> No wonder EU's tech industry and economy in general aren't doing well, when we let so much money flow to America, even though we absolutely have the talent to build good enough systems over here.
You have to be careful with this line of thinking, because as you've stated it, this justifies concepts like Trump's tariffs based on trade deficits.
The reality is that Finland won't be any richer (nor poorer, of course) if it spent 1+ billion euro on some EU or even Finnish alternative to MS; nor if it were spent on consulting and/or a government IT office. Trade is not a problem in itself.
The real concern is that letting Microsoft be the only game in town for business software of this type lets them control prices - that just having some trustworthy alternatives would allow the same services to be obtained for, say, 500M euro instead.
The other concern is related to tech dependence - that the government's reliance on MS services allows the US to use a threat of denying access to MS products as a strong-arming tactic in any negotiations.
Finally, the concern that a US company - and, implicitly, US security services - has access to potentially highly confidential data is a national security risk, though the impact is hard to measure.
Yep, what I was thinking weren't just direct cost savings, but the ways how what money would flow to other parts of Finnish economy had it stayed here, instead of going to America.
We're in recession, there are way too many fresh IT grads, and even experienced devs are having it hard in this job market. Ultimately this affects every area of our economy, as unemployed people aren't buying houses or spending much on services. Shifting some spending from MS licenses to developing local solutions would almost certainly have a positive impact on our whole economy, even if the solutions weren't any cheaper in the end.
It should be also noted that we have a state-funded education system. It seems incredibly dumb to use lots of public money to train programmers, and then have them sit unemployed, while using more public money to buy mediocre software written by other programmers beyond European Union.
> You have to be careful with this line of thinking, because as you've stated it, this justifies concepts like Trump's tariffs based on trade deficits.
The difference is that if you are using tariffs to stimulate local industrial capacity, this can take many years and you might have competitive disadvantages (ie wages, access to supply chains, etc.). If you are replacing software like Windows and Office with open source alternatives and you put the money from the licenses into your local tech sector to develop a support ecosystem, I think this is both achievable and would make your country richer too.
> this justifies concepts like Trump's tariffs based on trade deficits
It doesn't have to. Thinking you want to spend locally and building options isn't a problem - you can just invest in local capacity to deliver, build it and they will come. Artificially putting barriers (tariffs, threats) so people have to spend locally is the problem. Don't confuse these 2 just because they achieve the same and people spend more at home and less elsewhere.
> if it spent 1+ billion euro on some EU or even Finnish alternative to MS
Even if you end up paying the same, 1bn Euro spent locally goes a lot further than 1bn Euro spent across the ocean.
You have to be careful with this line of thinking, because as you've stated it, this justifies concepts like Trump's tariffs based on trade deficits.
The reality is that Finland won't be any richer (nor poorer, of course) if it spent 1+ billion euro on some EU or even Finnish alternative to MS; nor if it were spent on consulting and/or a government IT office. Trade is not a problem in itself.
The real concern is that letting Microsoft be the only game in town for business software of this type lets them control prices - that just having some trustworthy alternatives would allow the same services to be obtained for, say, 500M euro instead.
The other concern is related to tech dependence - that the government's reliance on MS services allows the US to use a threat of denying access to MS products as a strong-arming tactic in any negotiations.
Finally, the concern that a US company - and, implicitly, US security services - has access to potentially highly confidential data is a national security risk, though the impact is hard to measure.