this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
60 points (96.9% liked)
World News
871 readers
573 users here now
Rules:
Be a decent person, don't post hate.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
that's it, Linux and Libre Office here I come. Fuck, fuck, fuck corpos and enabling fascism
Unpopular opinion here but
The choice of M$ - made before the sanctions - was likely just a case of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
I'm quite worried here actually - M$ did this not because they sided with Netanyahu or against Palestine, but because the US threw its might and compelled M$ to do so. The article says the chief had to move to Proton Mail which is a Swiss provider. While the Swiss have historically been independent and unyielding to foreign pressure, the US got them to agree to information sharing under FATCA (see https://international-adviser.com/us-and-switzerland-finally-seal-delayed-double-tax-deal/ and https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/switzerland-us-agree-exchange-financial-account-data-2024-06-27/ )
So, worried. How long before the US comes and tries to sanction Proton Mail? The free world needs to come up with a response to this and prevent the US from abusing it's power here. Perhaps the free world needs to sanction the US and kick them out of our international banking system before it's too late?
And in an alternate universe where Harris won and the US was using its sanction power responsibly, it's not that unreasonable to go with M$. As per https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/office-365-platform-service-description/office-365-us-government/gcc-high-and-dod M$ actually has offerings tailored to highly classified and secure agencies. (Not that I'd go with M$. I'm just saying I get why a bunch of intelligent lawyers and prosecutors who aren't particularly tech savvy would say yes to M$.)
the reason they made the choice is exactly why I'm so mad.
I hear what you're saying. Just remember that Cygnus Solutions and Red Hat, both prominent commercial supporter of FOSS, were based in and headquartered in the US when they were independent companies. (Now they're both part of IBM.)
Even the Linux Foundation and the Free Software Foundation have to obey US sanctions - LF is based in San Francisco and the FSF is based in Boston.
Going FOSS is good, but the US abusing their sanctions powers is a different kettle of fish.
I mean, GMail is from Google who uses Linux/GNU extensively (as per https://www.computerworld.com/article/1612523/the-story-behind-google-s-in-house-desktop-linux.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175182 )
Even M$ supports using Outlook on Linux/GNU via the webapps (see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-365-and-outlook-for-linux/0eeaef13-c337-4c92-8260-8ac7fdf4df9f ) and back in the day they ran Hotmail on FreeBSD ( see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31113296 )
The issue here isn't the use of FOSS per se but that these folks aren't tech savvy and don't want to run things themselves - they'd rather pay someone else to do it. They want "enterprise customer support" and all that. And then whoever they pay might end up bailing out due to fear of US sanctions ... which sadly even Swiss banks aren't immune to.
The sooner they stop/prevent/workaround the abuse of power by the US here, the better.