Denmark has called it quits on its efforts to replace Microsoft Office, ending a pilot program that explored using an open source alternative.
Denmark’s Ministry for Research, Education, and Digitization (previously the Ministry of Digitization) launched a pilot program in 2025 to explore replacing Microsoft Office. The pilot originally involved 38 employees testing the viability of switching to the Collabora office suite.
According to Tom’s Hardware, citing the Danish Computerworld, some employees complained about compatibility issues, specifically “with style, paragraph formatting, blank pages, and challenges with tracking changes.” The pilot program appears to have ended after less than six months.
Needless to say, not everyone is happy with the decision to end the program.
“It’s a good idea to test alternatives in a pilot project,” Prof. Mikkel Flyberbom of the Copenhagen Business School said in an email. “However, I wish that the ministry would take the opportunity to learn from the pilot project and share those experiences with other parts of the public sector.”
Denmark is not alone in wanting to reduce or eliminate dependence on US Big Tech. Several countries in the EU are exploring similar initiatives, driven by an increasing distrust in American companies and the American government. The issue reached a major turning point when Microsoft suspended the email account of International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in response to sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
While it seems that Microsoft was likely engaging in malicious compliance, since they only suspended the email account of a single prosecutor and not the entire organization, and the company has taken steps to reassure EU governments that such action will not be taken again, the incident underscored the potential dangers of relying too heavily on US tech. As a result, there is a renewed push within the EU to build out sovereign tech that is not subject to foreign governments.
As Professor Flyberbom points out, however, it seems Denmark may have ended its pilot program prematurely. Collabora is not the only, or even necessarily the best, Microsoft alternative on the market. Trying a single program and ending the pilot after only six months is sure to raise questions about potential motives behind the scenes.