DK_en 2x01 - Are there alternatives to Office365?

Episode first aired on 2 December, 2022. Listen on Spreaker.com

I'm back in English after four years. Suffice it to say that in this time, what used to be my old man's rants have become quite mainstream.

But if you are comfortable in the illusion it all peaks out with Musk proving he is the child-king among the tech cult of uselessly rich sociopaths, I'm here to tell you to curb your enthusiasm, because it's just beginning.

I reckon four years on hiatus is maybe enough to warrant an episode 1 again, so here it is, DataKnightmare Episode 1 redux.

I read an interesting piece of news from Wolfie Christl, over on Mastodon,

Here's the news: the German DSK, the DatenschutzKonferenz, composed of the Federal Data Protection authority and the 16 German State authorities has just closed an investigation on Microsoft 365.

The investigation lasted two years and here's the conclusion

it is not possible for an organization to use Microsoft365 in a GDPR-compliant way because there is no clarity from Microsoft on how it treats customer data for its own internal purposes under the aegis of legitimate interest.

Not one week ago, we learned from the ICCL that Facebook has gone on record saying it just does not know what on Earth happens to personal data in its 179 different systems a US court has asked information about.

Noone sensing a trend here?

Now, the latest piece of news from the DSK is massive because that kind of conclusion has been brewing for a while, and this it's not just about schools orpublic administrations: it's about declaring the platform unlawful for both the public and the private sector, in the largest country in Europe.

This will, and indeed must, inevitably scale up to Union level soon, so whether or not the farce that is the pompously named Trans Atlantic Data Protection Framework is up by then, expect something major.

One thing: this is a report, not a restrictive measure; also, it is not binding on anyone or for any specific measure.

It's the result of two years of work by the joint group of German Data Protection authorities.

Which means, as of right now each individual German DPA can, if it so chooses draft its own restrictive measure .

Although I think it is more likely that the Germans will want to put all other European DPAs on notice, because of that harmonization mechanism written into the GDPR for which the decisions of the DPAs must all go in the same direction. So you see, there is no way in hell this is going to scale down.

So far, that's the news. Comment usually falls in two main categories:

1. Let Microsoft burn and salt be scattered on its ashes, or
2. this prohibition is not viable because there is no alternative;

The latter category, the "no alternative" one can be further declined

• passive aggressive version one: these are tools that everyone knows how to use and everyone has to use in order to bring home a paycheck
• passive aggressive version two, which again comes in two flavours, troll and educated:
  • troll version,

"ah sure, and where are the alternatives to such an integrated office suite as Office365/PowerPlatform?"

• educated version, courtesy of my colleague Andrea Lisi,

"Protecting digital sovereignty in a free market system means offering viable, alternative and complementary services and not simply banning other services that we have failed to control and regulate due to our gross and obvious inaction!"

Now, let me say right off the bat that Lisi is right as rain, and since I instead lean toward the "let it burn" version, we could be ecumenical about it, and on the stake of Microsoft (and Google and company) we could add some nice pyres for assorted ministers of the last 30 years throughout Europe, who completely failed to preserve almost any semblance of a European IT industry, give or take a couple exceptions.

Before you start with whatever objection you feel like raising, one more thing: just four days ago the US Federal Trade Commission announced a ban on public tender for Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua and Hytera.

That is, all major Chinese manufacturers of communications appliances, video surveillance cameras and radio transmitters. Basically, no US public procurement will allow them among the participants.

The reason is that, in a textbook example of the pot calling the kettle black, the US seems to suspect that these appliances may hide Chinese government backdoors for espionage purposes. And we know the only right backdoors are US ones.

Enough news.

Now, any objection you wish to make to the German DPAs' conclusions must also apply to that of the U.S. FTC, or else we are only fooling ourselves.

Unfortunately, this thing about the inevitability of certain technologies I've been hearing one way or another for 30 years, and frankly I'm a little bit bored. So let's put some more meat on the fire.

While we fiddle around with the German DPAs, schools in Italy and Europe continue to blithely use Google Classroom as if we were still under emergency lockdown. Not only that, but it is becoming fashionable among teachers to post assignments and materials directly in Classroom, as if it was by now a standard tool to use.

We've heard against Google Classroom from the French and the Danish authority so far, and from a couple German State Authorities.

Does the European Data Protection Board have nothing to say on the subject?

Four years into GDPR what do we need to see some coordinated action on an issue that touches all of us?

What about all those complaints we made about the actual validity of consent extorted from parents under the guise of emergency? Is that consent still valid two years later?

And get this: while we are all distracted, the Italian Government has started to inventory public IT infrastructure in order to migrate it to Google Cloud and Amazon AWS, as a "transition" solution towards the mythological National Strategic Pole.

But why Amazon and Google, you may say? Because someone in government has been convinced that if you don't have hyperscaling, the cloud cannot work.

I will need to use a technical term here: this is bullshit.

Hyperscaling is for when you have to cope with extreme conditions like a web service going from fifty thousand daily users to five million in a matter of days.
For a public service to experience this DDOS levels of usage somebody should be so on acid to invent something that puts together:

• high demand,
• extremely low offer-to-demand ratio, and
• first-come, first-served.

That is exactly what the Italian government has invented, and of course it comes with a pretend English name: click-day.

Short of thinking that a click-day is something desirable, can you explain to me what public site or service has DDOS-level legitimate usage surges of three orders of magnitude? Or maybe Taylor Swift is touring town halls and no one told me?

Naturally, who are the only ones with infrastructure that can support hyperscaling? But google and amazon and microsoft of course. And so here we are watching the turbocharging of the National Strategic Pole (can you hear the capitalization?) being launched with national champions TIM, Leonardo and SOGEI acting as a fig leaf for Google Amazon and Microsoft.

Can someone please explain on what planet:

• infrastructure in the hands of oligopolists from a foreign country,
• whose foreign policy doctrine has always aimed to prevent Europe from ever coming to play a prevalent role on the European continent

can be considered nationally strategic?

Now.

Are there alternatives to the clouds of Amazon, Google and Microsoft? Of course there are.
But as long as we keep setting the price bar on US offerings, it will be impossible for European companies to compete.
The US IT industry is subsidized since World War II with billions from the U.S. Department of Defense. They can do price dumping forever, unless someone finally calls out their anticompetitive practices, champions of the Free Market that they are.

Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager, if you're listening, this is your call.

Are there alternatives to Microsoft and Google products in school and business? Yes, there are. I won't take any other answer.

Of course, regarding business there's always the one who'll come along and tell you that he can run the entire division or company with a bunch of interconnected Excel sheets and PowerShell and blablablah.

To me this is only evidence that no one cares for the division or the company, because that such a contraption not only has been produced but is being used is the problem, not the solution.

Regarding schools, I still think that public schools should provide skills and competencies, not teach how to click on the right button, because that's what I call training monkeys.

The public school system should teach how the structure of a document works and what meanings it has, and in what ways structure and form reflect each other.

The public school system should teach how layout accompanies, guides and supports content. Schools need to teach the rhetorical structures behind a speech, not how to choose the prettiest backgrounds for a mind-numbing sequence of slides or two videos fished out of You Tube.

What is heartbreaking, and pisses me off mightily, is that everyone in the public school system, principals, teachers and pupils alike, they're all just victims. I know, I was there.

Cue the inevitable: "But schools don't have enough funding!"

Yes. And when the fuck did we start thinking that underfunding the public school system is a law of nature instead of the obvious result of a policy that's as criminal as it is short-sighted?

Every minister comes along and quacks about digitalising schools. But not a word to say where in the public school system one would find the computer professionals to make that a reality. A serious public school system should have its own IT infrastructure, a part of which at the school level, and technically competent employees capable of managing it, expanding it and teaching it. What better opportunity for extra credits would there be than learning how to manage one's own school's website, email, or file servers?

Or maybe we shouldn't, because we'd not be preparing kids for the world they will find? Schools should not prepare kids for the world they will find, they should prepare them to look and aim beyond that. That's what public schools are for.

If private industry needs "advanced computer skills on the whole Office package" they can pay for Office courses, because somebody who knows how to structure a document, has layout skills, and knows how to handle email, will master the Office package in no time, and will find it ridiculous, as it should be.

Do you know what's the biggest obstacle to the adoption of alternative tools to Office? It's millions and millions of people who know nothing about computers, document structure or presentation, know nothing about layout, and maybe know very little about rhetoric (with the exception of humanities professors), but live under the illusion that they know these things because Office allows them to produce stuff that looks right. And of course no one wants to feel less competent.

We need to explain to all these people that yes, they have been cynically deceived, but all is not lost. Everything they need to actually acquire the skills that Office allows them to fake is available, typically for free, all that's needed is a little self-esteem and willingness to step out of the box to learm.

Of course, it would help if IT people talked less about lusers and began to understand that IT exists to serve those in other professions as well.

But there it is, another world is possible. And we'll get there. Go Europe.