April 20, 2026 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The New OS Wars
April 20, 2026 at 3:21 pm
It will take, but US software won't be evident anymore due the recent geopolitics. Maybe for new projects one will look to Opensource / Europe for Business Continuity
Migrating the current plaforms will be costly, there is a good reason why they are used. AI platforms are on the rise which may reduce that effort / cost
April 20, 2026 at 4:37 pm
Apparently, France is one of the few nations that can design and build its own fighter jets alone. It's a great shame because the UK used to be really good at aerospace projects.
From experience, I know that getting rid of SQL Server and Microsoft products from a large organisation will take many years. You have to be really, really determined to do it and have the staying power to do so. After you have done so, I'm not convinced that much has been achieved.
Even if you want to remove all Microsoft products, there always seems to be some that are difficult to get rid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeMSMvqkI2Y
I understand what has provoked all this, though it does seem a bit of a knee-jerk reaction for a temporary anomaly.
April 21, 2026 at 8:24 am
I know we avoid talking politics here, but is it really a "temporary anomaly"? After (you know who) has gone, will he simply be replaced by another (you know who)? Is the US on an irreversible path? Hungary just shown that it is possible to step back, but who's to say that the US will?
April 21, 2026 at 5:41 pm
I know we avoid talking politics here, but is it really a "temporary anomaly"?
Yes, everything is temporary; it just depends on the timescales.
Getting rid of Microsoft at the enterprise level would be a project (more likely a programme) exceeding 10 years duration. It isn't easy getting rid of Oracle or any of the other big US vendors because they are so entrenched. Yes, their grip becomes looser as projects chip away at their internal monopoly, but a wholesale rout isn't likely. There are large organisations out there who would love to get off their 20+ year old tech stack, but the cost and size of that endeavour keep them kicking the can down the road.
We do Show & Tell sessions at work and have had some good presentations from our sales colleagues. It's a tough job with a lot of effort and stress. It is much harder to win new business than it is to retain existing customers.
Some products take a lot of effort to replace, but never take your customers for granted. With sufficient motivation, they will walk.
April 21, 2026 at 8:56 pm
I'd like to think various regions or even countries would want to reduce dependence on tech they can't control. The US companies are subject to US law, including subpoenas, so it makes sense they might want to limit where a foreign government can go or what access they have.
It is a lot of effort, though I think the US level stuff, or maybe desktop stuff, is easier than the database stuff. Moving off a database is hard. Moving people to OSS stuff for a desktop and office software isn't. Lots of bespoke software is hard to rewrite, or was, but if you were to move to OSS models, AI reduces the cost of recreating lots of software quite a bit.
April 22, 2026 at 7:48 am
"Yes, everything is temporary; it just depends on the timescales."
In which case, the word "temporary" becomes meaningless. Is it an anomaly? We'll have to see on that. But if we're still seeing a US government with the same attitude in 10 years, then doubtless they'll be many companies wishing that 10 years ago they were more proactive about moving away from US suppliers.
But even then, as you say, many will keep kicking the can down the road, hoping that it is still an anomaly.
April 22, 2026 at 8:41 am
While our administrations are temporary, the bureaucracy isn't, and a lot of our government legal stuff is caught up there. So I'd suspect that the legal mechanisms that allow the US to get access to data held by any US cloud provider (or access stuff from your OS) will not change.
The attitude to do so might, but that's somewhat meaningless, as a good lawyer/solicitor could make an argument to do so. In which case, it behooves other countries to prepare.
If I were part of a government (or even corporation)outside the US, I'd be trying to avoid US tech for these reasons. That and everything we build tends to be more expensive
April 22, 2026 at 8:54 am
It is a lot of effort, though I think the US level stuff, or maybe desktop stuff, is easier than the database stuff. Moving off a database is hard. Moving people to OSS stuff for a desktop and office software isn't. Lots of bespoke software is hard to rewrite, or was, but if you were to move to OSS models, AI reduces the cost of recreating lots of software quite a bit.
Your comments about hard/easy struck a chord with me. I agree that moving a db is hard, but resistance from end-users would be minimal (assuming their interface is similar to what they know). And giving users a device with a different o/s is easy, but of course the resistance would be significant, loud, and long.
The bottom line, I guess, is how each country feels about the sovereignty of their data. I am both a UK and US citizen, living in the UK, so I have connections to both countries. But I don't want the American (or whatever) behemoths to know everything about me (although I'm sure Palantir and the like have enough info from both countries to make a connection).
And then of course there's the fact that I make my living with Microsoft SQL Server and now, unfortunately, Oracle on Linux. I don't want to be unemployable a few years before retirement but fortunately as other have mentioned, these deep changes take years to work through and I'll be retired before it could affect me. My kid, on the other hand, should probably start getting comfortable with Linux.
April 22, 2026 at 2:48 pm
Definitely learn Linux. I miss working with Unix, and while I'm very comfortable in Windows, being comfortable with common *nix utilities and how to navigate is important.
I can see lots of people moving to Linux for SQL Server over time (or PostgreSQL on Linux) as it's cheaper to run and there are more resources for the db because the OS is lighter. I run containers only for SQL SErver on my laptop, so everything is Linux based. I port code between my windows desktop (or VMs) And containers, and mostly things work. I rarely need to touch Linux, but when I do, I'm glad I understand the basics of how the OS works and how to navigate around.
April 25, 2026 at 7:16 pm
Apparently, France is one of the few nations that can design and build its own fighter jets alone. It's a great shame because the UK used to be really good at aerospace projects.
We used to be good at a few things, haha... Nuclear reactors (French leapfrogged big time there as well), railways, cars...
I don't have any general concerns with using US software, but do think it's a good idea for countries to be as self-sufficient as possible - we take global supply chains, food imports, chip manufacturing etc for granted and events in the past 6 years have shown how precarious that can be. The US is massively self-sufficient compared to us, but even they have done the CHIPS act realising we are so dependent on Taiwan.
I do thing Euro govts need to be much less toothless against Big Tech though. Microsoft plays ball, Apple are just a good company who don't need coercing, but Meta, Tiktok and Google aren't. That's more concerning to me than relying on Windows or SQL Server.
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