If the worker has a “choice” between a familiar application with guaranteed compatibility, there’s a slim chance a switch is going to take place. It requires standardizing document exchange on open format types (instead of continued use of Microsoft’s proprietary ones) and familiarization to the substituting software suite. This doesn’t mean these applications and formats should be dropped entirely (at least not short-term), but that FOSS applications and open standards should be defaulted to. Otherwise this should be regarded as gesture politics.
The news I saw said they were dumping the move to Linux, and resuming Windows use. This post says nothing about the underlying OS in use (neither “Windows,” nor “Linux” exist on the page).
As long as they use only software that works cross platform, they will have very low switching costs if they do eventually decide to move to linux.
Switching away from MS Office dependency before switching away from Windows indeed makes sense.
“Lower” switching costs. But it’s still going to be a Thing to get switched to Linux across the government. I hope they are going to continue that as phase 2.
I bet there’s like 500 forms and spreadsheets that simply do not function in Libre Office. And remaking them all will take forever because of the approval processes
However, before this work could be completed, the Danish government was reorganised in June 2026, and the Ministry of Digitization was abolished as a standalone ministry. Its responsibilities and employees were transferred into a new ministerial structure.
As a consequence, the pilot lost its original organizational setting and was put on hold before the planned evaluation could be completed.
To our knowledge, no formal assessment of the final suitability of Collabora Office was completed, nor was a formal conclusion reached regarding the outcome of the pilot.
The interruption should therefore not be confused with a completed technical evaluation or a decision that the technology was unsuitable.
Yep, I saw that. Again, no mention of OS, which is what all the news was about. This just feels like them saying “I’m not dead yet.”
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The first phase was successfully completed. Collabora Office was integrated with F2, demonstrating that individual users could freely switch between Collabora Office and Microsoft Office when editing documents, while maintaining their documents within the same government platform and using Microsoft-compatible document formats.
This could be weasily phrased. I recall a comment mentioning sticking point was documents in Microsoft-specific formats. Obviously open formats would work in Office.
My guess is that collabora does support ms document formats like docx, but doesn’t natively support all the features/specifications. E.g. complex layouts in word documents may fail, media may not play from PowerPoint, complex excel formulas may fail to import or not run as expected.
However word can open opendocument formats docs, though I’m unsure about the entire suite. It may be that Microsoft programs support those files better than collabora supports native Microsoft formats, so that’s what they’re currently using
Yes, Microsoft Office is purposely designed to confound interoperability. Embrace, extend, exterminate.
