What makes you think they can't?

Microsoft's corporate edge isn't merely the product, it's also an army of sales, entrenched corporate markets/clients, lock-in, etc.

You could have a better version of their product and still get eaten alive.

Formerly - skype

Matrix

There is nothing magic about Palantir, especially not about the subset of Palantir that the German police uses as we have stricter data privacy laws.

You might think that would be a strategic risk not worth taking especially with the US getting more hostile towards Europe but here we are.

Why? Honestly I don't have a good answer other than well the whole system is rotten, corruption, lobbyism, take your pick.

Microsoft then used its monopoly in office tools to push Teams to everyone

You can't compete with a trillion dollar company offering your product as a bundle your clients already pay for, even if your product is better. Even VC money runs out eventually

(Also most people don't know that you can still use a KMS with/for office 2024. You don't need M365.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861331

https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues/34271

Element is the actual app being trialled here, which feels more like Slack and/or Signal than Zulip. The point is that you get something you can selfhost while also interoperating with other deployments… while also encrypting the data end-to-end with Signal protocol.

Anyway, the first goal listed in this project was to move to European sovereign solutions so Zulip failed at the first hurdle.

Given the (lack of) speed of European bureaucracy, this is likely more a reaction to the US sanctioning the ICC than the more recent Greenland saber rattling, but you'll probably see more of this in the future.

Other European institutions are also adopting Matrix, so federation may turn out to be an important feature.

I’ve used matrix for years, ran my own federated server for a while.

I’ve been critical of the user experience and issues with how it’s handled by the matrix team before but I acknowledge that by and large these problems can be fixed with money.

Big players need to put their big boy pants on and throw a couple coins from their farcically large coin purse and they can drive a stake through the wretched heart that is Teams.

But having worked at various startups and enterprises, it is very common for lots of money and resources to thrown at projects and for little or no progress to be made.

Money might be a necessary condition but it’s definitely not a sufficient one. See Microsoft teams.

Again I know nothing about Matrix, but I found your comment about UX concerning. UX is a problem that is almost immune to money. An extremely clear vision almost always the bottleneck. Money usually just results in more “features” being shoved in.

Zulip: lacks encryption, interoperability