#Canadians, this is your Government of Canada on #Microsoft (and this is only one of many M$ contracts this year).
"Just say no!". Elbows up eh?
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@leftylabourtech lying to us.
When we get tired of Carney they will offer us the return of Harper. We need to pressure Liberals to start standing up, just like the Democratic Party in the US.
The lie that we have to become fascist to defeat fascism is insane.
We need to see a plan on getting that lowered, and I would love a new rule to put a freeze on any new deals with Microsoft within our government.
@leftylabourtech How do we convince them to sever this connection? We need to get away from US tech entirely.
@lmgenealogy This is an enormous problem not just in Canada, but world-wide.
I think there are already some positive initiatives elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe that we can draw upon, of the public sector breaking with US big tech. There have been some mistakes too of poorly planned migrations along the way that we can also learn from so that we don't make the same mistakes.
This M$ outage though has created broad public awareness of the issue of US big tech dependency.
@leftylabourtech This is something I've been trying to escape for quite some time - I had completely freed myself from the clutches of Microsoft (and I've always refused to use Google unless forced), only to start a distance-learning course with a University in Strathclyde that insists on doing everything through Microsoft. And I have a business associate who refuse to hold meetings/share information/etc. anywhere other than Google. It's so incredibly frustrating. Then I think of how hard it is to even convince my husband and son to try different platforms and I despair over trying to convince an entire government.
@lmgenealogy I've had my own experiences and yes it takes a long time. But people very slowly change.
What I have found is that when folks see that they can do things in the FLOSS world that they can't do in the proprietary software world, they're more likely to switch.
My spouse made the switch to Linux this past year on their personal laptop with the Win10 end of life. They had a perfectly functional 4th gen i7 with 16 GB RAM. M$ would have them trash this machine.
@lmgenealogy The beauty of the free/libre/open source (FLOSS) world is that it gives public sector organizations the opportunity to collaborate on breaking proprietary US big tech dependency. No single public sector organization has to figure everything out on their own.
@lmgenealogy I recall reading an article some years ago on the Swiss government developing its own court document processing system and then releasing it under the GNU General Public License. That would mean that any other government had source code access and could modify the software to meet local needs.
Big software freaked out and took the Swiss government to court. They lost! A small victory for the public. :)
@leftylabourtech Small victories add up. I just worry that it won't add up before we're past the point of no return.
@lmgenealogy Just keep on pushing on whatever things you can push on. It actually slowly gets easier. :)
@leftylabourtech Can you imagine how transformative a third of a billion dollars a year would be for Linux and BSD developers who beg for rent and pizza?
@datum To be fair this is a "multi-year contract", but it's only one of many M$ contracts
And yes, this one contract alone would do miracles for FLOSS development.
Last time I looked at The Document Foundation's annual financial statement, they ran on about 1.5 million euros a year. That's peanuts for a government.
@datum That's the thing about neoliberalism though - they're not looking for efficiency. Their ideology sees giving $350M to a foreign monopoly as 'fostering a competitive market' somehow, but directly funding a free, open-source solution as an 'anti-competitive state subsidy.' (edit for clarity: operational vs capital expenditure)
This despite the fact that money in the hands of Canadian developers just ends up circling back to them through taxes and economic spending and money given to Microsoft gets used for yachts, trampling competitors and buying political influence.
#neoliberalism having stripped the assets elsewhere seeks to strip the assets of the state for profit.
And if Yanis Varoufakis is correct, we are shifting from neoliberalism to #technofeudalism
@leftylabourtech 👆 Not entirely sure, but I'd say we're already there. @datum
@leftylabourtech
I think you target the wrong audience.
Early-administrative people within a bureaucracy drive change. They shift their 8-12 employees to a new data set, a more-efficient work flow, a new software or cloud service, etc.
They are small enough for a more-senior administrator to take a risk on letting them run with an idea. Once they do it successfully, for less money/staff/time/whatever, they sr. takes credit for the innovation, and implements everywhere.
Not the PMO.