Three EU Officials Not Sold on Europe's Homegrown Alternative to Microsoft Teams (politico.eu) 63
Politico EU reports:
The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams — but officials using it aren't impressed, with one describing the tool as "absolute shit."
The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a "sovereign back-up to Teams," according to an internal staff memo seen by POLITICO. The platform is intended to provide a fallback for Commission communications if U.S.-based Teams becomes unavailable.... But three officials have questioned why the Commission needs the new system — and whether it works well enough to serve as a genuine backup. "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology...
The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems... Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe... Element CEO Matthew Hodgson told POLITICO in a call using Element software that the Commission is still trialing it. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," he said, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.
The article adds that earlier this year, France announced millions of civil servants will switch to home-grown alternatives to American video-conferencing tools including Microsoft Teams and Zoom by 2027, while Austria's military also replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice last year.
The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a "sovereign back-up to Teams," according to an internal staff memo seen by POLITICO. The platform is intended to provide a fallback for Commission communications if U.S.-based Teams becomes unavailable.... But three officials have questioned why the Commission needs the new system — and whether it works well enough to serve as a genuine backup. "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology...
The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems... Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe... Element CEO Matthew Hodgson told POLITICO in a call using Element software that the Commission is still trialing it. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," he said, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.
The article adds that earlier this year, France announced millions of civil servants will switch to home-grown alternatives to American video-conferencing tools including Microsoft Teams and Zoom by 2027, while Austria's military also replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice last year.
On par with MS Teams (Score:5, Funny)
If it's "absolute shit", then it's a drop-in replacement for MS Teams.
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Re: On par with MS Teams (Score:3)
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We've seen how well it has worked out for us here in the US...[rolls eyes].
Re:On par with MS Teams (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm more interested to hear who are the "three officials". An anonymous opinion about an issue that involves Microsoft doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its veracity, not to mention that politico EU is a magazine that thrives on ragebite and excessive dramatism about nothing.
Re:On par with MS Teams (Score:5, Interesting)
You are being too kind. Any issue that benefits MS being reported anonymously is very likely a direct lie and needs strong evidence to the contrary to even begin to be credible. MS has a long history of dishonest and illegal business practices.
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Yep. Also, statements do not get much more low credibility than this, because this supposedly "absolute shit" tool is in widespread use and nobody has complained on that level about it now. The best fix is probably to remove the clowns making that statement.
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This isn't good evidence, but that there should be edge cases where they don't act the same should be expected. (OTOH, I've no experience with either product.)
Slack... Hipchat... Zoom... (Score:4, Interesting)
If Europe puts the money into an alternative to Teams, it should go somewhere after a few years. After all, we have seen other video and chat platforms become popular before despite the Teams integration in the Microsoft ecosystem. (Slack...Hipchat...Zoom...)
Market leaders are putting all of their money into AI instead of improving their products. Unless you are one of the ones spouting the mantra of our AI overlords that "we don't need humans anymore" while simultaneously brazenly stealing work while ignoring licenses... I don't think surpassing Teams will be much of a challenge.
Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
So the EU is swapping a shitty proprietary solution for another shitty proprietary solution.
And what will they do when the company that developed Element Pro is bought by an American company ?
Swap to another one ?!
Stupidity and corruption is deeply ingrained in the European Commission.
Re:Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
I call article shenanigans.
Element is a UK company. Which is not part of the EU. Why should the EU choose to use a non-European company, headquartered in a non-European country, with a non-European, non-compliant legal system?
The UK is already barred from offering unrestricted financial services in the EU, I expect communications services to be an area of concern.
Brexit is Brexit. The UK is out, and simply cannot be trusted with European communications backbones.
I may be willing to believe that there's been a tender process and their product is currently being evaluated, but on privacy grounds alone I doubt their product passes the bar unless they reincorporate in an EU country with 51% EU ownership, all other things being equal.
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It's already the case that European government are moving their physical gold reserves out of the US because they know that Trump might steal it. It's clear that besides looting the US Treasury for his personal gain, he's turned the entire country of Venezuela his personal piggy bank.
Are you stupid enough to think that just because Microsoft is a huge financial entity that h
Re: Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:2)
You should also check the wealth of God family.
Re: Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:4, Informative)
Personal piggy bank? Isn't Trump the only president whose net worth actually decreased during the presidency? The decrease in wealth is unlike most modern presidents.
While that is true for his first term, that was because of COVID and his heavy investments in real estate that were negatively impacted, much like all real estate, and estimates are his net worth rebounded and has doubled in his second term so it's not like he hasn't greatly profited form the presidency.
Re: Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:4, Informative)
Personal piggy bank? Isn't Trump the only president whose net worth actually decreased during the presidency? The decrease in wealth is unlike most modern presidents.
As for leaving the job with a lower net worth, Carter and Clinton were both in debt when they left; but of course rebounded with various books and speaking fees. Carter, IIRC, wrote over 30 books.
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No. Trump was overleveraged and the last bank that would do business with him was Deutsche Bank until he made whatever deal they made with the Russians... Pedo Jr. and Eric both told us they were banking with Russia.
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The biggest problem here isn't the fact MS is American or that Element is British.
It is that they are STILL using proprietary, closed source software.
So they still have the exact same problem and are spending millions for nothing. Because like the OP said - what if Element gets bought out by a bunch of VC's? What if the CEO just decides he hates people? They then up their subscription prices 500%, introduce new "License Servers" costing hundreds of thousands of man hours to comply with, and the EU are stu
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What does "Teams" actually do? I've never used it, so it's always been a puzzle, as every article seems to just assume that I know. I gather it does something that facilitates, or is supposed to facilitate, different people on different computers working on the same project, and that's as far as I get. Perhaps there *is* no open-source equivalent.
Re:Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confusing several steps here:
1. Get it away from US companies with a documented history of blocking organizational users on request from the US governmwent.
2. Get it to an EU source or FOSS for "reasons".
They are doing the first step now. The second one may not be needed.
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They are doing the first step now. The second one may not be needed.
LOL, do you really think the leopard will change its spots? The second step is ALWAYS needed. Who is the leopard in this scenario? The one who has the power... currently a UK company.
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Since when has the British Isles not been part of Europe? Please stop equating Europe with the European Union, the two are not the same.
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Re:Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:4, Interesting)
Element Pro is not Open Source. So the EU is swapping a shitty proprietary solution for another shitty proprietary solution. And what will they do when the company that developed Element Pro is bought by an American company ? Swap to another one ?! Stupidity and corruption is deeply ingrained in the European Commission.
Given they are no doubt spending significant money, why not take an existing open source product, pour money into it to make it meet the EU requirements? That would benefit the EU by having an open source alternative that would be widely available for adoption and if it is good enough to replace teams be a shot across MS' bow.
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why not take an existing open source product, pour money into it to make it meet the EU requirements?
1) The Pro version isn't open source, but purchasing their proprietary offer also supports the AGPL version of their server
2) The EU wasn't going to develop anything internally, it's not what they do; they open a tender for the supply of services. They wrote the tender to somehow exclude Microsoft, maybe they wrote "must be based on an open protocol" (Elements is based on Matrix). Any company, whether local FOSS developers or large IT consulting companies could have proposed to do what you suggest, take a f
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why not take an existing open source product, pour money into it to make it meet the EU requirements?
1) The Pro version isn't open source, but purchasing their proprietary offer also supports the AGPL version of their server 2) The EU wasn't going to develop anything internally, it's not what they do; they open a tender for the supply of services. They wrote the tender to somehow exclude Microsoft, maybe they wrote "must be based on an open protocol" (Elements is based on Matrix). Any company, whether local FOSS developers or large IT consulting companies could have proposed to do what you suggest, take a fully FOSS offer and take it to the needs of a government organisation. Maybe Elements won because they have an existing offer and not only promises.
It would be interesting to see the tender. A true FOSS solution may have encouraged wider adoption since there would be no licensing fees and things like serves costs could be handled by the EU on behalf of member states. It's not like getting rid of teams saves money as it I likely all part of the Office license terms and fees anyway.
Re:Element Pro is not Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
A true FOSS solution may have encouraged wider adoption since there would be no licensing fees and things like serves costs could be handled by the EU on behalf of member states.
The basic solution is FOSS. An individual, a school or a business of any size can self-host the AGPL-licenced Elements server for free, and use their FOSS client from F-Droid.
What they charge for is buzzword-features like "Corporate oversight", "Dynamic scaling".
The "Sovereign" offer for governments is an airgapped deployment (internal communication of intelligence agencies)
Basically they're a service company around a FOSS solution.
Information taken from: https://element.io/en/pricing [element.io]
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A true FOSS solution may have encouraged wider adoption since there would be no licensing fees and things like serves costs could be handled by the EU on behalf of member states.
The basic solution is FOSS. An individual, a school or a business of any size can self-host the AGPL-licenced Elements server for free, and use their FOSS client from F-Droid. What they charge for is buzzword-features like "Corporate oversight", "Dynamic scaling". The "Sovereign" offer for governments is an airgapped deployment (internal communication of intelligence agencies)
Basically they're a service company around a FOSS solution.
Information taken from: https://element.io/en/pricing [element.io]
Interesting. I wonder if the EU will role out an air-gapped version alongside a public version, much like the US'NIPR and SIPR nets. It would seem you need a publicly accessible version or else you are stuck with two solutions one public and one secure with the public one still a different product.
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Element Pro is not Open Source. So the EU is swapping a shitty proprietary solution for another shitty proprietary solution. And what will they do when the company that developed Element Pro is bought by an American company ? Swap to another one ?! Stupidity and corruption is deeply ingrained in the European Commission.
The best case scenario is that a US company buys Element Pro. Then the EU can institute fines, fines, fines. EU barely creates, it stands at the finish line and extracts money from the winner.
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Actually its AGPL.
But like almost all AGPL software, its actually just GPL flavored shareware. There is an "enterprise" version that costs $$$
I still maintain AGPL was the worst mistake the FSF ever made.
But in theory theres nothing stopping someone from forking the AGPL version and adding the missing "enterprise" features and hacking out shitty limitations.
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It is built on top of an open-source app but includes extra, proprietary enterprise features and workplace functions that are not open source.
Your sig: "Read the goddam paper first before shooting your mouth off."
Virtual online meetings are now a thing (Score:2)
Re: Virtual online meetings are now a thing (Score:2)
its bad (Score:2)
Re:its bad (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still impressed that the Teams web client can't edit a message with an emoji in it without messing up the keyboard controls and often corrupting the message and losing data. It's had this bug for years. It's literally a messaging app where you can't reliably send messages.
Not just a dupe (Score:5, Funny)
This version has a dumber headline, so it's like a whole new story! Three people didn't like it!
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Yeah. Next escalation "A large group of EU Officials loves Teams and wants to keep it because it is massively better than all competitors!".
Sure but how many stars is that? (Score:2)
If they're rating it on a scale from "vibe-coded horse-crap" to "absolute shit", that could well be a positive review.
Infomaniak to the rescue (Score:2)
Why not?
It is in fact utter shite (Score:2)
Buttons are not in another place, you just suck at software
At first... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wasn't sure if Slashdot had just been down all weekend, and there hadn't been any new posts, or if this was just another dupe.
Carry on. I guess.
There are stupid EU officials as well (Score:2)
Not really a surprise. These people apparently do not understand what the reasons for switching are. May also be the results of some probably illegal actions by Microsoft.
Shrug (Score:1)
"Teams is shit!" ... eh, Teams is actually pretty good for what it's for. I use it every day for text chats, voice calls, video meetings, screen sharing; works fine.
The search is buggy / weird ... could definitely improve there.
Apparently Element Pro is just another closed source program. So not sure why it's supposed to be so much better. The same people who hate the US tend to also hate the UK.
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You seem to have really low standards.
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when youve made hating microsoft part of your personality
"someone with a contrary opinion on conferencing software? better insult them personally, whew, my ego remains intact"
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For special-purpose, there are better things. For example, for teaching the Big Blue Button is quite a bit superior IMO. I have used it last semester with no issues at all. But it is not really suitable for more general use. For example, it requires you to schedule meetings and upload your slides before. That is fine for teaching, but does not work so well in many other situations. It also uses LibreOffice to convert PP slides to PDF, but since my teaching slides are LibreOffice anyways, I had zero problems
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That is a nonsensical statement. One size does very much not have to fit all.
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You just directly contradicted yourself there ...
This absolutely cannot be true (Score:2)
How do you do worse than Microsoft Teams? Their entire product team are PhDs from the Marquis de Sade School of Product Design. No organization can compete with their excellence in Awful Design.
I have this morbid curiosity to see this Element Pro, as a kick in the face from an angry donkey is still better than Microsoft Teams.
Dupe (Score:3)
With a funny title. I hope it is voluntary.
And who cares if three civil servants whine ? Bureaucrat are amongst the most annoying people when it comes to software adoption. The same software with a button which has changed of place is a drama for many of them. Ignore the whine, it's not like of most of them can go work elsewhere anyway.
NATO uses Element, which is rather good sign.
If you want to get off Microsoft software (Score:2, Insightful)
As crappy as Windows 11 is Teams mostly works now. Microsoft kept getting their asses handed to them by other software companies and because they have limitless money from the office and windows monopolies they can just keep plugging away until they get it which they did.
Other software is still better but teams has finally achieved good enough. And good enough is always good enough.
When you start I new a
Inventive (Score:2)
Obviously the three persons do not exist, they were entirely made up by the journalist.
If they would exist, the situation would be different, because then one could sue the Commission for badmouthing the product.
Three? (Score:2)
There are roughly 60,000 to 79,000 'officials' in EU institutions.
3 anonymous people don't like it, allegedly! (Score:2)