[GnarfGnarf]

I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all national governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic sovereignty. I'm sure Microsoft, under orders from the U.S. government, could disable all computers in any country or organization, at the flick of a switch.

Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit.

Apart from a few niche cases, the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software.

[jll29]

The sabotage scenario is perhaps less likely than the alternative scenario of industrial and political espionage.

There are also practical advantages: the ability to fix a bug in-house instead of waiting for a technology giant from another continent.

[whstl]

Less likely? This is exactly what happened earlier this year.

Here's an article from the same newspaper that showed up to me as "related" when browsing TFA:

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai...

[lo_zamoyski]

> the ability to fix a bug in-house

Yes, but bureaucracies make this impossible. If you have worked at a bank before, you'll know how difficult it is to make a change to some in-house piece of software. And that's a bank, not a gov't institution. Think how much more friction there will be in the latter.

[graemep]

Governments have more to gain from being able to work with a few big companies on things like surveillance than they do from sovereignty - which many of them regard as an out of date idea anyway.

Despite all the talk about sovereign cloud the actual governments are actually going the other way.

1. The Online Safety Act in the UK pushes people to use big tech more rather than run stuff independently - the forums that moved to social media. 2. EU regulatory requirements that help the incumbents:https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/27/cispe_eu_sovereignty_... 3. ID apps in multiple countries that require installs from Google or Apple stores, and only run on their platforms. 4. The push to cashless which means increased reliance on Visa, Mastercard, Apple and Google.

To be clear I do not not think that any of these things are in the public interest. However the government is not the public, and the public (and probably a lot of the government) has deeply ingrained learned helplessness about technology.

[al_borland]

Today when a government pushes for a backdoor we often see companies push back. The FBI publicly complained about iMessage encryption a lot, and currently Apple is also telling the government of India they aren’t going to install their “security” software… those are just a couple examples.

What happens when major OSS projects are controlled by the governments themselves? Will David still beat Goliath?

[lucianbr]

How does anyone "control" an OSS project in the sense that you are talking about, so the ability to insert backdoors or activate kill-switches? Maybe Linus controls Linux, but can he "flick a switch and kill" any running kernels? He might be able to insert backdoors, but will they go unnoticed? Would anyone be forced to install them? Just patch the code to remove the backdoor.

I feel that you wrote some words that only seem to make sense if we don't think about them too much.

[Spooky23]

Maybe. I highly doubt Apple or any other company isn’t complying in some way.

It’s been widely speculated that there are gentleman’s agreements where strategic bugs do not get fixed. To apple’s credit, unlike say BlackBerry, they designed iMessage where many of the intercept methods are tamper evident.

[hamdouni]

Fork the project.

[belter]

Apple sit behind the most corrupt US President in history at its inauguration, donated to a ball room and millions of dollars for other unspecified purposes. Is your argument that they will not fold...or that the backdoor is already in place ? :-)

[switknee]

Flicking that switch would be pretty much a one time deal. Not likely.

What would happen instead, and has happened in the past, is Microsoft (or juniper, etc) leaving a remote vulnerability unpatched while certain groups use that exploit. It's much more deniable. So deniable, that it's impossible to say for certain that it was intentional.

It's more practical to audit FOSS systems for bugs than a Microsoft solution, and the tools for doing so are open source and getting even better every day. Like you said, sharing the burden helps with cost: It also helps with the trust issue. Going one step further, formally verified software solutions are possible (and exist!). Good luck getting that from Microsoft, they ship a calculator that needs updates and internet access to run.

[rocqua]

I doubt that Microsoft has a kill switch. Though through automatic updates they still have pretty strong sabotage capabilities.

But the OS is not where Microsofts power lies. Its in exchange (almost everywhere cloud managed, including for many governments) and SharePoint, with a small amount of teams, where Microsoft is truly a scary prospect for sovereignty.

[codedokode]

They have the kill switch, it is called a "cloud account". Nowadays you need a valid cloud (MS-controlled) account to log into your computer.

[smodo]

The kill switch is M365 account management. You take that offline, many SME’s and local governments just stop working. At least for a while.

[karussell]

> pretty strong sabotage capabilities

Via updates they can install and run anything they want ... aka 'kill switch'.

[1718627440]

They absolutely have. They force upgrade computers to Windows 11, which then won't boot, because the system doesn't actually support it. I guess they also have a smoother way to achieve that. They are also cases where an update broke the booting process, so the bitlocker key was lost. Everything is encrypted with it by default, and the only copy sits on a MS server connected with you MS account. Guess what happens when they say sorry, we can't just give you that key...

[pjmlp]

Similar opinion and source of income.

Linux for starters, however even that has too many US contributions.

In general, we need to go back to the cold war days, multiple OSes and programming languages governed by international standards, with local vendors.

If sovereignty is desired, it can't stop at Office packages.

[mattip]

> Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit.

This is the business model of Quansight Labs, whose employees help maintain much of the scientific python stack. Mostly tech companies, not governments, sponsoring the work

[newsclues]

I feel like there should be an open project to manage and support this.

I think governance (both public and private) would benefit from open tools to manage communities at scale via technology.

[consumer451]

I have a possibly strange take.

Isn't the code of law the original open source, for very good reason?

As law becomes more and more enforced by software, should it not all be required to be open source?

[tonyhart7]

"the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software."

wait until they found out that there is no "customer service" in OSS, sometimes the project is fine but people need "someone" to be held accountable in some ways

that's why a lot of OSS project never take flight

[TRiG_Ireland]

There absolutely can be "customer service" in OSS. You can usually find someone to pay for it.

[1718627440]

Customer service is how OSS companies make money.

[homarp]

indeed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44336915 - Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837342 - ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

[rusk]

> Where does this kind of conspiracy thinking come from?

The news in your jurisdiction might not cover these matters

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/trump-sanctions-on-interna...

[SoftTalker]

Prudent to assume that the same is possible with Linux.

[myaccountonhn]

I agree, but it also feels like it would be so difficult. It requires a ton of training, the UIs are not flashy so people are going to feel repulsed (I unironically found looks to be a big blocker when adopting open source tech) and finally Microsoft is going to lobby incredibly hard against it. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to actively sabotage any adoption.

[whstl]

This excuse is as old as the hills and I've been hearing it since the late 90s, but historically there has been exactly zero training between versions of Office or Windows that changed a lot of the interface overnight. Office workers just kept using them like the rest of the planet.

Not to mention companies who moved on to Google Docs or the web version of Office. Or companies who moved to MacOS 15-10 years ago.

In my state back home the entire workforce moved to LibreOffice and, according to my sister (a government worker), everyone is doing fine. Recently I saw a German government worker using Office to produce a document and she mentioned that she "barely knows how to use it" and "just knows how to load templates, fill and print".

This hypothetical problem of "needs training" only seems to exist when you mention the words "open source".

[dietr1ch]

> - It requires a ton of training, the UIs are not flashy so people are going to feel repulsed (I unironically found looks to be a big blocker when adopting open source tech), and finally Microsoft is going to lobby incredibly hard against it.

I think everyone agrees the costs are high, especially beyond monetary ones, but this stance on avoiding these costs is slowly pushing everyone into finding out how expensive is not having sovereignty.

Through its tech industry the US has over time acquired too much power over critical digital infrastructure that has already compromised governments. We know of Presidents/PMs/Legislators spied upon through their phones and computers, and also Microsoft itself involved in revoking email access to the ICC's chief prosecutor as retaliation/defense against investigations.

Sovereignty is too important for government, and since everyone needs to do it and get security right going for open-source with funded development and constant auditing is in my mind the only way.

[GoblinSlayer]

>UIs are not flashy

Where did you see flashy UIs? Modern UIs are boring flat geometric monochrome shit and Microsoft is one of the worst there.

[blibble]

not being able to be coerced by the US regime is a huge strategic requirement that no amout of lobbying by microsoft will be able to overcome