Could they do it? Deactivate Windows licenses, block Cloud services, access to Office 365 and whatnot?
Microsoft is an Eldritch hydra monstrosity. I think it has become its own civilization. I think it’s so large that it just exists as a self sustaining chaos phenomena. I don’t think the organization can make a decision. One department of thousands makes a decision. And they all jostle about breaking each other’s shit every other day.
Yes and no.
For non-cloud stuff, the EU would quickly legitimize cracks that circumvent anything they would try.
For Cloud stuff, they can more easily turn that off, but then they would need to forfeit all their EU business and assets.
Would they legitimize cracks, though? I can’t see that happening. That would be a far reaching legal precedent.
They would immediately nationalize Microsofts Europe operations and the crack would be an official patch signed and released by Microsoft Europe.
No sick ASCII art though.
Is that a promise?
Maybe if we ask nicely.
Absolutely
It would be the biggest self-own in history but apparently the yanks are into that these days.
That, yes, and maybe Microsoft wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger? I mean, with prism the NSA had access to most internet traffic between the US and the rest of the world, I think. Who knows what mechanisms there are in place, and what this government might decide to do?
Its has already turned off all mainline windows but the worst one so.
It hasn’t, though. They just ended support for older versions of Windows. You can still use those versions. The question being asked is if they can actually stop you from using Windows, to which the answer is most likely no.
Update could brick your computer intentionally, and on a regional basis. Could steel your data. Mix of love, loyalty and money for US government and its global dominance all that is needed.
Time to enjoy free open source clones
I’d leave the clone part out
Sadly I’ve found nothing as good for spellcheck
Have you tried: https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
I’m very happy with it!
I think I installed this but I will try it again, thanks for the recommendation!
Does it catch double spaces for you?
How about a dedicated third-party service like Grammarly?
My family used that a lot but in trying to keep my research private I prefer to not use something proprietary. Which hurts me a little bit… :/
I think I understand. I don’t know how Grammarly compares to Microsoft Office in terms of privacy though.
What I mean is since I got into selfhosting services via my servers I try to keep as much data as I can in my own home. I know Microsoft Office calls to home so I try to stick to FOSS which I can guarantee doesn’t. I also don’t know but I bet grammarly does call home a lot since they use AI as well now.
It’s still a good recommendation, so thank you! I know it does help my family more than word typically, so it’s a good product.
I see, I misunderstood then. From your first post that I replied to, I assumed that you were using Microsoft Office. Sorry for the confusion. You’re welcome! I’ve never used it myself, but I get the impression that it works well.
Thanks! :) If I ever have a stressful paper my mother still helps me to this day and I think they go through that. So still inadvertently helping me lol
Yes, technically they could cause massive disruptions. Not likely they will.
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They would not get paid.
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Europe would suddenly have a very good reason to spend billions of euro on funding competitors.
To expand on point 2, Europe is already home to two major competitors to Windows (one headquartered within the EU) as well as competitors in other fields, so they would also have an easier time (as a bloc) than many other places, who don’t have local competitors I nearly as good a position.
Windows is only a small part of the Ms online exosystem
What are the competitors?
LibreOffice, OpenOffice compete with the office suite. Google docs is American but is a big competition with the online variant of office.
Linux and to some extent BSD compete with windows. Munich, Germany had a project to switch away from windows in favor of Linux. Or got cancelled after some other guy got elected, I don’t know the details.
There are a dozen cloud storage competitors. But that is something Microsoft is not dominating the market at anyway.
The government won’t care about gaming but the public opinion would turn against the xbox and windows, which would cause Sony and Nintendo to celebrate.
Well Munich swiched back to Windows and a M$ dependence opened there short after, looks like deals where made.
But good news anyway Schleswig-Holstein, the state near Hamburg, decided to switch completely to Linux.
The two I was specifically thinking about are SuSE and Canonical. There’s also Collabora and Nextcloud in the productivity systems space and plenty of others.
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Technically yes, but bypasses are easily and widely available for all non-cloud stuff. MS licenses are a joke for anyone already unconcerned about following the rules. MASgrave is your friend in that regard.
Also, Microsoft fucked over the IRS to degree that they still haven’t recovered from when the IRS tried to get them to stop using tax loopholes more than a decade ago. They aren’t going to let the US government bully them. You have to remember that MS has the US government IT infrastructure by the balls, for better or worse.
Microsoft has the ability to do this if they really wanted to. It would completely destroy their business if they did, though, so they won’t. I mean, who would keep using Microsoft products if the company was willing to just take it away from you at a moment’s notice?
The US government cannot do it so easily. They’d have to order Microsoft to do so. Microsoft would resist and take it to court. The US Court system makes a LOT of really fucked up rulings, but the one thing they do reliably is side with big business. I’m inclined to think that in this hypothetical showdown, the courts would side with Microsoft.
I mean… If you take the leaks by Snowden (iirc?) seriously, there’s a good possibility the CIA or other intelligence agencies have backdoors in everything.
Not like loads of militaries care.
They either use Linux (probably not BSD (or maybe they do?!) or outdated af Windows NT/XP/embedded 7/Server versions.
I’d honestly not expect them to at least use Windows 10 IoT or an embedded modern version.I mean our banks still used Windows 7 or Server 2012 for their ATMs.
And they are network connected lolIsn’t it even part of US law? And why big organization request their data to be hosted in their country?.
I thought this was far more than just Snowden
I’m sure that if a government has information that’s so sensitive they’ll store it on servers that run some sort of proprietary OS, or maybe not digitally at all.
Yes but not legally. They are also legally bound to EU laws, which would protect the clients that bpught the software. But! Just like plenty of companies pulled out of Russia, if the US does not care and decides ro enable this behavior then they could do it without too much trouble.
But I doubt this would happen, the EU is a big part of their income, and money is what they care about.
I can’t imagine a better result.
Yes, no problem with those rented licences.
