson explained just a week ago.
Just over the border, Germany's northernmost state is also doing the same thing. A few hundred kilometers west, the Dutch government is making similar efforts, and lobbyists from other European nations are badgering the European Commission in the same direction.
When such things are bruited, tech managers in Microsoft-centric organizations typically start whimpering about "but muh macros" and the essential customizations that they couldn't live without. In fact, in the extensive direct experience of the Reg FOSS desk with office staff in multiple countries, most don't even understand how to use document styles, let alone VBA. One former workplace attempted to instruct this vulture in how to lay out an official, paid-for, company report by copying and then doing Paste Format across some 60 pages. The shock when we showed them how to do it in half a dozen mouse clicks was a joy to behold.
The more pressing problem tends to be groupware – specifically, the dynamic duo of Outlook and Exchange, as Bert Hubert told The Register earlier this year. Several older versions go end-of-life soon, along with Windows 10. Modernizing is expensive, which makes migrating look more appealing.
A primary alternative to Redmond, of course, is Mountain View. Google's offerings can do the job. In December 2021, the Nordic Choice hotel group was hit by Conti ransomware, but rather than pay to regain access to its machines, it switched to ChromeOS.
The thing is, this is jumping from one US-based option to another. That's why France rejected both a few years ago, and we reported on renewed EU interest early the following year. Such things may be why French SaaS groupware offering La Suite numérique is looking quite complete and polished these days.
EU organizations can host their own cloud office suite thanks to Collabora's CODE, which runs LibreOffice on an organization's own webservers – easing deployment and OS migration.
A few months ago, we reported on the EU OS proposal, too. It's still not a distro you can download, but since March, the plans have become more detailed and concrete. These moves have their skeptics, as The Register reported last month, but the signs are encouraging.
Such moves will cost real money, and some consultants will make millions – but if that stops those millions flowing across the Atlantic in rental charges for software that nobody can buy, that's arguably not waste.
No, it won't be a perfect fit, an exact one-to-one replacement. That's literally impossible. That's the trap of proprietary software. But it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be good enough to do the job. Across Europe, more and more toes are being shoved into doors, forcing them open. If some office features and furniture get broken in the process, that's a price worth paying. ®
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Comments
By darkstar_16 2025-06-149:024 reply I really want this to happen but sadly have seen a LOT of govt and private companies trying to move to libreoffice (and OpenOffice and StarOffice before that). None really stuck. The office suite is hard to replace and none of the open source suites are a good enough alternative right now. I hope that changes.
This is true, but only if you try to achieve the exact workflow that Office 365 offers. Maybe it is time to try to be a bit more subversive. Do we really need everything that Office can do? Is Microsoft's abstraction of office work really the holy grail of modern office work or is it causing "empty work"?
By linker3000 2025-06-1410:08 This is an important point but often it's existing docs and files that cause the most grief, with subtle issues like differences in font rendering or line spacing.
For example, I wanted to make a simple change to a Word doc in Libre Office that included a side bar/column of text in a fixed size table on multiple pages. In Word the layout looked great.
Unfortunately due to font subtleties, in Libre Office the side texts overflowed the tables and the last sentences were cropped. It took some fiddling to make things fit and look as good as the original, but in the process I had to make the font smaller which lost some clarity. I did play with line spacing but that got fiddly.
In summary, a 5 second edit of an existing document laid out 'just so' perhaps 5 yr ago ended up becoming 20 minutes of hassle.
New docs could be laid out better and differently to make future edits easy, but that ignores the large legacy of existing stuff that many will have.
By sam_lowry_ 2025-06-1410:19 The migration is an opportunity to subvert the "Office" abstraction to start with.
Me personally I hope for a paradigm change: there is no reason to use an office suite instead training people from the school to use proper typesetting and computing software.
We have LaTeX wrapped in nth way to typeset, we have easy languages like Python, it's about time to teach plain text power and bring org-mode to modern UIs for the masses because we do not need "an alternative to $ProductOrService" but a different paradigm from the current old mainframe model to an older modern interconnected desktop model where people know how to mold a desktop for their needs and desire instead of depend on someone else computer.
By kkfx 2025-06-159:15 Well... I've managed various people so far and while yes, most are simply way to uneducated/illiterate to work properly in the present world in their roles, they are still capable to learn if properly driven. I've observing that treating people like humans instead of meat-based bots do makes them much more human and a step at a time a team change.
Of course you can't transform things in a snap, but a change is possible if properly conducted. The issue is more the unwillingness of those who conduct than the reactionary ignorance of most.
By surgical_fire 2025-06-149:331 reply Out of curiosity, what you can do in, say, Word or Excel that you can't in the LibreOffice versions?
I keep seeing this claim, but it is never substantiated.
I am not trying to be a prick and throwing a trick question in your direction btw. It is an honest question as someone that only needs those applications occasionally, and could switch to LibreOffice without issues.
By darkstar_16 2025-06-185:30 others have articulated it much better but I think the difference isn't in what it can do. But working with existing docs - subtle things like font differences, formatting issues, working with the rest of the world that is MS dominated, keyboard shortcuts for excel warriers. LibreOffice is very capable on it's own, as a drop-in replacement is where it doesn't work most of the time. And the difference isn't even huge, but people being people give up fast.
By fsflover 2025-06-149:10 > and none of the open source suites are a good enough alternative right now
AFAIK very few features of MS Office aren't already implemented well enough in LibreOffice. In principle it should mean that most users/organizations can already move.
I cannot talk freely a 100% but I can tell you; the need to move away from ANYTHING "US" made is now a well established goal in all top governments.
The search is on, less features or capabilities are accepted as well...
By vrighter 2025-06-149:03 except for ours, apparently (malta)
By ChrisArchitect 2025-06-1416:35
