Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Denmark Avoids a “Scientology Cult” in IT

"37 letters with exactly the same words. Some of the senders didn't even care to remove the 'Type company name here' text.
"Simular letters has been circulating in Denmark as an e-mail from the Danish MD Jørgen Bardenfleth to customers and business partners.
"I call it fraud, cheating and disgusting. If I wasn't anti-Microsoft before, I am now. Disgusting !"

--Leif Lodahl



Summary: The rather secret story of migrations to Free software and ODF in Danish municipalities

A government delegate once compared Microsoft's methods to “Scientology cult” because along with its partners it is hunting down resistance to Microsoft products.



We have already seen Microsoft getting 'disobedient' CIOs fired/ousted, which is only to be expected from a company that endorses bribing people and using an "insider friend"/"fox". A lot of people still think of Microsoft as an innocent and professional company, but that's because they never encountered the wrath one does when getting on Microsoft's "wrong side" [1, 2] (or "Wong" side).

OSOR has just published this report which is encouraging news for ODF.

Representatives from three European member states, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, took part in the second Open Document Format (ODF) interoperability workshop held in the Italian town of Orvieto at the beginning of this month.

Fabio Pistella, president of Italy's Center for ICT in Public Administrations (CNIPA), in his opening address told the attendees of the workshop that Italy is about to start a three-year promotion campaign on open source software, writes Roberto Gallopini, one of the organisers of the ODF workshop on his web blog.


OSOR has another new report about migration to ODF and Free software in Denmark (also here):

The municipality announced on 6 November 2009 that, as from the next week, it will start to use OpenOffice, alongside its proprietary alternative. However, the municipality plans to fully move to OpenOffice eventually.

Rødovre has installed OpenOffice on seven hundred desktop PCs.

The municipality's move to OpenOffice was announced at the annual OpenOffice conference 'OOoCon 2009' which took place in Orvieto, Italy, from 3 to 6 November 2009. At the conference, Leif Lodahl, a volunteer project manager for the Danish OpenOffice project, gave a presentation on the integration of existing document management tools with OpenOffice: "Moving to OpenOffice improves control over the documents and allows the municipality to automatically convert relevant documents to PDF."


Microsoft will not let this be. It never does, as Russian schools teach us.

“Microsoft will not let this be. It never does, as Russian schools teach us.”One of our readers from around this region writes: "Rødovre, Denmark, just west of Copenhagen, has kept secret its deployment of OOo on 700 machines until recently, to avoid interference from Microsoft. Over in Lyngby-Tarbæk, which has already made a switch to OOo, Microsoft is trying to get key municipal staff fired, a tactic which has been used with success elsewhere by finding weak-willed or easily "influenced" bureaucrats.

"Rødovre currently has OOo deployed parallel to Microsoft Office, an option that many are apparently unaware of being able to do. That allows the legacy software to be phased out gradually and smoothly."

Regarding an interference, worth including here is the Turku incident (cited in this Comes vs Microsoft exhibit along with other places in Finland and Scandinavia in general).

Our reader continues: "Underneath the facade of desktop software is a fight for control over the information flow and, by extension, the work flow and thus governance of the population. Rødovre is still limited by a proprietary document management system, but like other municipalities will publish open source extensions to OOo that work with that document management system. The fight to get Rødovre's governance out from under the absolute control of an outside, foreign interest is by definition a fight for local, if not also national, sovereignty. Sedition using backstabbing over smiles and beer is no less sedition through other means.

"There are good, FOSS-based document management systems in wide use already around the world, including but not limited to these:



"To paraphrase a point in the argument, a school does buy a text book when it does meet the educational requirements and especially when it is also cheaper than one that doesn't.

"It's not Microsoft fighting for a contract, it's Microsoft fighting to gain or retain control over the governance mechanism -- against the local, national and EU governments."

It may also be about gateways to and formats for accessing information, which is why Microsoft goes crazy over Google.

To say more about Denmark, there are the banking issues that are rarely talked about. In light of the Bing failure [1, 2], we also happen to learn that "it is an example that the problems exist even today, as they have at the beginning. The hole in Bing is about the same as last year's Danske Bank (DB) catastrophe. It was actually a consortium of banks, but we'll call it DB, who fell victim to Microsoft Sharepoint's security. DB's business and individual customers lost an inestimable amount of money by having inaccessible or pillagable online accounts. AFAIK the amount these customers lost has not been published it is so big."

We would like to finish with a somewhat mystifying new press release. Watch what it says there at the end:

Product highlights include new visual mapping of relational data sources; new XQuery code refactoring functionality; increased support for several EDI data formats; SOAP 1.2 support; and new integrated data sources including ZIP, Javaâ„¢ Archive (JAR), Microsoft Open Office and OpenDocument.


Does Microsoft own OpenOffice.org and ODF now? Or is this an erroneous reference to Office 'Open' XML, which is a name Microsoft chose in order to confuse?

Related posts:



Danish tower
Keep Denmark free

Recent Techrights' Posts

A Note on SimilarWeb
Or why SimilarWeb is meaningless for more than 99% of the sites on the Web
IBM Said to be Shutting Down Offices or Sites in the United States
the press can no longer avoid admitting that IBM moves many jobs to India
LLM Slop as Attack Vector on the Reputation of Linux
The attacks on Linux have escalated to information warfare
 
Traf-O-Data, the Company That Jeffrey Epstein's BFF (Bill Gates) (Co)Founded 53 Years and Went Out of Business Due to Heavy Losses
Who will die first, Bill or Microsoft?
Why Microsoft's Shares Sank Almost 20% in Recent Months (the Bubble is Imploding)
verified press reports from the past 24 hours
GNU/Linux Rises to Almost 5% in Algeria While Windows Sinks to All-Time Low
GNU/Linux grew tenfold
Where to Get More Gags
A valued reader recommended that to us
Links 04/04/2025: Tech Stock (Inc. GAFAM) Fall, Google Pretends to Do End-to-End Encrypted Emails (With Google in Control)
Links for the day
To Participate in Fedora Diversity You Must Use Proprietary Software
Not for the first time either
Yandex About to Be Three Times Bigger Than Microsoft (Bing) in Asia
That's about 60% of the world's population
Gemini Links 04/04/2025: Decoupling Updates, Elaho as Gemini Client
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 03, 2025
Microsoft's Trouble in Africa and Asia
A new all-time high for GNU/Linux
Brett Wilson LLP Reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The saddest thing in all this is that law firms can maintain high standards shall they wish to
Links 03/04/2025: Tariff Pains and C.D.C. Cuts
Links for the day
StatCounter: Microsoft is Masking a Disaster, It's Way Behind DeepSeek Already and Interest in LLMs Has Waned
it turns out the money "raised" for "Open" "AI" may not even exist at all
Links 03/04/2025: SoftBank Money for Microsoft "Open" "AI" Probably Doesn't Even Exist, Wikimedia Foundation Blasts LLM Nuisance While Microsoft Admits Demand Has Shrunk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/04/2025: Patch Panel and Pictures
Links for the day
Islamic Republic of Iran: GNU/Linux at All-time High This Month, Windows Falls to 12%
Vista 10 is up this month despite being "end of life" (EoL) soon
Indonesia: All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux
What's noteworthy right now is the growth of GNU/Linux
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Usage is Up Again (Internationally)
some preliminary April data
Only on April 1st Can the Free Software Foundation Associate With Microsoft's Open Source Initiative (OSI)
We saw some pranks that day linking the FSF to Microsoft (e.g. "endorsing" Windows)
Confirmed in the Mainstream Media: A Lot of Microsoft "Workloads" Were Just LLM Slop (Helping to Fake Growth for Years, as Microsoft Had Paid "Open" "AI" to Become a "Client") and Demand is Rapidly Waning, Datacentres Canceled and/or Shut Down
Anything to facilitate further accounting fraud
Taiwan's Media Covers Closure of Microsoft's "AI" Lab, It's Time to Talk About the Gradual Death of Windows and Implosion of the "AI" Bubble
Earlier this week we showed that mostly Asian media had the 'nerve' to mention Microsoft silently shutting down its 'AI' lab
IBM Gets Rid of Kelly Chambliss as Mass Layoffs Reported in IBM Consulting, IBM Loses Key Contracts/Graft
IBM Consulting has been in disarray lately
More Gains for GNU/Linux, Based on Web Surveys
the Steam site shows rapid growth for "Linux" this month
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles, Not Even Written by Humans
Why aren't Web sites more vocal about this problem?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Links 03/04/2025: Apple Fined Over Secret Surveillance, "Elegant Writer For A More Civilized Age"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: Books and Cold Tea
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: More Layoffs, Nokia Again Takes Advantage of Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court With Nokia Staff as 'Judges'
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: Seizures and Returns to Windows of 24 Years Ago
Links for the day
LLM Slop Helps Obscure and Distort News About Layoffs (IBM, GAFAM)
It's hard to find accurate information
Links 02/04/2025: Microsoft Developers Are Threatening to Go on Strike, World Backup Day Noted
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol Has Growing Appeal (the Web Got Too Bloated and Full of LLM Slop)
For any "data plan" with bandwidth limits or "tiers" it would be cheaper to use/browse Geminispace
The Web Can Survive LLM Slop, But Only If We Collectively Shun and Discourage Serial Sloppers
Doing nothing ought not be a possibility
Amid Secret Shut-downs and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (4 Waves of Layoffs in 3 Months of 2025) Some Microsoft Staff Expected to Go On Strike
workers going on strike
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: No more on Mastodon and Gemini Mention Script in Go
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 01, 2025
My Motion Disbarring or “Striking Off” Brett Wilson LLP for Enabling Violent Americans Who Try to Crush Microsoft Critics in the United Kingdom by Multiple SLAPPs
"Guns for hire" (for Microsoft people who received Microsoft salaries)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Hijacked Again by Patent Litigation Industry, as President Cheeto Prioritises Aggressors
The "mafia" has taken over the "industry" and the Federal system (justice and constitutions trampled upon)
Ubuntu Slop and FUD Manufactured With LLMs and Funded (by Oneself) 'Studies'
Slop and FUD are ruining the Web