Post by @jesusmargar@mastodon.social

2026-02-16 12:45 UTC

@kirschner Seeing this only as an open source /free software issue is missing the football, in my opinion. Most of that money won't be on software but on cloud services, servers and support. You may replace MS for open source versions but I doubt the costs would go down considerably and I am not sure how many companies would be able to step in at that level. The Government may have to do it by itself (which is possible, but would take time and serious investment).

Replies (3)

@jesusmargar@mastodon.social 2026-02-16 12:46

@kirschner In an ideal world, you'd see the EU pulling resources together to replace it with an EU-based alternative, ideally publicly run and serving all 27 nations with possibility to export elsewhere, but that would take a few years to develop. I don't see it happening.

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@kirschner@mastodon.social 2026-02-17 06:51

@jesusmargar it is often the argument when dealing with monopolies that they are too big to be replaced by another company. That is exactly the problem, and you have to start implementing strategies so there can be more competition by splitting up different components.

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@jaypeach53@mastodon.social 2026-02-17 10:05

@jesusmargar @kirschner Jesus, and those expenditures would hopefully be done by EU companies paying EU taxes with EU employees. And if the software is open source, even if they were paid handsomely, the fees would probably be 10% of what M$ gets for enshittified software. M$ makes crapware, face it. Or are you just M$ troll?

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