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Microsoft

Lyon Abandons Microsoft Office To Strengthen 'Digital Sovereignty' 60

Posted by msmash from the growing-trend dept.
The City of Lyon will replace Microsoft's office suite with free office software, including OnlyOffice for office work and Linux and PostgreSQL for systems and databases. The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement.
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Lyon Abandons Microsoft Office To Strengthen 'Digital Sovereignty' More

Lyon Abandons Microsoft Office To Strengthen 'Digital Sovereignty'

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  • It's not about the software (Score:3)

    by excelsior_gr ( 969383 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:02PM (#65475802)
    It's about the file format. I would expect this OnlyOffice thingy supports odf, but does it default to saving in this format? Otherwise they'll be replacing the plague with cholera.

    • To be honest, exchanging files with people is less important than it was 10 years ago. I suspect that any inevitable incompatibilities between the formats will not actually be of any importance. It's not as if you care how well it prints.

      • I suspect that any inevitable incompatibilities between the formats will not actually be of any importance. It's not as if you care how well it prints.

        Yeah, why would a city government want to ensure they can accurately read/display their last few DECADES of official, legal documents? It's good enough if the reader can infer what the document means/contains, there's no reason to worry how, say, tables, charts, graphs, etc are displayed on official documents.

        Are you serious?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          >Yeah, why would a city government want to ensure they can
          >accurately read/display their last few DECADES of official, legal
          >documents?

          If they're concerned with that, they should *avoid* Microsoft, unless they are going to keep an old machine with each version forever.

          Historically, staroffice/libreoffice/openoffice has done a *better* job than ms of reading prior versions of ms documents.

        • You don't need to edit decades old documents, jut view them. So you can archive PDF versions, which can be viewed with anything.

    • Re:It's not about the software (Score:5, Informative)

      by DeBaas ( 470886 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:22PM (#65475856) Homepage

      The feature of Onlyoffice is that it uses MS format (docx etc.) as the default file format. In my experience this does result in OnlyOffice being more compatible with MS Office files. I've seen it be better in layout, as well as media embedded in i.e. ppptx.
      So it makes sense in that you get a lot less blow back from users that could care less about sovereignty. I personally have been mainly using LibreOffice and its predecessors all the way back to StarOffice so I do prefer Libreoffice, but if you have to support many users...

      Unfortunately there is some controversy on the company behind OnlyOffice and its Russion origins. They are now registered in Latvia, but there still seem to be close ties to Russia.
      It is open source though, would be nice if it would be forked by a less controversial party.

      • As much as I support the idea of LibreOffice, "Calc" is just too different from Excel. Word processors are a dime a dozen, no one really cares enough, and I would prefer LaTeX anyway... But spreadsheets basically need to be standard, even down to the keyboard shortcuts... And for what it's worth, Excel is the standard.

        (more recent versions of Excel are, sadly, increasingly enshittifying, though, with all the "integrated" features... 2016 was probably the last great version)

        • The last great version of Excel was 4.x.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ukoda ( 537183 )
          I guess you should get an upvote as "Informative" as I didn't know. I think the last time I used Excel was over 10 years ago and I switched to Calc. For me there was no real difference and I would assume that is still true today for casual users. It is more power user that would notice. By power users my threshold would would be quite low, as being someone who used a spreadsheet often enough to learn the less common keyboard short cuts.

          Being pedantic it doesn't matter what the standard is, it matters

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Himmy32 ( 650060 )

        If we were to go back to 2007, ODF should have won. But OOXML is an open standard from ECMA and ISO/IEC, so it's not really an issue for lock-in.

        The real source of lock-in is macros in spreadsheets.

    • Give them 5 years before they go back to office

      • 5 years, so after the next presidential elections your bet the new USA regime will be more EU friendly? This time is not about money but about sovereignity, politically motivated, so don't expect Microsoft CEO to fly there and bribe them away from independence.

    • OnlyOffice is mostly an online collaboration tool (albeit it also has desktop clients), so you don't have to save files, share them and the other people will open in the same web interface (and yes, it can export in both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, but also as RTF and PDF)

  • Can they really use OnlyOffice from Russia? (Score:3)

    by dvice ( 6309704 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:06PM (#65475814)

    Lyon is 3rd largest city in France, population 520,774 (2022).

    "Behind OnlyOffice hides the Company Ascensio System SIA, which have their Headquaters in Riga (Latvia) and London (Great Britain). The Company however is russian. Because of that OnlyOffice falls under the sanctions imposed by Germany together with the EU against Russia."
    https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.d... [uni-mainz.de]

    So can France really use it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      Reply to self. As mentioned in the link above, the open source version is not under the sanctions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by R3 ( 15929 )

      This. According to Wikipedia: "Due to EU economic sanctions targeting Russia, European organizations that used the commercial version of OnlyOffice were prohibited from doing so"
      So I am guessing they went self-hosted route then?

      • They say everything is hosted in regional datacenters and all companies are national (therefore not the original OnlyOffice publisher from registered in Latvia). List of contractors https://territoirenumeriqueouv... [territoire...eouvert.fr] They're a eleven companies named, no point to name them here, just local companies that do cloud stuff and training.

    • If the concerns are serious, OnlyOffice can be forked under AGPL.

    • Lyon is 3rd largest city in France, population 520,774 (2022).

      *blink* Third largest at half a million?!

  • He predicted it in the Futurama crossover. But will it run DOMO? Just kidding, I'm sure the sysadmin in Lyon reads Breitbart like a WWIII solder.

  • There are theoretically lots of programs in Microsoft Office, but all most people use is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

    Word can make documents that are prettier than a text editor. But none of it is really necessary. You could use Notepad.exe to convey the same information, and nothing of value would be lost.

    PowerPoint is used for making slideshows, not one of which has ever contributed anything positive to any human endeavor. People use it a lot in an educational context, but it's terrible at it. You'd b

    • >PowerPoint is used for making slideshows, not one of which has ever contributed anything positive to any human endeavor.

      Thank you very much. No need to add anything further.

      Ok, one thing:
      don't use powerpoint ... ever.

      I'm done now .

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Let me counter your argument with this powerpoint presentation on why powerpoint is so great...

        Hey you in the back! Yes you you big hairy gorilla, wake up, there is only 42 more slides to go!
        • In the hierarchy of unspoken IT crimes one should never commit making a PP presentation is ... probably below choosing Ubuntu for embedded systems development... uh.. ok around the same level of retar--- umm --- it's bad! Very bad!
          Also. You woke me up!!

          • Re: "Nobody puts Visio on a hot dog!" (Score:4, Funny)

            by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @06:53PM (#65476494) Homepage
            True story from about 20 years ago. My company decided that getting patents would be good idea for a tech company. They booked a full day meeting for all the tech team. During the morning session I fell asleep during the powerpoint presentation about the process of getting a patent.

            At the start of the afternoon session the presenter said "Hopefully you will find this interesting, I know someone fell asleep during the earlier session", to which I cheerfully replied "That was me!". If looks could kill, I wouldn't be typing now. He followed up with "So far only one employee has completed the patent process and has got a patent for your company's tech", to which I cheerfully replied "That was me!". He didn't know how to respond to that.
    • Oh, I guess I forgot about Outlook. Outlook is used to not read emails. And to set meetings which could have been emails that nobody reads.

    • Re:"Nobody puts Visio on a hot dog!" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mr. Barky ( 152560 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:03PM (#65476200)

      You could use Notepad.exe to convey the same information, and nothing of value would be lost

      I am tired of too many "geeks" thinking that the only information in a "document" is the text. Text is important, but so is formatting. Layout conveys meaning in ways that just the text does not (print-based newspapers knew this long ago... what is above the fold mattered more than what was below). It is similar to "data". A table of data can convey meaning, but an appropriate graph will often do the job much, much better even though technically it is the same information.

      Presentation matters.

  • How are they going to identify all the American contributions to Linux and strip them out to achieve their aims ?

    • I get you're trolling, but still:

      Digital sovereignty means "running locally", and that no external entity can pull the plug on my software.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      It's not about boycotting U.S. based contributions to software. It's about getting your data out of U.S. escrow. As long as Microsoft puts everything in a cloud controlled by an U.S. based entity, Lyon doesn't control any data it puts into Microsoft software. Lyon is a town in France, and not in the U.S.. So Lyon prefers its data to be completely within the French legal system.

      Code put in Linux is not controlled by any U.S. based entity. When in doubt, you can always fork. Hence Lyon does not have the sam

  • The more do it, the better (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:20PM (#65475848)

    The critical mass for people realizing Microsoft is far too expensive for what they deliver and has all these problems from being an US company is not that high. I would expect that 1% or less of Europen cities would be far more than needed. And at that time, the illusion of MS crap being "without alternative" will collapse.

    • The most mission critical parts of most companiesâ(TM) enterprise spend has nothing to do with these applications. Lyon now needs to implement a dogs breakfast of email, chat/collab, cloud storage/sync, meetings, before you even get to security and data control. Microsoft Word is perhaps the least interesting product Microsoft makes

      • The awarded contracts include: Zimbra, Matrix, Nextcloud, Jitsi.

        • Nextcloud offers tons of value. For the top 10 use cases, you can configure whatever you want and run it on your own hardware or in the commercial cloud for free. You own your own data.
          • But will it seamlessly replace my iCloud?
            • for the most common use cases, I'd say yes, but I think we'd likely quibble over the "seamlessly" part.
              so : cloud file storage/sharing between your devices, and other people both with and without Nextcloud accounts, email clients,
              audio/video streaming, encrypted messaging ("Talk" is the rough equivalent of Signal messaging app), Calendar, phonebook, quick notes... so there are apps for all that, and quite a bit more, including server side ... I"m not even sure what it's called because I don't use it or even

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I see you have eaten up the crap that MS marketing fed you.

    • ...said someone that seriously believes and expects next year to be The Year Of Linux, when the world switches over from MS operating systems and embraces the free and open OS that runs zero programs anyone is familiar with.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I actually have seen it happen. It is entirely possible. It just needs to be done and as business people are small-minded cowards, they need reference cases.

  • ...The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement.

    While I applaud the city for this move, I miss an MS Access equivalent on Linux. In short, there's none that comes close.

    There have been efforts in this direction though...

    Gambas [gambaswiki.org]
    Lazarus [lazarus-ide.org]
    Kexi [kexi-project.org]

    All these show promise, though more serious work is needed.

    With Access, one could choose what backend to employ. It still remains an formidable solution for many small office database problems especially with the ability to program business logic into the frontend and report generation.

    • If at first you do not succeed , try, try again.

    • 1) It was over a decade ago, things have really changed. 2) Munich migrated end users to Linux, which they don't do here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        In my experience the first step to moving people to Linux is first move them to cross platform apps on their existing OS and give them time to get used to that change. Then the change to Linux is less jarring and makes the OS change go smother as their apps feel familiar and that is where most people spend most of their time.

        Making too many significant changes all at the same time is going to get push back from users.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Different political environment. With the WTFs coming from Washington, this appears to be politcally motivated ("digital independence") as opposed to the previous (Munich) effort's financial motivation.

      It would be difficult for MS to offer big enough discounts to cover a decree of "No Software From the USA"

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      And it worked. There were two reasons why Munich switched back to MS: Changing political majorities in the city council, and Microsoft Germany being headquartered in Munich.

  • OnlyOffice (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @04:09PM (#65476010)

    Sounds like a site where people can ogle documents and spreadsheets -- those blank ones leave a LOT to the imagination ... :-)

  • A "Windows 11" effect is implied (Score:3)

    by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @04:28PM (#65476090)

    "Prolong the lifetime of computer equipment and thus reduce their environment footprint" (my translation) https://www.lyon.fr/actualite/... [www.lyon.fr]

  • This is a good move. Now everyone outside the USA needs to do the same thing. The USA is no longer a trustworthy partner and you really don't want to risk the USA shutting down your operations if King Donald gets in a snit at you.

    I've de-Big-Tech'd my personal life to quite a large extent [skoll.ca].

  • Note: google translate [translate.goog], so not the best, but at least it's better than French. I hope it made something of it.

  • Softmaker Office has a spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation creation tool... and it's German. Using duden it can check German grammar and style. I guess French support can easily be added.

    Another alternative is still LibreOffice. Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing program, and database front-end which supports a ton of databases in one simple package.

  • US Companies Are Illegal In Europe (Score:3)

    by AncalagonTotof ( 1025748 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @06:02PM (#65476350)
    Because of the GDPR [wikipedia.org], the fact that even if a US company has servers in Europe, the US something (government, CIA, etc) can get access to the data.
    Benjamin Bayar explains it better than I would [bee-tube.fr] (if you can understand French).

    So, since M$ Office uses extensively M$ cloud services, M$ Office (among many other M$ products) is illegal.

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