Money transfer from the German Federal Administration to Microsoft:

[mvb19@mastodon.social]

@kirschner that will be 1B in 2 years time, wow. It doubles every 2 years.

[unqualifiedtechbros@mastodon.social]

@kirschner
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227390419_Against_Intellectual_Monopoly

Supporting intellectual monopoly which includes the likes of Microsoft, is supporting externalities which have devastating consequences for society.

[lostprototype@mastodon.social]

@kirschner Brilliant question to be asking. And lays bare the lie of "build versus by".

[danielswann@mastodon.social]

@fajfer @zikko @kirschner and then factor in the cost/benefit of essentially *owning* vs *leasing*.

there was a time when this made sense, but now EU citizens are essentially paying for microsoft to play in the AI bubble

[xs4me2@mastodon.social]

@kirschner

Utterly ridiculous indeed... imaging the amount of software, infrastructure, knowledge and jobs this could have led to in Europe... time for change!

[ghostonthehalfshell@masto.ai]

@kirschner

Imagine the lies of all the open source projects if they got just a few pennies from all that money

[sonlight@mastodon.social]

@kirschner Whats all the payments for? They look more like covert donations in support of some dark agenda

[sonlight@mastodon.social]

@kirschner Jaw Dropping big number lol. The financial Markets is Shocked

[jesusmargar@mastodon.social]

@kirschner Seeing this only as an open source /free software issue is missing the football, in my opinion. Most of that money won't be on software but on cloud services, servers and support. You may replace MS for open source versions but I doubt the costs would go down considerably and I am not sure how many companies would be able to step in at that level. The Government may have to do it by itself (which is possible, but would take time and serious investment).

[jesusmargar@mastodon.social]

@kirschner In an ideal world, you'd see the EU pulling resources together to replace it with an EU-based alternative, ideally publicly run and serving all 27 nations with possibility to export elsewhere, but that would take a few years to develop. I don't see it happening.

[alterelefant@mastodontech.de]

@kirschner And Microsoft will obviously not lower their prices now they have the customer onboard in their system. When it is extremely difficult and costly for your customer to leave you can basically ask any price you want.

[mray@social.tchncs.de]

@kirschner A more visual representation of how #DigitalSovereignty is going:

[purrperl@noc.social]

@mray @kirschner

EpsteinGate might bring Microsoft down.

https://rant.li/ashwin/castles-made-of-sand

[zygoon@fosstodon.org]

@kirschner then extrapolate to all of EU and see the sheer power there