Re:Denmark Is Switching to Linux
by bjackman on Sunday June 22, 2025 @08:52AM
(#44346524)
> Most government positions could use almost anything.
Having worked for several years on bespoke IT for a megacorp, I think this is massively underestimating the challenge. There are literally hundreds of engineers involved and this is in a very well-established context.
Building a reliable, secure and user-friendly platform is a seriously enormous undertaking. I am honestly kinda skeptical that it's feasible for a smaller European nation to do this at an acceptable cost.
It absolutely needs to be done though. But I have a feeling everyone is doomed to fail if they try to do things on a custom basis. I think it has to be centralised one way or another.
Whether that means growing firms like Canonical, or coming up with some EU-level public engineering institutions, I dunno. I guess the best would be a patchwork of several such solutions.
I just don't really see how any of this can be done quickly enough to free us from US tech within 10 years :/
My fear is that people just don't do it properly. Then we end up with governments that are running on nonfunctional or horribly insecure IT. I don't think this is really better than being constantly fucked by Microsoft and the US govt.
Having worked for several years on bespoke IT for a megacorp, I think this is massively underestimating the challenge. There are literally hundreds of engineers involved and this is in a very well-established context.
Building a reliable, secure and user-friendly platform is a seriously enormous undertaking. I am honestly kinda skeptical that it's feasible for a smaller European nation to do this at an acceptable cost.
It absolutely needs to be done though. But I have a feeling everyone is doomed to fail if they try to do things on a custom basis. I think it has to be centralised one way or another.
Whether that means growing firms like Canonical, or coming up with some EU-level public engineering institutions, I dunno. I guess the best would be a patchwork of several such solutions.
I just don't really see how any of this can be done quickly enough to free us from US tech within 10 years :/
My fear is that people just don't do it properly. Then we end up with governments that are running on nonfunctional or horribly insecure IT. I don't think this is really better than being constantly fucked by Microsoft and the US govt.