Now which browser/search engine will they be allowing their employees to use ? I imagine that more personal details leak through the browser/search engine rather than through the OS.

We all know that MS systems phone home but does anyone know with exactitude which information is being relayed ? Obviously some licence information and probably software installation but what else ?

Not quite what you asked, but Windows systems, Defender, Outlook/Office, Edge, etc logs (and certainly in the case of corporate cloud connected systems; uploads) EVERYTHING.

Ask anyone who works in corporate IT and has access to log analytics, security.microsoft.com, Purview or Sentinel.

We (IT) know your IP address. Logged in use account. User profile. List of applications. Lists of all your files. Who you last emailed (or who you emailed at a specific time/date). The contents of that email. The contents of the word document you sent. A complete list of websites you visited (including any in private browser mode). A list of your shadow IT accounts, including which user account you logged into them with and which documents you uploaded. What time you logged in and what time you logged off. Which applications you used. Which versions of those applications you used, with a compete list of vulnerabilities for that version (including CVEs). A list of other accounts on your system. The contents of your OneDrive.

If you ever logged in to your Microsoft account with your phone I can tell you the make and model of your phone, which software version you're using (and therefore any vulnerabilities you might have), your IP address, the SSID you connected to, your geolocation (and also the geolocation of any other phones that logged in nearby - so if you're banging someone else in the company in a hotel every weekend - your IT department know).

It's probably safe to assume that the consumer versions of Windows uploads a significant amount of all this too. To use one example of many... it's not beyond the realms of possibility to imagine that when a bunch of home users suddenly get infected with X from email Y that this information is then fed into Systems to update Exchange 365/Defender/Microsoft Security to be resold as a premium threat intelligence service to business users (there are myriad different licensing levels just for Defender in enterprise computing). We know 100% that this is possible, so the only question is; do we consider that Microsoft would do it?

Sleep tight.

Oh, and all this information is kept and is available FOREVER. Whether deleted or not. That's the reality of cloud computing.

Yes, I know most of the that, we use InTunes so as you can imagine we can a lot of what it held.

But how useful is that information compared to what your Google, FB etc are capable of extracting.. Google and FB are basically 24hour/365 day surveillance platforms.

" so if you're banging someone else in the company in a hotel every weekend - your IT department know "

Demonstrate the veracity of that, and suddenly manglement will be very interested in the potential benefits of open source...

"We (IT) know your IP address. Logged in use account. User profile. List of applications. Lists of all your files. Who you last emailed (or who you emailed at a specific time/date). The contents of that email. The contents of the word document you sent. A complete list of websites you visited (including any in private browser mode). A list of your shadow IT accounts, including which user account you logged into them with and which documents you uploaded. What time you logged in and what time you logged off. Which applications you used. Which versions of those applications you used, with a compete list of vulnerabilities for that version (including CVEs). A list of other accounts on your system. The contents of your OneDrive."

There is an element of security through obscurity here, at least from employers. There is so much data generated in the likes of Purview that unless there is cause to look at the actions of a particular employee, or monitor for something specific, much is going to go below the radar.

Yes, the data looks like 20 tonnes of sand, each detail being a grain.

The difference is that the filter to sort out all grains that were ground down from the same rock is a lot quicker.

The biggest concern of all is the server. If they're sending data to the server who needs the clients or browser to phone home?

I think in their position I'd be starting with the NextCloud server and a local MSP, even before moving to LibreOffice.

Microsoft's focus on moving people to Office 365 and upping hardware specs for Windows 11 for no good reason...

I disagree.

There is a very good reason for all of MS's shenanigans. It's called the bottom line.

If MS can squeeze more revenue out of its customers even if the changes mean inconvenience, cost and disruption to the customer; if it increases profits then as far as MS is concerned it's job done.

No good reason from the users' PoV.

At this point any remaining suckers deserve what they get 100%.

Go M$!!!

It's not just M$'s bottom line we're talking about here. This is just general economics and evolution at play. If the demands of hardware don't increase then there is no reason to build bigger/better. If people don't have a need to upgrade then we're talking about stretching out the lifecycle of this stuff and that harms everyone's bottom line.

It all sucks.

The forced upgrades harm the customers' bottom lines.

"Microsoft also has cloud products that it says provide sovereign data for customer"

It says they do. Subject, of course, to any demands on Microsoft by US legislation such as the CLOUD Act. How does it claim to get round that?

It can't. There is no way for Microsoft, Amazon, or Google to get round it.

As demonstrated by the FBI vs MS case regarding data held in Ireland. C.b.a. to look up a link right now, but TL;DR : FBI wanted some data on a person of interest, it included emails in an account hosted on servers in Ireland, MS refused, citing that it was outside of US jurisdiction, US passed the CLOUD Act, the very next day MS in the USA handed over information held on a server in Ireland.

That pretty well nukes any claim to be able to keep your EU data safe within EU borders, and IMO it makes it illegal in the EU to use MS's 365 service because even the name and email address of your contacts is personal data and therefore it's not lawful to export it outside of the EU without each person's consent. In practice, you can't really get someone's consent before emailing them (send them an email asking - oh no, that's just exposed their name and address), and given MS's previous actions you cannot take any of their assurances at face value. I could see that being an "interesting" case for someone with the ability and desire to push it.

If this succeeds MS will go down the pan - at least in Germany.

Not so fast, look up what happened last time(s).

I know what happened last time. I said IF this succeeds. Also I'm aware that Munich is also watching this very carefully - as is a friend of mine who lives in Munich, and keeps me informed about various IT stuff.

I just hope the Germans won't go full-Monty on industrial policy and attempt to use a German Linux distro. There are already great Linux distro's out there (like Linux Mint) and trying to push your own Linux is bound to lead to disappointment and even resentment among users.

Let's hope they are successful. I predict MS tweaking document formats to make life annoying but I'm sure LO will respond quickly enough. The real trick would be for the local governments to specify open standards for text and spreadsheet docs (when needed, otherwise pdf should be the default) to be used by all relevant partners and subcontractors which, if MS started making life difficult, might also push more use of LO

I also predict that the main areas where they'll suffer or get resistance will be the many hidden macro-filled Excel spreadsheets which support ERP, online forms and various databases. LO isn't such a good fit here in my experience. Macros work mostly OK, but will need testing or re-writing, but I guess the move away from VB was going to make this happen anyway. I think that the main issue will be importing data and getting character sets right, which has caused a bit of head-scratching and trial and error for me a couple of times, but no real biggy unless people are of a mindset that they don't want to make it work.

If a german state really wants this it will happen. The german people are nothing if not methodical and persistent and a considerable proportion of quality open source originates from german developers so the skills and motivation are there.

Recall the progenitor of LibreOffice and OpenOffice, StarOffice was developed there (albeit not open source.)

Whatever skulduggery Microsoft might attempt it is constrained by the certain knowledge the (IT) world is watching.

Also, where are they storing thier standard office-type documents? Basic network fileshares would probbaly be best for compatibility and local control.

"where are they storing thier standard office-type documents?"

That's taken care of. The previous article said NextCloud was part of the mix.

The real trick would be for the local governments to specify open standards for text and spreadsheet docs

That's already been done in some places. And the result ? MS spent a lot of money (allegedly) sponsoring people to join the relevant committees of multiple national standards bodies (including the BSI here in the UK) to rubber stand their application for their not all that open and still proprietary file formats to be ratified as an "open" standard. For good measure, they called it Office Open Format to deliberately cause confusion with Open Document Format (as used natively by the likes of OpenOffice/LibreOffice etc). I recall looking at it at the time - it's a right mess and codifies things like Excel bugs into the document format ! And that's apart from using their own definitions for time zones, country codes, etc. instead of simply referencing international standards for the same.

Anyway, the end result is that MS's formats, which do not have an independent test suite against which to test them, are not technically an "open" standard allowing that box on the procurement form to be ticked.

I didn't realise the Schleswig-Holstein question was "Microsoft or Libre Office?"

But how many people really understand it this time?

They will fail because of people that will take bribes from MS to get them back in the game. Simple as that.

Why the downvote? This happens all the time. Move closer to the sales side of IT if you don't think it's true.

I suspect this is due to the cynical certainty of failure that the poster replied with.

Things are very different to a decade ago. Software is much more expensive, money is much harder to come by. Financial pressures have never been higher. Quality of open source software has also never been higher.

Hopefully all these things can come together to create a positive outcome This time around.

Yes, but the bribes won't be coming from Microsoft directly (plausible deniability) but from Microsoft resellers (whom are attritional). I've seen this trick used before.

One of the reasons this will eventually be successful is that in-house development has all but disappeared. Anything you want to do, there is already a (commercial or free) app that does it. Once upon a time, porting your in-house Excel or Word (or Visual C or FoxPro or Delphi or SMB or .COM) app wasn't really possible. It's still not really possible, but all those Finance Regulation, Money-market Valuation, Scheduling, Resource Allocation and Mail-Merge apps are available off-the-shelf now, and mostly have been for decades. Once you've moved off the in-house apps, system compatibility is no longer a issue: at worst, you just select a different supplier.

" system compatibility is no longer a issue: at worst, you just select a different supplier. "

Far too many English councils would like a word with you...

Perhaps one difference for why now is that there is a "home team" to help prop up again. Both past times Suse was on some weird journey in strange hands, so essentially mia. Curiously enough it is returned as much a cloud vendor as an open source one. But what may be important it is a German one again! Canonical? Hardly European even before BR-Exit, let alone German. Red Hat? Exchanging one kind of US landlord for another. This may also be about the rise of a new protectionism, the "new" nationalism, etc.

came for the best of three jokes. Disappointed.

... then this task would be so much easier.

Including the bugs? And Redmond's stupidity tax?

Desktop Linux has improved to such a degree that if will be nigh impossible for Microsoft to hold onto its Windows monopoly for long. Linux Mint (and others, I haven't tried many other versions) is just as easy to use as Windows (easier if you take into account not having to install device drivers) and far more secure and respectful of your privacy.

I foresee Microsoft eventually offering an ad-based version of Windows for free. They won't pile on the ads too thick for fear of alienating users. Maybe subtly in the Windows Store or the Edge browser here and there.

I've already managed to switch complete computer illiterates to Linux Mint and I urge everyone to do the same with family members and friends.

I don't think they do subtly.

Some Linux distros might be reasonly straighforward to manage for a tech-savvy home user. Now try centralised management of thousands of devices. Sure, there are ways to do it but they are complicated and expensive. There is nothing with the simplicity of Intune (or Jamf for Apple devices) available. Intune can manage the main commercial platforms (Windows / MacOS / iOS / Android) reasonly well, but its functions for Linux are very, very basic.

I feel that one of the best features of Linux is that there is no one mega-corporation which is trying to monetize every aspect of Linux, or trying to connect every device you own to every other device on the planet, or trying to extract your personal information from every single action you perform on your device so it can be shared or sold to anyone who wants to see it.

I have used Windows are my primary operating system for decades, and I must confess that I have become less and less satisfied with Windows with each new release. Microsoft seems to want to cram "features" in the OS that only serve to make it more complicated, bloated and vulnerable to security breaches as they open up vector after vector into and out of Windows under the banner of 24/7 global connectivity, whether you want it or not.

The phrase "digital sovereignty" makes a lot of sense to me. I have configured all my PC's to dual-boot into Linux and plan to look increasingly for ways to move out of the Windows world into the open source world. My user profile is unique to me and such a strategy would be difficult for many people, I'm sure, especially if their livelihoods depend of using applications only available on the Windows platform. But in my case, there is virtually nothing I do that cannot be done using Linux as a platform for similar applications that perform adequately if not superbly on Linux.