European governments are moving away from U.S. tech giants, opting for domestic or open-source alternatives.
LONDON (AP) — In France, civil servants will ditch Zoom and Teams for a homegrown video conference system. Soldiers in Austria are using open source office software to write reports after the military dropped Microsoft Office. Bureaucrats in a German state have also turned to free software for their administrative work.
Around Europe, governments and institutions are seeking to reduce their use of digital services from U.S. Big Tech companies and turning to domestic or free alternatives. The push for “digital sovereignty” is gaining attention as the Trump administration strikes an increasingly belligerent posture toward the continent, highlighted by recent tensions over Greenland that intensified fears that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access.
Concerns about data privacy and worries that Europe is not doing enough to keep up with the United States and Chinese tech leadership are also fueling the drive.
The French government referenced some of these concerns when it announced last week that 2.5 million civil servants would stop using video conference tools from U.S. providers — including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and GoTo Meeting — by 2027 and switch to Visio, a homegrown service.
The objective is “to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool,” the announcement said.
“We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors,” David Amiel, a civil service minister, said in a press release.
Microsoft said it continues to “partner closely with the government in France and respect the importance of security, privacy, and digital trust for public institutions.”
The company said it is “focused on providing customers with greater choice, stronger data protection, and resilient cloud services — ensuring data stays in Europe, under European law, with robust security and privacy protections.”
Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting did not respond to requests for comment.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing digital sovereignty for years. But there’s now a lot more “political momentum behind this idea now that we need to de-risk from U.S. tech,” Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group.
“It feels kind of like there’s a real zeitgeist shift,” Reiners said
It was a hot topic at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of global political and business elites last month in Davos, Switzerland. The European Commission’s official for tech sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, told an audience that Europe’s reliance on others “can be weaponized against us.”
“That’s why it’s so important that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to very critical fields of our economy or society,” she said, without naming countries or companies.
A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.
The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a “kill switch” that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.
Microsoft maintains it kept in touch with the ICC “throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services. At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith has repeatedly sought to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties, the company’s press office said, and pointed to an interview he did last month with CNN in Davos in which he said that jobs, trade and investment. as well as security, would be affected by a rift over Greenland.
“Europe is the American tech sector’s biggest market after the United States itself. It all depends on trust. Trust requires dialogue,” Smith said.
Other incidents have added to the movement. There’s a growing sense that repeated EU efforts to rein in tech giants such as Google with blockbuster antitrust fines and sweeping digital rule books haven’t done much to curb their dominance.
Billionaire Elon Musk is also a factor. Officials worry about relying on his Starlink satellite internet system for communications in Ukraine.
Washington and Brussels wrangled for years over data transfer agreements, triggered by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of U.S. cyber-snooping.
With online services now mainly hosted in the cloud through data centers, Europeans fear that their data is vulnerable.
U.S. cloud providers have responded by setting up so-called “sovereign cloud” operations, with data centers located in European countries, owned by European entities and with physical and remote access only for staff who are European Union residents.
The idea is that “only Europeans can take decisions so that they can’t be coerced by the U.S.,” Reiners said.
The German state of Schleswig-Holstein last year migrated 44,000 employee inboxes from Microsoft to an open source email program. It also switched from Microsoft’s SharePoint file sharing system to Nextcloud, an open source platform, and is even considering replacing Windows with Linux and telephones and videoconferencing with open source systems.
“We want to become independent of large tech companies and ensure digital sovereignty,” Digitalization Minister Dirk Schrödter said in an October announcement.
The French city of Lyon said last year that it’s deploying free office software to replace Microsoft. Denmark’s government and the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus have also been trying out open-source software.
“We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely,” Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen wrote on LinkedIn last year. “Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers.”
The Austrian military said it has also switched to LibreOffice, a software package with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation programs that mirrors Microsoft 365’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
The Document Foundation, a nonprofit based in Germany that’s behind LibreOffice, said the military’s switch “reflects a growing demand for independence from single vendors.” Reports also said the military was concerned that Microsoft was moving file storage online to the cloud — the standard version of LibreOffice is not cloud-based.
Some Italian cities and regions adopted the software years ago, said Italo Vignoli, a spokesman for The Document Foundation. Back then, the appeal was not needing to pay for software licenses. Now, it’s the main reason is to avoid being locked into a proprietary system.
“At first, it was: we will save money and by the way, we will get freedom,” Vignoli said. “Today it is: we will be free and by the way, we will also save some money.”
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Associated Press writer Molly Quell in The Hague, Netherlands contributed to this report.
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This version corrects the contribution line to Molly Quell instead of Molly Hague.
Read the original article
Comments
Worth pointing out: France is not adopting existing open source software, they're building their own software and releasing it under the MIT licence. Most of it (or all of it?) is Django backend + React frontend (using a custom-built UI kit).
Home page for the entire suite (in French) with some screenshots: https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/
Code bases are on GitHub and they use English there: https://github.com/suitenumerique/
Dev handbook (in English): https://suitenumerique.gitbook.io/handbook
Not French and I can't say I personally tried deploying any of them, but I've been admiring their efforts from afar for a while now.
I work at Grist, the "tableur collaboratif" (collaborative spreadsheet) listed on the La Suite homepage. We're in the interesting situation of being both a NYC-based company, and open source software the French gov has adopted and is helping to develop. Grist is mostly a node backend. So it is a complicated story. The key is having code the gov can review and trust and run it on sovereign infrastructure.
Grist https://www.getgrist.com/
A write-up of how the French gov uses it https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...
Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration.
That being said, I should ask: to what extent do you see being US-based an advantage or a problem in the current state of things? For example, in regards to exports controls, or any other such thing that may potentially limit your business scope depending on $current_admin.
By SideburnsOfDoom 2026-02-0415:10 > in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin.
I don't think it's just that. It's also the increasingly plausible idea that the US government could pressure the EU by actually or threatening to control, throttle or tax EU access to online platforms such as Zoom, Teams, MS Office, Google docs, Azure or AWS.
> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin
Would you elaborate how this "in fact" is "protecting their citizens' rights"? Very curious to know.
https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...
> Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.
By bratwurst3000 2026-02-0511:50 for example EU privacy laws can be ignored in the states with for example the cloud act. having control over software and infrastructure is protecting the rights of eu citizen in that regard.
By estimator7292 2026-02-046:121 reply Microsoft, Google, et al very famously spy on everything you do and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government, regardless of whether the person is a US citizen.
Take this idea one step further. Microsoft, Google, et al also snoop on what foreign governments do with their software and report back to USGov.
> and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government,
Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.
Don’t think that this is a uniquely American property. If your data sits on servers within the control of any company that operates in a country, that country can and will apply legal pressure upon those companies to extract the data.
By SideburnsOfDoom 2026-02-0415:121 reply > Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.
I'm not sure of your point. This is an excellent argument as to why the French government should run their government videoconferencing and chat on infrastructure in France, as they plan to do, isn't it? Using software that they have vetted. Regardless of if this is a "uniquely American" thing or not.
Right. I’m not disagreeing with that. A country should run their official business on tools that aren’t trivially liable for extraction by foreign governments.
The point was in response to the above comment. All governments can and will compel companies to turn over data. It’s often framed on HN as a feature of only American companies but it’s actually universal.
By SideburnsOfDoom 2026-02-0420:59 It happens that the major tech platforms are all US-based, so it's more relevant to talk about US government policy than any other. Even if they are all like that.
But, in addition, the US government has recently become more pushy and less friendly than it was before, which is prompting many other nations to re-assess their dependence on the tech of what was until recently a close ally. The headline is an example.
It seems to me more about "this foreign government is most relevant" than "only this foreign government is like that".
By yunnpp 2026-02-060:52 That's not the point. Yes, governments are sovereign within their territory. But the US can force any US company to hand over data, regardless of where that company has located the data center.
wow it reminds me of Microsoft Access, a great piece of software in terms of rapidly building an application!
Does grist have forms?
I'm not an MS dev type, but I've often seen these forms questions. What made their forms so easy, or more in general what is so complicated about forms that this was even a tool so many liked?
MS Access was on its way out by the time I started working in software, but the simplest explanation I can give about why the "forms" question is this, let's say you're a business person and...:
It's basically if you could turn a SQlite file into a low-coded desktop app.* You have a huge Excel document that's basically a DB. (What Access kinda was) * You want users to interact with said data document, i.e add record, find/query record(s), edit records * You add a "form" for users to do just that. You can also add a "login" form to give some users more permissions.By p_ing 2026-02-0323:10 Access is an FE for db — JET Red, specifically.
JET Blue aka ESE is currently used by products like Active Directory and Exchange.
By inanutshellus 2026-02-0322:24 With Access, a business doing data entry could -- with a business user not a software engineer -- craft a Form and voila, easy onboarding to train new employees instead of filling out sheets of paper and filing them.
By KellyCriterion 2026-02-0415:41 Access biggest advantage by far was that you could share the file on a network drive and having multiple people accessing it: You didnt need any type of complex backup procedure.
In case of failure, just copy-over the old file from yesterday - such simple solutions are pure gold for SME without any big IT department
If you want forms try https://visualdb.com/ it is another tool that aims to be Microsoft Access
https://nocodb.com/ is an open source alternative.
By lateforwork 2026-02-0413:24 It has data corruption issues, see https://visualdb.com/blog/concurrencycontrol/
Right but it is cheaper than open source products if you self-host. Most open source products in this space, including grist, are only partially open source.
[grist employee here] Grist forms are open source and were used to keep the toilets clean at FOSDEM just a few days ago https://fosstodon.org/@grist/116001932837956733
Everything you see in our standard docker image is open source. Yes, you can enable and pay for enterprise features too.
By lateforwork 2026-02-040:121 reply It is weird that your enterprise features are not self-hostable even if a customer pays. I understand if some features are not open source, but why make it not self-hostable? Self-hosting is a requirement for confidential data.
By paulfitz 2026-02-041:00 The enterprise features are self-hostable. Look at "your servers" on the pricing page for Grist. Individuals (and orgs with < $1 million in annual income) quality for free activation keys btw.
Form support is touted on the homepage: https://www.getgrist.com/forms/
For what it's worth, which isn't much because this is probably outdated: I remember trying grist a few years ago and leaving mildly unimpressed with form support (I think because I was hoping to have image upload in the forms and that wasn't supported yet).
By paulfitz 2026-02-0323:40 Grist forms support uploads since 2025 https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/pull/1655
Since it is relevant here: support for uploads was code written by a French contributor, and reviewed by a developer working for the French gov (ANCT/DINUM) and a developer working for Grist Labs. Grist Labs has since maintained and improved on it. The forms feature itself was inspired by an integration built by Camille Legeron at ANCT.
By mentalgear 2026-02-0323:501 reply Kudos, Grist is great ! Super features, quite seamless only the UI could be more modern (or user stylesheet customizable) if you get to it.
By paulfitz 2026-02-041:51 Thanks! Fair about styling :). You can bring your own stylesheet https://support.getgrist.com/self-managed/#how-do-i-customiz...
By mickael-kerjean 2026-02-045:103 reply > France is not adopting existing open source software
As a Frenchman, this stings. I have been working since 2017 in creating an open source alternative to Dropbox (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash), the reality is out of 60 customers, only 2 are French and most contacts I've had with French entities only shown interest onto open source because they were not willing to spend a dime on anything.
Customers are mostly US entities and other countries in Europe. The gist is our technology is already working accross every possible storage technology and every identity provider, has a clean modern UI, has gateway capabilities to expose your data with open protocols like SFTP, FTP, S3, MCP, with virtual filesystem capabilities that enables a decentralized approach through federation and tons of other advanced setup, is deployed in production in places like US military, MIT, European Commission and many other othher high profile places.
We just launched https://www.filestash.eu a few days ago hoping to talk to people in France who are interested in translating the talk of data sovereignty onto actual actions. If anybody who is reading this is truly interested onto a sovereign Dropbox and is willing to put talks onto a concrete reality, reach out to me, I'd love to talk to you
This looks interesting. Does it also has desktop sync clients? Didn't read anything in that direction while glancing over.
By mickael-kerjean 2026-02-0411:34 yes there are a few options there as well
Does Filestash support replication/automated backups and encryption? Also, do you have mobile clients?
By mickael-kerjean 2026-02-048:25 Yes, the international website is: https://www.filestash.app/
By dbl000 2026-02-0319:43 I've been using the docs tool in my homelab for ~3 months now as a knowledge base for some projects I've been working on with some friends.
It's really good. The typing experience "feels" right and the collaboration features work. I haven't played with the other solutions yet but I'm very excited if they are up to the same standard.
I deployed it with docker and it was relatively smooth. I had to play a bit with the OIDC but I'm pretty sure that was more a me issue than anything.
By tombert 2026-02-0319:38 I am certainly not going to complain about more well-funded FOSS software being out there.
Hmmm not entirely true. The text chat of their suite is simply element.io (matrix) and they're paying them for development.
Visio does seem built from scratch but I wonder if it's a temporary thing until element is feature complete with their move away from Jitsi.
You can find more about la suite on their website and the opendesk one (German project using mostly the same software). Unfortunately I don't have the links to hand here.
Tchap (the chat part of the suite) is indeed a fork of Element. Unfortunately they haven't funded upstream development for many years (otherwise both Element and Tchap would be much much better!)
Visio (aka meet) began in parallel with Element's work on MatrixRTC and Element Call. Hopefully the two can converge, given they are both built on LiveKit.
We do support the foundation: https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/espace-presse/dinum-...
Yup, DINUM does support the Matrix Foundation, which is appreciated in terms of helping keeping Matrix itself alive and independent.
However, this doesn't help support the folks improving & maintaining Element (either its clients or servers), which is the actual upstream product that Tchap is dependent on. Just like donating to the W3C doesn't help improve Firefox, if you were operationally dependent on a Firefox fork.
By StopDisinfo910 2026-02-047:041 reply I think it's a very convenient way of framing it and nicely occults how the stewardship at Matrix significantly changed since they chose it for Tchap.
By Arathorn 2026-02-0414:33 We’re not trying to obscure anything: we very well know that Tchap’s adoption of Matrix and their current support (Foundation membership, code contributions to Element Web, evangelisation to other countries, etc.) are key to our success, and we are very grateful for it.
We’re just stating facts: DINUM stopped funding upstream development at Element in 2022/2023 when their post-COVID funding evaporated, and this then directly contributed to the licensing changes at Element at the end of 2023 (https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/) as we tried to figure out a way to survive (which, thankfully, worked).
But we also know that the Tchap team is very budget constrained internally themselves to keep it running, despite the growing criticality and huge visibility of the service, and are trying to find ways to fix the situation at every level.
This is not a challenge limited to France: the question of how to support the upstream when heavily using open source was one of the top topics of last week’s Open Source Week in Brussels, involving folks at every level in European government.
By wolvoleo 2026-02-043:01 Oh I thought you said that you were doing custom features for the French government in a comment a few months ago. I must have misunderstood, sorry.
By tabbott 2026-02-0321:53 It really has been a huge disappointment the extent to which governments using open source projects for mission critical work go out of their way to avoid financially supporting them.
How much better could open source alternatives to Teams be in this moment if only 1% of what Europe paid Microsoft for Teams went to investing in open alternatives?
It boggles the mind as to why they choose a name for this application that is very clearly a Microsoft trademark.
In understand it's also the French word for Videoconferencing, but even still...
By KPGv2 2026-02-0323:00 If French trademark law is even remotely close to US trademark law, it can't be applied to videoconferencing because you can't apply a trademark that is just the term for the category of product that is covered.
So for example, I can't trademark "Apple" for my apple orchard. But I can trademark it for my computer company. Similarly, MS likely has chart visualization tools covered by "Visio" in France, but not telecommunications software.
Trademarks aren't granted to a company for unrestricted use. They're granted for specific use. Like I can't found a computer company, get Apple trademarked, and then buy an orchard, use Apple for the orchard, and then sue every apple orchard for saying "XYZ Apples" in their name. It remains restricted to a specific use that was included in the initial application for TM.
By WhyNotHugo 2026-02-0320:277 reply > Code bases are on GitHub
Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/
If the move away from American big tech is for practical reasons rather than political, there is no harm in using GitHub. The worry with using an American firm is that the US government could force the company to handover confidential information, or shut down access.
For open source code, there is no risk of confidential information being given to the US government (since there is no confidential information), and moving to another forge would be pretty simple if necessary.
tbh I was always of the mind that Github offers nothing over some slight convenience in hosting and some exposure, in exchange for the loss of control
Github had enough mindshare that for a small dev operation it was a form of social networking on top of actual code revision control, and one could get the occasional PR worth looking at; this consideration has essentially gone away as the amount of unreviewed vibecoded slop has skyrocketed
I know I'm biased but I'd run my own git server
but you're right that security is of no object here if you're code is OSS in the first place
What control do you lose with github that you want to maintain?
For any code you are sharing, I think you are underselling the hosting + sharing convenience. Everyone looks for projects on github, it is what people expect. Hosting it yourself requires managing user signups/accounts/permissions/etc.
By muyuu 2026-02-056:36 Well, if you're using it like it's supposed to be used, all of it is accessible by a third party and its availability depends on them. It will all be potentially scrapped (meaning it will be). You are essentially outsourcing the hosting as well, with its pros and cons. I'm heavily biased against that, so it's not only a github thing but a "cloud computing culture" thing. I only use other people's computer when using my own is a real problem or it's just not feasible.
The other commenter nailed it down. But I want to add that removing dependance on US companies is not some kind of spiteful act. It's purely down to both privacy and reliability.
Having private companies in the US becoming more involved with politics is fine for the US apperantly, but the EU just don't want to be involved.
By jepj57 2026-02-0322:46 Open standards, private software is the way to go. It makes sense for any entity to control their own destiny.
As if EU doesn’t involve itself with software, policy and censorship which has its own inherent risks
By bilekas 2026-02-047:07 The EUs interests focus heavy on regulation, standardisation and privacy. They avoid letting private companies dictate the terms.
Isn't perfect, but it's getting better and it's a work in progress.
Maybe they have local copies as well, and just figured they might as well take GitHub’s free bandwidth and social networking features.
By isisjcisncjanc 2026-02-0322:30 [dead]
By irishcoffee 2026-02-0323:331 reply Foul tarnished, I have given thee courtesy enough.
By chupasaurus 2026-02-045:59 The full phrase is older than Demon Souls.
By cozzyd 2026-02-041:32 Sounds legitimate
By Narann 2026-02-0413:06 Fun fact: In french, Github, is pronounced « Guy Teube », where « Teube » is the backslang of « Bite », which can be literally translated by “Dick”.
So to give an example, is as if English speaking peoples would use a service named “Davedick”.
By inemesitaffia 2026-02-0410:05 I'm sure governments can ask the registrar to make it happen.
By sylvinus 2026-02-0321:56 Exactly, we do have private forges we build and deploy from.
By ninalanyon 2026-02-0413:24 Surely everyone who uses GitHub has a local copy, that's pretty much how git works.
By alpha_squared 2026-02-0320:34 This is probably just the first big step (communications) in a series of big steps.
By thrance 2026-02-0321:59 I remember seeing some projects by the French government on their self-hosted Gitlab. Maybe these are just public mirrors of their private repos?
Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc).
It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech behemoths. If this realization happened ~20 years ago, they might have stopped FB, Goog, Amazon, MSFT, etc. much earlier, and wouldn't be hand-wringing now trying to stop or delay the evil effects of social media.
I am pleased that AUS has banned social media for teens < 16yrs, and perhaps Finland is thinking the same route.
Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.
By codethief 2026-02-0323:33 > Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.
As a European, I agree. Zooming out a little, though, this whole decoupling process of entire economies (which has been well underway for a while) is going to increase the probability of armed conflict as the repercussions of military engagement will be lower.
Germany has https://www.opendesk.eu/de and https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund. both mentioned on HN
By aanet 2026-02-0417:33 I had known about the OpenDesk, but the Sovereign Tech Fund is new to me. Glad to hear that it exists...
Does anyone know if the German govt has mandated the use of OPenDesk (and its like) across its internal use? I faintly recall there being a Linux distro (?) that was supported by German fed?
By irishcoffee 2026-02-0323:35 Have Germany supplanted office for these alternatives?
It’s super cool they exist, if they’re not used… I mean, it’s still super cool they exist?
I agree with this totally. But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this.
To me a really significant signal that they’re serious will be when there’s an official Linux version of Solidworks.
It’s remarkable to me that France has control over one of the premiere CAD suites but theyre entirely dependent on an American OS to use it.
Why would a private company deciding to release a Linux version of their product signal a government's follow-through? As far as I can tell, there is no current connection between Solidworks and the French government.
Solidworks is produced by a company that is owned by the Dassault Group.
There is always a connection between the military industrial complex of a nation and the state.
If France feels that it is an existential threat they will not let the design and maintence of their weapons be dependent on an operating system produced by a company based out of a country that has threatened them.
I'm not saying that this will happen. I'm saying that should this happen you know France is serious about eliminating dependencies on unreliable and threatening countries.
EU have access to Windows source code. Presumably if the shit really hit the fan we'd have a European build without all the spy/crapware added? Not much of a consolation given we'd have to be on the brink of WW3 for it to happen...
By LostMyWords 2026-02-040:191 reply I'm out of the loop, how does the EU have access to Windows source code?
By theragra 2026-02-0410:07 I think even Russia had it at some point. Microsoft is ready to allow it, if it is needed to convince state structures using Windows.
By fvrther 2026-02-046:12 Great remark, I will add that Solidworks is more intended for small CAD work, industrials usually use Catia for deeper CAD work, which is also owned by the Dassault Group. Both are developed for Windows.
By irishcoffee 2026-02-0323:38 500k and 3 really smart people can get solidworks running under wine in a few months. The barrier of entry seems pretty low.
By aanet 2026-02-0417:36 > But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this.
Yes, that is my own opinion too... that the EU states start with good intentions, but end up with bickering on all sides, with the end result of vastly neutering their own actions :-/
Would like to see how far this French initiative goes...
Well I would definitely prefer to use globally popular established solutions like Zoom and Teams and the English language and America as a reliable democracy.
Weather or not they get Greenland, Trump and his supporters in the US administration have changed the world. Guy should definitely get Nobel prize for pushing decentralization.
Completely confused about which parts are sarcasm. Pretty sure the last sentence is and by this the rest must be as well. But oh boy in what kind of world do we live where you seriously can't tell easily anymore.
By yunnpp 2026-02-041:55 To be fair, Trump seems to be doing more for software freedom and against rent-seeking US monopolies than any previous president. Not saying he's doing it intentionally, but he is doing it. Heck, maybe he applies that policy domestically and US software companies flourish once again without the grip of big tech and unfair business practices that starve their competition. Right to repair, reverse-engineering and modding coming very soon...
By MichaelRo 2026-02-046:10 First sentence is genuine and the last, with the Nobel prize, it's sarcasm, so you nailed it. But it confused a lot of Sheldons based on the number of downvotes I received.
I work on BlockNote (https://www.blocknotejs.org), the block-based editor that powers Docs (https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs).
1.5 year ago DINUM (La Suite) and OpenDesk (Germany) reached out and started sponsoring quite a bit of our work which has really helped us accelerate the project
Do they have an impact on the roadmap? Like special features for gov work or specific integration?
And I believe BlockNote uses tiptap/prosemirror, no? Do they also contribute to those “primitives”? That would be a very nice gift to the OSS community
By YousefED 2026-02-0513:56 They're pretty mindful of sponsoring things that also works for us. I.e.: we try to align both our roadmaps as good as possible.
We're discussing how to work best with downstream dependencies as well. So far they're actively sponsoring Yjs, but not prosemirror/tt.
fyi, here are some early thoughts by the PM of Docs on how to collaborate between public sector and OSS (companies): https://github.com/virgile-dev/playbook-work-with-oss-librar... (we surely don't check all the boxes yet, but it's good to have the discussion!). Feel free to jump in!
By badsectoracula 2026-02-046:18 AFAIK - and what is mentioned at the bottom here[0] - La Suite is a joint effort by French and German (and others) governments.
I did try a local installation of Docs when i first saw the project a few months ago (i do not remember if it was posted here or on Reddit, though i think one of the developers posted in the comments wherever i saw it), it seems fine though it did feel a bit sparse for all the docker containers it expected from me to setup. I guess for an organization this might be ok, but it did feel a bit overengineered, especially since the actual functionality doesn't seem to be much (and the core editor isn't even written by them).
By andai 2026-02-040:58 Here's what I gathered:
- TChap - Group chat (looks like Slack / Discord)
- Visio - Video meetings
- FranceTransfert - File Transfer
- Messagerie - Email client
- Fichiers - Cloud file storage
- Docs
- Grist - Spreadsheet
By quadrifoliate 2026-02-0319:496 reply Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy.
Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.
That website is specifically to explain it to French audiences.
German version is here, but unlike France they're mostly boosting already-existing German open source software (like Nextcloud and Open Xchange): https://opencode.de/en/home
I don't know how the Netherlands really fits into all of this, but I know they're one of the biggest funders of open source projects in general via NLnet. Seriously, their list of projects they've given money to is ridiculously comprehensive, you're going to struggle naming some that are not listed here: https://nlnet.nl/project/index.html
By Vinnl 2026-02-0422:14 FWIW, NLNet is distributing EU funds, not Dutch funds.
That said, the Dutch government is collaborating with La Suite (fr) and OpenDesk (de): https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau/
By econ 2026-02-0320:52 je maintiendrai!
By ta20240528 2026-02-045:491 reply "Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French"
Where I live names that aren't so obviously American have an advantage.
By NLMichel 2026-02-0410:09 Is the German version of La Suite: OpenDesk? Because to me (Dutch) I like the OpenDesk name better.
> Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy.
Why not? Plenty of French people speak English at a native level.
By latexr 2026-02-0415:05 Why are you nitpicking this? Are all French people incompetent laggards at speaking English? No, definitely not. There’s nothing about being French which makes you incapable of typing English text and maybe even *gasp* using a spell and grammar checker. The GitHub org shows seven people, is it so hard to believe they’re not absolute dolts at English? Why are you hell bent on insulting yourself?
The Dutch are also working on this: https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau/
By brnt 2026-02-049:02 Which uses LaSuite.
By OJFord 2026-02-049:33 The Dutch would probably use it no problem without even noticing it was French, same way they would if it were German, or English.
Looking through the resources you've linked is one of the most hopeful and awesome software experiences I have had in a while.
There's a chance to unlock tremendous value for society here.
Imagine if you could fix all the awful bugs making video conferencing software shitty for you! It's perhaps the most bug-plagued software out there in the world, with the highest number of complaints I have ever seen.
We've had a large detour away from open-source running the core of the internet, at least outside of web pages, but this sort of software feels like we're getting back to the 90's and earlier.
Vive la France!
By philipallstar 2026-02-0321:471 reply Zoom isn't buggy I wouldn't say. It's really good.
That's been my personal experience, but colleagues on Linux are continually fighting it.
I gave up on the native Zoom client on Linux right away, it was completely broken. It worked well enough on a browser to get through the project though.
Same with Teams, the video calls work fine on a browser. You just can't use any background pictures or effects.
By VorpalWay 2026-02-0323:20 Teams in Firefox on Linux does work with backgrounds for me, and since a few months you can even upload custom backgrounds.
Actual calling works well enough, I would say it is more stable than the native Windows client ever was.
By prmoustache 2026-02-0323:421 reply > You just can't use any background pictures or effects.
Thanksfully it is fairly easy to present a virtual webcam that is a composition of what your real physical webcam is showing and whatever background you want.
Can you give some pointers about this? I thought it's straight to kernel modules territory if I want a virtual webcam.
By prmoustache 2026-02-069:591 reply you can do it with ffmpeg but the most user friendly way is to use obs.
https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide
https://usercomp.com/news/1413136/ffmpeg-virtual-camera-guid...
I used that back in the days in 2019 / early 2020 when it was not yet possible to share your screen on msteams under wayland in chrome and firefox.
By distances 2026-02-0710:38 Thanks!
By Agingcoder 2026-02-0320:23 This one made me laugh , thanks ! I wish there was some kind of slashdot like ´funny’ tag
By caycep 2026-02-0320:29 I mean if they're half as good as Handbrake and VLC I'm up for trying
By Bendy 2026-02-0412:53 Should’ve called it OuiChat
By morshu9001 2026-02-0323:12 Is there not a FOSS solution like this already that they could just deploy?
By Aeolun 2026-02-0322:29 I like how they go to digital sovereignty on office. And then immediately turn around an host on Github.
By MagicMoonlight 2026-02-0413:19 That is awesome
By isisjcisncjanc 2026-02-0322:29 [dead]
> Used each month by more than 500 000 staff, in 15 ministries and many administrations.
By input_sh 2026-02-0320:38 Okay fine, I'll take the bait. How do you define "working out" to conclude that there's 0% chance of it?
By iamacyborg 2026-02-0320:55 You think government staff just use whatever software they want?
By shevy-java 2026-02-0319:4011 reply Makes sense. This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything. The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government, and the current US government will remain hostile as long as it is in charge; but even afterwards it is quite logical to assume that any follow-up government will prioritize US interests over European interests. So it makes no sense to pay for outsiders who would work against you.
France does a few things right; scandinavian countries too (I include The Netherlands here, though they are not really scandiavians but in their decision-making, they are often a bit like a hybrid between France and Denmark or Sweden). Spain and Italy lag behind but sometimes, surprisingly, also do the right thing. The real troublemaker is ... Germany. For a reason nobody understands, Germany is like an US satellite in everything it does, but only ... half-hearted. Naturally, "the economy" is one reason (export centric country so it is readily blackmailable by the USA here) but even then you have to ask why german politicians have absolutely no pride at all. France has pride - that's good and bad but good in this context. (UK is more an US colony really after Brexit anyway, with Farage probably going to win - and cause more damage. Brits just don't learn from this.)
By derektank 2026-02-0319:56 >For a reason nobody understands, Germany is like an US satellite in everything it does
I don’t see what’s surprising about this. In the post-war period, most of Europe was hostile to German empowerment, from initial opposition to West Germany’s inclusion in NATO to later resistance to German reunification. The presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Germany also required more diplomatic communication and alignment to maintain status of forces agreements.
The status quo has only really changed in the last twenty years.
By BiteCode_dev 2026-02-047:30 Even worse than most people realize: https://www.bitecode.dev/p/the-eu-can-be-shut-down-with-a-fe...
That includes:
Dependency on US-hosted digital services (emails, chat, calendars, ticket systems, online editors, file hosting, sync services, payment providers) — e.g., Gmail, Google Docs.
Dependency on third-party authentication providers — e.g., login via Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, and iCloud on iPhones.
Dependency on US cloud infrastructure providers — e.g., companies relying on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
Dependency through supply chain partners who rely on US tech — e.g., digitization partners using AWS/Azure impacting invoice processing.
Dependency on US-based business IT software and data services — e.g., banks using Microsoft LDAP, accountants using Dropbox, telecoms storing data in Oracle data lakes.
Dependency on US-controlled operating systems on user devices — e.g., Windows, macOS, iOS, Android.
Dependency on US-designed chips in most devices — e.g., Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Apple chip hardware.
France is the only country in Europe and likely the world that builds anything defense related in France. Pistols, machine guns, aircrafts, ships, helicopters, etc, it's all french.
By qball 2026-02-047:22 The big stuff, sure, but the French state's small-arms capacity (while once impressive) has atrophied to the point of non-existence.
They rely on the Germans (and to a point, Czechs) to supply their military these days.
By RamblingCTO 2026-02-0415:351 reply Are you saying only French companies build defense stuff in France or it's the only country in Europe that builds defense stuff in general?
Germany has quite a lot of defense companies that supply half the world I think.
They are saying that France is the only country that builds its own defence stuff only in country (unlike Germany that would buy American jets, for instance).
And it's true for most things that matter. The only exception I can think of is manufactured by cooperative companies that are part owned by France and have facilities in France but that specific thing might be made somewhere else (e.g. Airbus A400Ms for which the final assembly is in Seville, but Airbus is jointly owned by France, Germany, Spain), and small arms (HK, German made). Small arms don't really matter in the grand scheme of things due to the low barrier of entry both for acquiring off the shelf and setting up domestic manufacturing. Good luck doing that with fighter jets or cruise missiles.
By bratwurst3000 2026-02-0512:52 airbus is owned by germany and france to each 10% and spain 4%. Things get interesting if you count all the owners from the states together they have ≈ 12%. But it is controlled by Germany france spain.
By dyslexit 2026-02-0320:55 > This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything.
More to this point, the article points out that one of the drivers of all this is when Microsoft killed one of the emails an ICC prosecutor's email because the US administration sanctioned them:
> A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.
> The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a “kill switch” that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.
By tacker2000 2026-02-0322:22 Since WW2, German national pride is something that is not very well received, added to that the old east/west divide, and the generally strong identification with ones own state/region. It is a complex affair.
By AlecSchueler 2026-02-048:531 reply > The real troublemaker is ... Germany
Everyone is responding with rationale for this, but it's not actually true it's it? It feels like every week we see another German state moving away from Microsoft etc.
By tacker2000 2026-02-0411:461 reply Some are, some arent.
The Bavarian state for example just signed a huge deal with MS.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Cloud-Row-in-Bavaria-over-billi...
By AlecSchueler 2026-02-0412:38 Sure but I still think it's unfair to characterise Germany as an outlier or a "trouble maker." Weren't they also the ones who took the privacy fight to Google with regards to things like Street View? That kind of behaviour is making trouble for US companies.
You're basically saying Western European countries' relationships with the US haven't changed much since the Cold War.
By herbst 2026-02-047:30 I wouldn't agree to that. However we are in the middle of a new cold war since orange guy the first and pretty much manifested it with orange guy the second.
By philipallstar 2026-02-0321:485 reply France does everything right except produce much software. I'm sure it can copycat things pioneered by the US, and 20 years later, but that's not exactly difficult.
Sounds like a pretty good deal for France to fork US software from 20 years ago, because shit sure hasn't improved much since then.
By philipallstar 2026-02-0714:22 It definitely has, but it's more that US hardware has advanced incredibly over that time period.
By chakazula 2026-02-0322:08 To me this is the point right? Everything that's spent enough time in the oven and has been commodified should be eventually launched as a public service. If we lived in a reasonable world this would be how things are done instead of installing permanent toll booths on everything and letting it get shittier and more expensive.
By victorbojica 2026-02-0322:04 Doesn't really matter if copycat or not in this case. I'd argue it's even better to be a copycat in order to move faster.
By mylifeandtimes 2026-02-0323:17 why does it matter if it is difficult? You are right, these systems should be well understood by now. And public domain.
By sofixa 2026-02-0416:58 Obviously you've never seen French software, so why pretend like you have?
Counterpoints: Deezer, Doctolib, Back Market, Tidal, Adopte, Mistral, Dassault Systemes (the company behind the two main CAD softwares out there), Thales, Qonto, Kyutai, Mirakl, BeReal, Klaxoon, ABTasty, etc etc. We can do this all day.
Oh, and there are ton of official government open source projects.
And no, "but they're not as big as a FAAG" does not mean that the software isn't good or innovative.
By _el1s7 2026-02-040:54 Europe? Uh, I think you mean the whole world.
By mrits 2026-02-0319:55 [flagged]
> The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government
Where do you get your information from? This is just plainly false. Heck, it runs afoul of the Constitution, so even if the government were to try something, it'd be smacked down real fast.
By p_j_w 2026-02-042:21 > Where do you get your information from?
Comment right above yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877163
> even if the government were to try something, it'd be smacked down real fast.
One would hope, but evidently not!
I don't know if you're joking, but if not you need to start paying attention to what has been happening in US courts recently.
By moi2388 2026-02-046:16
By le-mark 2026-02-0323:46 I think it’s more accurate to say that US corporations are subject to US law. Indeed there are no laws that say anything about corporations prioritizing the party in power, but they often do as matter course.
By pelagicAustral 2026-02-0317:2915 reply Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive concession.
Heh, now that our team has standardized on Teams rather than Zulip (so that we suffer/connect with the rest of the org whom are stuck in MS land) - and I've been given the chance to use Teams for a while - it really is worse than I initially thought.
Which means it's time to look for alternative clients. I ws hoping for something like WeeSlack:
https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
But all I found was:
https://github.com/btp/teams-cli
https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams
Are there really no good Teams clients? Doesn't have to plug in to WeeChat or be a TUI... But something?
You'd understand why there's no even half-decent clients for Teams if you ever tried to write a bot in Teams.
That's just a pure lesson in pain.
Webhooks work, but proper bots are borderline impossible; at least without giving you the feeling that you'd rather pull your own teeth out with pliers.
By exceptione 2026-02-0320:281 reply Sorry to hear. Pulling teeth with pliers on-premise has been out of support for a while. Please contact our sales team if you haven't tried our Pliers Copilot 365 For Teams and Dentists offering yet. It solves any problems you might currently experience.
By dijit 2026-02-0320:38 Audibly laughed. Thank you for that.
By wizzwizz4 2026-02-0320:22 Even authenticating to Teams is a herculean task. Microsoft's official APIs seem purpose-built to prevent people from writing proper Teams interfaces, and attempting to replicate their proprietary SSO flow is extremely painful. (In theory, you could hook into it by starting a fresh web browser at the appropriate login page, waiting for the appropriate redirects, and then harvesting the relevant cookies, but that's a really ugly solution, and it already represents a lot of invested work.)
I actually had a look. Now you can get messages and stuff from MS Graph. The situation is better than a few years ago when only very useless Teams APIs were available.
But the available APIs still suck. For example there is none to just get all recent notifications. I don't know if teams itself has access to more and better apis? If not that would explain a lot.
By TOMDM 2026-02-0321:54 I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. The number of times I've heard the notification sound, gotten a toast while in the middle of something, and then been unable to find what the hell that notification was for, because some other device I'm logged in on has helpfully marked it read.
Then begins the hunt through chats, meeting chats, group chats, channel chats and the notification pane (which doesn't show every type of notification!?) to find what it was.
Absolutely maddening.
By internet_points 2026-02-0320:32 I'm in the same boat and I am this close to just torching the mainsail
By Flere-Imsaho 2026-02-0321:19
Teams is the bane of my existence. Oh well, one of them at least and am forced to use it for the time being. Europeans may get lucky with some sane software or get something even worse than Teams. It remains to be seen how they do. If their software is starting to get better, perhaps US software will get better too because they can no longer justify the junk they're pumping out on us.
By pelagicAustral 2026-02-0319:151 reply > get something even worse than Teams
I'm not sure that's actually possible, you know...
I hope for the best for Europeans but until I see results I'm not sure what they're capable of.
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0321:36 I guess we could concoct something made out of PHP4/5 and jQuery and use Xampp stack, to get something worse. Or wait, I have it! We build it on top of MS Excel!
I've had to start using Teams more lately and it is indeed as terrible as I'd heard. The other day I needed to copy a number of items from an ongoing chat. Seems like an extremely simple and normal thing, but every time I hover over a message a popup jumps up with emoji reactions that partially covers the text I'm trying to copy. Trying to move quickly, I kept accidentally "reacting" to messages instead of double clicking the text. To make matters worse there's no way to disable this "feature"! Why?!
Teams is supposed to be a professional workplace tool from one of the biggest software companies in the world, but it feels like something a high schooler coded up for fun. Weirdly Discord, a platform explicitly meant for gamers, is a more useful chat tool. I don't like Discord at all, but it's better than Teams.
By internet_points 2026-02-047:55 What are the downsides of Discord?
By randusername 2026-02-0320:232 reply The Zen of Teams is that Teams is so clunky it cannot be Slack.
Without threads, there is no breach of thread-etiquette.
When "channels" are so awkward, nobody uses them. Then there is no constant deluge of middle-age folks creating a Facebook out of work, needing to be reminded that the photos channel is for business-photos, not pictures of their kids.
When emoji support is limited, nobody has to police people pushing the boundaries of what emojis are appropriate.
The software is baffling. But I like it that way.
By nickkell 2026-02-0413:26 For the most part I agree with you: there is less functionality and hence less to police. There are also fewer people in chats/channels, as for the most part they are private or undiscoverable.
There are definitely still breaches of etiquette though, e.g. people frequently tagging a whole channel when they have a support question, even though it contains hundreds of people.
By wilsonnb3 2026-02-0321:51 You can upload custom emoji to teams, most businesses just turn it off
By kenjackson 2026-02-0318:403 reply I have to admit, I have almost no problems with Teams. The one big issue I had was performance when screen sharing. But I got a new laptop and this problem went away. Seems so odd that so many people have major problems with it, while I feel like within my workgroup there are almost no problems to speak of.
This was discussed before: if your Windows computer doesn't have a valid HEVC license installed, then Teams falls back to software encoding and performs horrible. Most manufacturers include the license, but not all. It's also only 99 cents on the Microsoft store (which might be unavailable on enterprise managed devices)
By dijit 2026-02-0320:16 That: and microsoft routes all calls through their servers.
Fine if you live near a datacenter.
In Sweden though, you go through France.
Not ideal.
By delecti 2026-02-0318:52 How extensively do you use it? When my team was just using it for meetings and the attached chats, it did actually work completely fine. When broader orgs started pushing more communications through it (the "teams" in teams, and all the weird chat room/forums that entails) all of the rough edges became very apparent. All of that is just a shockingly disorganized mess.
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0321:421 reply And then we will get rid of them again, because some suits are telling us that we don't actually want them, that they are "complicated", we must trust them and that recursive data types are too hard to get right. Let's all write SMS again. Or better yet, send fax.
Some engineers will facepalm super hard but won't be listened to, as usual, and we will enter the next cosmic age of self-inflicted suffering.
By pjmlp 2026-02-048:32 Thankfully I only have to use Teams in very specific projects, thus I still have them. :)
What’s so bad about Teams that makes it so hated? I used it lately and often to work with a customer and I don’t find anything terrible about it, other than some minor usability annoyances like phantom chat notifications once in a while. But overall it does what it’s supposed to do, get on a video call, share your screen and share files over channels. The transcript feature seems to work well too. I’m not amazed by it, but I don’t see anything to hate either. I guess it is one of those tools I don’t have a strong opinion about.
"I don't have an issue with it" tells me you've never used anything else. Have you tried Slack? Zulip? Mattermost? Fucking... IRC from 1988?
Teams isn't just mediocre, it's aggressively hostile to basic usability. The camera bar sits at the top of the window, directly blocking where you're supposed to position your camera for eye contact. Chat organisation is broken: you get duplicate groups because the order people were added matters somehow. Notifications phantom in and out. Reactions are buried in an activity feed. Search is useless. You can't reliably paste text without major formatting issues. The mobile app logs you out randomly and doesn’t tell you unless you manually check it. Desktop notifications don't sync with read state. Files uploaded to chat don't appear in the Files tab. The "new Teams" broke half the features that worked in classic Teams. Presence status is a coin flip. Audio settings reset themselves between calls. Screen sharing has a 50/50 chance of sharing the wrong window. The difference between a chat and a channel is arbitrary and confusing. You can't edit messages older than a few hours. Threading is bolted on and barely works.
Performance is inexcusable. Multiple gigabytes of RAM to display text messages and lag constantly on modern hardware. How do you make a chat application lag? It's rendering text, not computing fluid dynamics. Opening the application takes 30 seconds on an SSD. Switching between chats stutters. Typing has input delay.
The real problem isn't that Teams is terrible. It's that "it technically functions" has become an acceptable standard. When you've never experienced better, "it works" seems fine. But Teams is what happens when a monopoly position means you don't have to care about quality. Microsoft has unlimited resources and still ships this.
Even Skype for Business was more stable, and in Skype for Business you couldn't reliably select text. That's how low the bar is.
By mystifyingpoi 2026-02-0319:571 reply > and lag constantly on modern hardware
This. Opening a chat for the first time in the morning consistently takes 5-10 seconds. Opening subsequent ones takes 2-3 seconds. That is, if they contain plain text. If not, UI keps reflowing and jumping while thumbnails and silly gifs are loaded async, so you cannot even reliably click.
By raffkede 2026-02-0410:49 And if I watch a movie it will pop up after 5 minutes
By 9dev 2026-02-0320:54 Out of all the things you listed (and I'd have a couple more), copy-paste is really what drives me insane, because it's completely cursed!
Sometimes, text copied from teams includes `[Sender Name, 2026-01-03, 21:51]` as a prefix—other times not. Sometimes you paste formatted text and it ends up pasted as formatted but inconsistent HTML, including (of course) text color of all things, rendering it black even with the dark theme, and thus unreadable. Other times you copy code, and there's two blank lines between each line when you paste elsewhere. It makes you cry, really.
I have used at least Skype, Meet/Chat, Slack, Teams and Discord, plus some other niche apps I can’t remember. In Discord, I like the ability to share user screens concurrently and the way you can just jump on a channel and have an impromptu meeting without much ceremony. But I have seen only one case of Discord in a corporate environment. My use cases are simple, video calls, screen sharing, file sharing and chat with mentions and code snippets, once in a while a survey to pick a place for lunch. I have been using Teams daily since last October. No issues. If it was consistently bad, it would have been replaced already. People I work with value their time. Also last week I was in a 2K+ people presentation with Q&A. I haven’t experienced most of the issues you mentioned, and don’t have the use case for some, like search or mobile. I use my email as my source of truth for communications, if it’s not in my inbox it didn’t happen. We are very diligent in keeping meeting minutes and transcripts which are shared my email at the end of the each call.
Your claim that "if it was consistently bad, it would have been replaced already" just... totally misunderstands how enterprise software decisions work, even in organisations where people value their time.
Switching costs are enormous. Your organisation has Teams integrated with your Office 365 licensing, which means you're already paying for it. Replacing it with Slack means paying $8-12 per user per month on top of your existing Office costs, because you still need Outlook, Word, Excel, and SharePoint. For a 500-person company, that's an additional $48,000-72,000 annually for a tool that overlaps with something you've already paid for. Finance departments kill these proposals before they reach decision-makers, regardless of how much time is wasted on Teams' inefficiencies.
The IT burden to move is quickly substantial. Migrating chat history, file repositories, and integrations takes months. You need to retrain users, update documentation, reconfigure SSO, and migrate bots and webhooks. Most IT departments are already understaffed. Unless Teams is completely non-functional, that project never gets prioritised over security updates, infrastructure maintenance, or business-critical requests.
Organisations don't optimise for employee time the way you seem to think they do. The calculus isn't "is this tool good", it's "is this tool bad enough to justify the cost and disruption of replacing it". That threshold is extraordinarily high. People tolerate inefficient tools because the alternative is fighting procurement, convincing IT, and enduring months of migration pain. Lotus Notes persisted in enterprises for over a decade despite being universally despised because the switching cost was too high. SAP is notorious for terrible UX but remains entrenched because migration is a multi-year project costing millions.
Your workflow actually proves the point. You use email as your source of truth because Teams' search and organisation aren't reliable enough. You manually distribute meeting minutes and transcripts because you don't trust Teams as a system of record. You've built workarounds to compensate for the tool's deficiencies and normalised them as standard practice. That's not Teams working well, that's your organisation adapting to work around its limitations.
Let me address the specific issues you haven't encountered:
- Teams' resource usage is measurable and documented. PC World's 2023 benchmarks showed Teams using 1.4GB RAM at idle compared to 500MB for Slack and 350MB for Discord. ExtremeTech's testing found Teams taking 22 seconds to cold start versus 4 seconds for Slack on identical hardware. r/sysadmin consistently reports Teams causing performance problems on machines with 8GB of RAM, forcing hardware upgrades. Microsoft implicitly acknowledged this by completely rebuilding Teams in 2023, promising 2x faster performance and 50% less memory. The fact that they had to rewrite the entire application is an admission that the performance problems were architectural. (it didn't help though)
- Microsoft's own documentation acknowledges search limitations. The search index doesn't include all message content beyond a certain threshold. Results ranking is poor enough that Microsoft published a support article explaining how to use advanced search operators to find messages, which rather proves the basic search doesn't work. The r/MicrosoftTeams subreddit has over 3,000 posts about search not returning results that users know exist. IT administrators on Spiceworks report having to advise users to "use Ctrl+F in the browser if Teams search doesn't work", which is a workaround for a broken core feature.
- Files uploaded in chat messages don't appear in the Files tab automatically. They're stored in a hidden SharePoint folder that most users don't know how to access. Microsoft's official guidance for this is to manually move files to the Files tab or use SharePoint directly. Is that an edge case? Is it FUCK, it's documented in Microsoft's own support articles as expected behaviour. If your organisation hasn't hit this, it's because you're not using Files tabs or you've trained people to work around it.
- Microsoft's Tech Community forums have literally thousands of threads about notification badges showing unread messages that don't exist (5,000+ when I last checked), or notifications not appearing for actual messages. Microsoft's official response, posted repeatedly since 2020, is "we're aware of this issue and investigating". It's six years later now, it's still not fixed. The fact that you haven't noticed might mean your notification settings are configured differently, or you've unconsciously learned to ignore the notification count as unreliable.
- Going back to r/MicrosoftTeams: the community continually documents persistent issues with the mobile app... notifications not syncing with desktop read state, automatic logouts requiring re-authentication, messages appearing in different orders on mobile versus desktop, and the app draining battery faster than comparable applications. GitHub's issue tracker for Teams mobile shows hundreds of unresolved bugs (then again, I suppose what popular app doesn't). You mentioned you don't use mobile, which explains why you haven't experienced this.
- Regarding Chat versus channel architecture, Microsoft's own UX research lead, cited in a 2022 Verge interview, acknowledged that the distinction between chats and channels confuses users but can't be changed due to early architectural decisions. The duplicate groups issue I mentioned isn't a bug, it's a consequence of treating "Alice, Bob, Charlie" as a different entity from "Alice, Charlie, Bob". This is documented in Microsoft's developer documentation as intended behaviour. Your organisation either hasn't hit this scale yet or has developed unofficial naming conventions to work around it.
You've been using Teams for four months. These issues emerge over time, at scale, or in specific usage patterns. When you're managing multiple projects with overlapping team members across different time zones and need to reference decisions made months ago, the organisational problems compound. When you're working on older hardware or need reliable mobile access, the performance issues become blocking. When you need to find a specific technical discussion from six months ago buried in one of 40 channels, the search deficiencies become critical.
The question isn't whether Teams works for your specific, constrained use case after four months. The question is whether it's good software compared to alternatives, and whether the problems people report are valid. The evidence says yes, they are valid. The performance metrics are measurable. The bugs are documented in Microsoft's own forums. The UX problems are acknowledged by Microsoft's own researchers. The antitrust case is real.
Your experience is one data point. It's not invalid, but it's also not representative. Saying "I haven't personally experienced these problems in my limited usage" doesn't refute the documented experiences of millions of users, the measured performance benchmarks, or the systematic issues that Microsoft itself acknowledges. It just means you haven't hit them yet, or your use case is simple enough that they don't matter, or you've normalised workarounds as standard practice.
And, I haven't even started talking about what happens if you dare to work across multiple organisations.
Well said.
> Replacing it with Slack means paying $8-12 per user per month on top of your existing Office costs, because you still need Outlook, Word, Excel, and SharePoint. For a 500-person company, that's an additional $48,000-72,000 annually for a tool that overlaps with something you've already paid for.
If only in this calculation they'd factor in how much time each employee wastes because of Teams glitches…
By disgruntledphd2 2026-02-0412:16 That's much harder to measure though, and to reduce to a dollar value. This is the cause of much of the dysfunction in the modern world.
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0321:491 reply Let's not forget how stupid the client on GNU/Linux was regarding audio devices. Every other app I had installed, that has anything to do with microphone (OBS, Audacity, Discord, Discord in Browser, Signal, ...) recognized my mic, which was connected via jack. Not MS Te-eams!!! Tada! Had to buy another headset with USB plug for Teams to get it.
By Wilder7977 2026-02-0323:20 I get the same issue on Mac, if it's any comfort. I had to close and reopen the app 7-8 times to have my microphone recognized, despite it worked reliably on every single tool I ever used, both on Linux and later on Mac. Teams couldn't do that either with the native client or with the web client.
By mrweasel 2026-02-0320:30 > Typing has input delay.
Everything in Windows has input delay, ever since at Windows XP, it makes it infuriating to use.
By cmoski 2026-02-0320:13 Notifying you about messages you've already seen. You have to change chats and to back for it to dismiss it. Kills me.
Likes to open new windows if you click a notification.
It is slow.
The search is not good at showing multiple results from the one chat. Why does it search all the other chats anyway...
Switching accounts constantly is a pain in the arse - I unfortunately have to use four accounts and one sub-account (member of some other org's team or something).
By Agingcoder 2026-02-0320:27 It has a very large number of bugs.
My favourite one ( still happens ) is having to mute then unmute at the beginning of the conversation otherwise nobody can hear me. It was so common, with people fiddling with their headset, calling again etc that I eventually asked everyone exhibiting audio issues to start with this
Another interesting one is that if you’re not connected properly , you send messages , but never get notified that they never left, and are never notified that you’re not connected.
It’s also a resource hog and will eat your machine for breakfast.
The list goes on and on, it’s very surprising.
By rootusrootus 2026-02-0320:22 I don't love it, but I don't have many of the problems other people seem to have. And I've used everything from IRC in the 80s to Slack more recently. The only thing I can think of is that I don't run it on Windows, but rather a fairly new MacBook Pro M4. Maybe in this case it actually runs better on Mac, which is kind of ironic.
By wolvoleo 2026-02-0319:35 It's a resource hog, crashes, it's constantly littering files all over SharePoint which becomes even more than a garbage bin than it already is.
And the UI is terrible, huge balloons around everything. I want density but even at the densest setting it sucks.
Oh and it also fails to update online status. Often I click on a colleague who seems green and only then it updates and it turns out they've been away for 3 hours. Grrr
By isk517 2026-02-0321:51 Another one for the pile. You can choose to open office documents in Teams directly, the browser, or in the native desktop app, but you can only set it to open by default in either Teams or browser. Why?
By CamperBob2 2026-02-0321:15 Teams feels as though it were vibe-coded, but dates back well before there was such a thing. It works, basically, but isn't something I'd feel good about shipping myself.
By perching_aix 2026-02-0319:54 Wrote up a few of my gripes on here a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933952
They just shot Slack and moved to Teams only here.
The company is falling apart so quickly they are going to have to pay up again before the end of the month.
Because slack startet to extort their customers. I guess many moved away, to be prepared if slack decides to push their prices even further.
Though, if your choice is between Salesforce licensing and Microsoft licensing, at least it’s possible to understand Salesforce licensing.
By andix 2026-02-0319:28 A lot of companies already have Teams included in their existing licenses.
But yeah, Microsoft licensing is impossible to understand.
By TulliusCicero 2026-02-0319:032 reply The risk is of course that the new thing might be worse than Teams somehow.
By TulliusCicero 2026-02-0319:141 reply Well no, there's always the European Oracle: SAP.
By marcosdumay 2026-02-0321:42 It's a good thing in this context that they are on the other side of the border.
By ziotom78 2026-02-0319:30 It will surely be worse, at least at the beginning. But there is a significant chance that with time they will improve it, and one can hope that one year after the first release the product will actually be better than Teams, given that the developers will improve it based on their own experience.
Teams, Sharepoint, Exchange, and OneDrive seem to be connected by a maze of dark twisty integration passages which no single human has mapped fully.
Somewhere, in the deepest bowels, Skype still lives. I'm sure of it.
By marcosdumay 2026-02-0321:44 Lync is still there, lurking. With Communicator blocking every contact with the outside world. But eventually some message will pass through!
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0322:01 It actually does or at least did, until at least a few years ago. When you opened the audio mixer (alsamixer or pulse audio control?) on XFCE, you could still see MS Teams labeled as Skype there. Not sure how it would be now, because I only ever use MS Teams isolated in a separate Ungoogled Chromium browser now, and have given up on the client for GNU/Linux.
And every private channel as well. And if you rename the Team, the SharePoint will become out-of-sync and all URLs will still use the old Team name.
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0322:02 Oh, this is useful info... Another tool in the box of making other people realize how much it sucks.
By blitzar 2026-02-0319:02 I knew I could smell a poo in the room, I didn't know what or who was responsible but it all makes sense now.
By andix 2026-02-0319:08 I don't have a lot of complaints with the current version of teams. Messaging and video calls work without major issues. It's bloated, and all those plugins are usually bad, but the basics work well for me.
The new Outlook app is horrible though.
By elzbardico 2026-02-0319:16 You kids have it easy.
Once I worked in a company with two brands after a fusion, and all of us had to use both Exchange and Lotus Notes. And I was almost forgetting SharePoint.
I couldn't agree more with this. Teams somehow managed to supercede my other microphone preferences when I'm not even using teams (took me a while to figure out). It might be one of the apps I detest the most. There is very little satisfaction with it and much annoyance.
By PeterStuer 2026-02-0318:571 reply By default, Teams never releases your audio input channel, even when you close it.
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0322:06 2 theories:
(1) They couldn't imagine anyone ever closing their gloriously developed MS Teams.
(2) Since everyone knows MS Teams and sitting in meetings all day is the one most important thing to get stuff done, they went ahead and made MS Teams a "priority". F using anything else! Maybe if it doesn't release the audio input, it will be 50ms faster next call! That ought to be enough for you!
By marcosdumay 2026-02-0321:46 Somehow, Teams overrides the volume controls on my Android phone. It's physically user-hostile.
By ergocoder 2026-02-0321:00 > No more Teams? Sounds like a dream.
No more Words? Introducing a worse software than Words...
By zelphirkalt 2026-02-0321:332 reply As bad and evil as MS Teams may be, I recently got invited to a Zoom meeting, and you simply can't use it in the browser! They just force you to download their shitty app to join. Naturally, I did not install crapware and closed the tab, as fortunately it was no mandatory event for me. At least in MS Teams I can isolate it into its separate ungoogled Chromium installation and treat that as a shitty app, without having to install crap onto my system.
By distances 2026-02-0322:57 Zoom calls work fine in the browser. They first make it look like you need the native client, but there's some dance you need to make to get the web link. Reload, wait, spin in your chair, something like that.
Of course I would never choose Zoom or Teams if I had the power, but Chromium does work with both when those are the tools your client uses.
By tlarkworthy 2026-02-0322:44 It makes you download it but then a button appears saying join in browser. I have tons of zoom binary copies
By macspoofing 2026-02-0317:538 reply It's not that bad. It's well integrated into Sharepoint, Exchange, and Office, and does the job. I've used both Slack and Teams and if you're using MS365, then Teams is absolutely the better option.
As someone who has gone from 100% Slack in startups to all-in Teams in big corpo, I disagree. Teams won't even display all office file formats without you having to open the dedicated app. And if it does it's usually a half-baked browser mess. And don't even get me started on the UX or meeting options or mobile support or the complete lack of a dedicated Linux client. I don't need one app to do everything half-assed, I need one app that does exactly what it's meant for well. Preferably on every platform.
By thewebguyd 2026-02-0318:40 > I don't need one app to do everything half-assed
That's primarily why it sucks, and that seems to be Microsoft's standard operating procedure. Everything they put out is in the category of "does everything, but half-assed with a web of fragile "integrations" that break if you look at it funny."
Worse, it's all SharePoint all the way down. Every team (and private channel!) is a SharePoint site, every user's OneDrive in the same tenant is a personal SharePoint Site. Every M365 Group gets its own SharePoint site (and mailbox). Creating a Team also creates an M365 group, but not vice versa.
Heaven forbid you rename something in the stack or you are in for a world of pain.
It's also by design that way. SharePoint storage is expensive, and boy what a disaster it is to ever try and get your data out of it.
Yet, for some reason, companies keep buying it and keep using it, letting Microsoft suck them in and hold them there for eternity.
If you're starting a new company, never, ever, buy anything Microsoft. Just don't go down that road. It's not worth it.
By orochimaaru 2026-02-0318:531 reply It’s not why your big corp chooses teams and the msft suite. From a corp perspective they don’t care about your edge case. There’s only - is it good for 90% of my use cases across the enterprise? And - do I get a bundle discount? Last but not the least - do I need to expend developer resources on it vs anything else?
Yeah, there is half assed stuff. But it’s not what most of the big corp uses anyway. So your little dev specific use case isn’t going to get much traction.
Teams does one thing well. It can do group chats and team calls. That’s most of what people use it for. And your corp gets a discount bundle.
Our CEO Decided to use his own phone, use zoom instead of the corporate Teams, and uses ChatGPT where the rest of us are stuck with MS copilot test licenses. I guess its good to be at the top!
By joe_mamba 2026-02-0320:58 Reminds me when at my previous company, management got themselves top macbooks for filing excel sheets and replying to emails, while rank and file engineers got the budget Lenovos with 8GB RAM
By orochimaaru 2026-02-0322:18 Depends on company size and how much influence legal, security and asset protection have.
Usually at big corp I haven’t seen a ceo actually schedule their own calls or deal with day to day bullshit. They have a whole team of staff for that.
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2026-02-0319:141 reply If you don’t want a half assed simulacra version, shouldn’t you prefer Teams open the native application?
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2026-02-0415:53
Teams should be about communicating. Viewing other document formats is layering on complexity for which it can never do as good a job as the native application.Teams won't even display all office file formats without you having to open the dedicated app… … I don't need one app to do everything half-assed, I need one app that does exactly what it's meant for well.
The children who write Teams cannot reliably deliver notifications on my mac without me restarting Teams every morning.
I've spent a full day attempting to send a webhook in. Teams used to work like slack (a channel admin can create an endpoint; you post to it.) Microsoft deprecated that because it worked. It's now a maze of permissions and it silently fails with no error messages at all.
Scrollback regularly fails and also requires app restart.
I cannot insert images into a channel w/ a customer via drag and drop, but I can paste them by opening them in preview, copying the image, and cmd+v into the channel. I wasted 4 hours w/ support trying to figure out why I can't drag images into the shared channel before giving up. This is typical of the Teams experience.
I could go on. Besides facebook's tools, it is the worst piece of software I've used and a demonstration of monopoly power to distribute total garbage. Slack has issues, but it does reliably do the core thing.
By creamyhorror 2026-02-0319:491 reply > I cannot insert images into a channel w/ a customer via drag and drop
Yup, we struggle with this. Seems to have to do with needing to pay for seats in order to have file-sharing allowed (but you can still paste Sharepoint/Onedrive links). Can't share files if there's even a single external person in the chat/channel. Forced us to buy another seat subscription. It's great!
By x0x0 2026-02-0320:00 That kinda makes sense (and thank you!), but I think the comprehensive incompetence is thus:
1 - fails 2 - w/ no useful feedback to user; 3 - I couldn't get support to tell me why (fine, small account), but the customer with 900 licensed seats couldn't either
Fortunately, said customer has come to the realization of how very bad it is and is hopefully migrating to Slack.
By clhodapp 2026-02-0317:56 For many of us, you are describing a black hole of integrated nightmare software
By soco 2026-02-0318:10 Okay and what exactly does this integration bring?
- opening Sharepoint pages in Teams' half-baked browser;
- opening Word or Excel in Teams' own half-baked editor;
- Exchange integration is the calendar, period. Nothing else. The only thing actually usable.
Am I missing anything?
By cbolton 2026-02-0319:57 Sharepoint... the only webapp I have to use that feels worse than Teams. I swear when I open the intranet landing page, the loading, reloading, resizing, rereloading, re-whatever takes at least 10 seconds to settle. How can engineers build something be so inefficient?
By blitzar 2026-02-0319:04 > Sharepoint, Exchange, and Office
A holy trinity if ever I have seen one.
By boringg 2026-02-0318:07 It is 100% that bad.
By Lio 2026-02-0319:11 Teams not being able to do threaded conversations consistently or reliably is a massive pain for me. I hate it. Corporate IT is just hell for users.
