OPINION: We are Microslaves
Is AU really being forced under Microsoft’s control, as the AU management claims? Now that the City of Aarhus is exploring the possibilities for alternative, open solutions, AU might as well do the same, writes Søren Pold, a professor of digital design and information studies.
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In May last year, Omnibus published an article following criticism from Bálint Márk Sosovicska, a classical philology student active in student politics, who had criticised Aarhus University’s total reliance on Microsoft for services including email, calendars, office software, cloud file sharing, telephony and video conferencing.
AU is deeply dependent on American IT solutions – this worries students
His brilliant critique highlighted that, whilst politicians talk about digital sovereignty, we at AU are effectively held hostage by the American company, which appears to be in the pocket of the Trump administration, having supported it with millions. Maja Horst, Dean of Arts, acknowledged the issue and welcomed the debate, but not much seems to have happened since then. At the same time, she points out that Microsoft provides the most user-friendly solutions and that it can be difficult to find alternatives.
Municipality is exploring alternatives
If only that were true, we’d just have to put up with the daily hassle of fumbling around in SharePoint and OneDrive. However, it’s first of all worth noting that others, such as the City of Aarhus, are looking into how they can switch to alternative, open-source solutions. Secondly, certainly not all of Microsoft’s software is user-friendly. As mentioned, it’s a daily struggle to find files and folders shared with you on SharePoint – which is sometimes also called OneDrive or Teams (when it isn’t on a mobile phone, that is) – and it requires a significant amount of technical support if you wish to collaborate with international partners or simply with colleagues outside AU. The Outlook email programme seems to have decided to eradicate Danish as a written language and regularly tries to change my words into meaningless English words, apparently with no way of stopping it, even though I check every week to make sure I’ve turned off auto-correct.
One question is nagging at me
It may well be that most staff and students have, by now, come to terms with unhappily using Word, but are we really forced to bring everything under Microsoft’s control? Personally, for example, I miss Thunderbird for my email and a calendar solution that doesn’t force me to grant AU access to my private phone if I want to access my calendar. Finally, the question of whether Trump can order Microsoft to pull the plug if we still refuse to hand over Greenland to him is still nagging at me. I would therefore urge us to revisit the discussion as to whether we might allow a little more diversity within IT and software solutions.
This text is machine translated and post-edited by Mie Skov Jeppesen.