It’s not just lobbying. The expertise to build and certify what Microsoft did for government cloud is expensive and rare. Open source still needs a third party to provide that level of support, because the documentation is more important than the technical capabilities.
Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on Software. At least, not any more. Open Source is the way to go, and there are plenty of Open Source consulting firms out there. Red Hat, Nextcloud, Redpill Linpro, etc.
They have a near monopoly on compliance though which is the draw of government cloud. It’s a totally different product from their commercial offerings. The software portion isn’t really a factor, it’s the paperwork and audit results.
It’s possible and not so hard, just too boring for people to do automatically (EDIT: I meant - as part of usual work), and also bureaucrats have a very different MO, one that you need a commercial company infected by that culture for.
Also governments steal money. It’s obvious they do. Both in legal ways, when some secretary has salary disproportional to the work they are doing and the need for it at all, and in illegal ones (just for the fun of it).
It’s about power and dealing with people of their culture.
The state is interested in less dependence from big corps, but its officials are interested in more dependence, because that means huge contracts with little transparency and lots of time to hide things that don’t look nice.
This is a valid mention and I agree, but I also have to say that there are companies like the nextcloud corp itself who do offer that level of expertise and are German based and would use the money to improve nextcloud, which is open source, whereas we don’t know how much of the money that Microsoft takes goes into the open source project.
It’s not just lobbying. The expertise to build and certify what Microsoft did for government cloud is expensive and rare. Open source still needs a third party to provide that level of support, because the documentation is more important than the technical capabilities.
Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on Software. At least, not any more. Open Source is the way to go, and there are plenty of Open Source consulting firms out there. Red Hat, Nextcloud, Redpill Linpro, etc.
They have a near monopoly on compliance though which is the draw of government cloud. It’s a totally different product from their commercial offerings. The software portion isn’t really a factor, it’s the paperwork and audit results.
It’s possible and not so hard, just too boring for people to do automatically (EDIT: I meant - as part of usual work), and also bureaucrats have a very different MO, one that you need a commercial company infected by that culture for.
Also governments steal money. It’s obvious they do. Both in legal ways, when some secretary has salary disproportional to the work they are doing and the need for it at all, and in illegal ones (just for the fun of it).
It’s about power and dealing with people of their culture.
The state is interested in less dependence from big corps, but its officials are interested in more dependence, because that means huge contracts with little transparency and lots of time to hide things that don’t look nice.
Thing is the authorities are told to use their own IT hoster. This dumbsack just - again - took money from extern.
It was also, internally, conducted that a third party governing an open-source stack ia cheaper then redmond.
This is a valid mention and I agree, but I also have to say that there are companies like the nextcloud corp itself who do offer that level of expertise and are German based and would use the money to improve nextcloud, which is open source, whereas we don’t know how much of the money that Microsoft takes goes into the open source project.