November 2022

This article (in French) appeared on my timeline with the implication that the use of MS Office and Google Docs was illegal in schools as they don't follow GDPR...

Turns out (with the ironical caveat that I used Google Translate) the response was a bit more circumspect than that... as in not quite illegal but 'deals' like that offered by US Cloud services should certainly be scrutinised for full compliance with local laws.

Another interesting read outlining some of the issues we face in our day to day choices in the IT sector. I'm not a developer and can't comment on the usability of the products in question however it has been noted that the original mantra of Microsoft of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is still a core tenet of their business model. In this case the enabler is the end-to-end control of an entire development infrastructure.

Give the Visual Studio Code article by Geoff Huntley a full read and ponder your options...

The Microsoft Product suite available to you as a a Government Agency under the MCSSA is not free as in gratis... The license costs may not appear on your balance sheet but make no mistake, someone, somewhere is sending a significant chunk of New Zealand Taxpayer dollars offshore to a US multinational never to be seen again.