12 ms·

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of gove

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

abarwick 4y ago
This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.
- clairity 4y ago
  ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard. also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    > ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. GP never says that you’re naive, but the comment was.
    - clairity 4y ago
      either way (intent can also be multi-modal), it signals a triggered response and is entirely superfluous and distracting. it's worth setting that aside, even after writing it, and examining the emotional underpinnings that led to the response in the first place. we learn a lot about our own subconsciousness that way.
      - ska 4y ago
        >, ... it signals a triggered response This is, at best, a stretch.
      - simonswords82 4y ago
        I have no idea what it is you're trying to say but I did laugh that your username is clarity! :)
        clairity 4y ago
        excellent, my diabolical plan to rule the world via dry humor is working as designed.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-saas-apps-yearly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s... I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software. Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - clairity 4y ago
      not sure that it's relevant and 'large' is subjective, but yes, i stewarded the technology migration of a core product suite for a prior employer, which incidentally had government agencies as a prominent customer segment. i'm not suggesting that governments can only use internally developed or open-source software, i'm saying corporate interests should be firewalled away from goverment. so a locally-installed office suite incorporating no surveillance tech doesn't have the ancillary corporate interests attached to qualify it for being firewalled.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        You migrated a product. Were you involved in migrating the entire infrastructure of an entire state? Yes, I speak from experience, migrations and modernizations are kind of my job.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - quantum_magpie 4y ago
      And if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.
  - mmanfrin 4y ago
    > ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument, e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.
    - clairity 4y ago
      arguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.
      - lovich 4y ago
        A car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately
        clairity 4y ago
        if you look carefully, the 3 sentences are disconnected. they don’t form a line of reasoning. if it had been starter, engine, and transmission, maybe you’d have a point, but instead it’s corroded battery, door handle, and tailpipe.
        lovich 4y ago
        I looked at it carefully, and I’m not seeing what you’re seeing unfortunately. I interpreted the naive comment as a separate summary of their opinion, and then the rest of the paragraph was the supporting explanation. He didn’t dismiss the idea because it was naive, it’s the reason it is naive is why he was saying it wouldn’t work
        jasonlotito 4y ago
        Ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        None of it was ad hominem.
- alsetmusic 4y ago
  I didn’t read it as government can’t use commercial products. Just that the corps couldn’t influence politics. But I’m not the OP, so I can’t speak to what was intended.
  - scale8 4y ago
    More around the storing of data. This is why Scale8.com is on EU servers...
- itronitron 4y ago
  Most developed countries have several offices/agencies that already run 'home built' solutions, they just don't get talked about much.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    They get talked about incessantly at the local Microsoft HQ.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  > are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?
  - TurningCanadian 4y ago
    Sharing a link to a document that others can edit in the cloud is much more convenient than emailing around a _final_v3(2).docx document.
    - einpoklum 4y ago
      Well... there's Collabora online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo or Box/DropBox/other cloud storage services, which is less convenient than proper collaborative in-pace editing, but you can still get the file at the link, edit it and upload it.
  - abarwick 4y ago
    I obviously can’t speak for all, even most, but back in my consulting days I can say the many US federal and state agencies use Azure AD and a litany of AWS services that are core to vital work streams. Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.
    - oska 4y ago
      > Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department. You've just identified one very good reason that they shouldn't be dependent on a single, proprietary vendor. Really, I was surprised to find your original comment on Hacker News, especially with you ironically fronting it with calling other people naive.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Russia has that. Just typewriters and stationary.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  Idk here in France there are cities and state-wide administrations with free/libre stacks based on Linux, LibreOffice, Zimbra and others and things seem to JustWork™. For instance the french Gendarmerie, the cities of Rennes and Arles...
  - pyrale 4y ago
    Arles is getting suckered by Microsoft, sadly [1]. Unfortunately all it takes is one idiot to get in office once to kill this kind of successful initiative that has been running for almost two decades. [1]: https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carolis-fait-planter-le-service-informatique https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carol...
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    Are there any high functioning large companies that use Linux/LibreOffice/Zimbra? I suppose governments rarely aspire to be high functioning.
    - quadrifoliate 4y ago
      Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run. In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting. With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.
      - hutzlibu 4y ago
        "Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run." Depends. When odf would be the standard maybe, but it isn't. Standard is microsoft office, and libre office is not 100% compatible. But you will still have to deal with lots of microsoft documents, from all the other agencies, ordinary people, companies, .. Meaning, when Munichs government tried to switch to oss a few years ago, they did indeed lost a lot of time with broken documents, templates, layouts etc. so they ultimately switched back (direct microsoft lobbying with even Bill Gates getting personally involved might have played a role, too). So I am all for an open standard, but this easier said, than done.
- sam0x17 4y ago
  Sounds like it would create jobs too, that's a plus not a minus lol
  - tvink 4y ago
    "Creating jobs" to inefficiently solve a solved task is not a good thing, it is society burning it's tax income. It is only good to create jobs when the output of those jobs is increased value.
    - the_other 4y ago
      Slowing the flow of money out of the public purse and into a very small number of barely accountable global megacorps and private equity funds, whilst improving the employment prospects of the local population, sounds like it's worth the cost of repeat work. Also, nature loves a bit of redundancy. And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly.
      - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised but if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok).
        tildef 4y ago
        > Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised By whom? > if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok). By whom?
        the_other 4y ago
        > > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. > And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. I didn't say shut down the megacorps. Maybe they have use; I don't know. What I do know is they're unaccountable (like the shit bits of government). If government had to use open systems, the quality of those open systems would improve and compete better with the similar commercial ones. The public (and companies and other countries) then have a choice between the tools from the megacorps and the open tools. The public also gains/improves a resource. More competition. Probably better for everyone.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Rubbish, there has been a concertive effort by the US to undermine other countries including so called NATO allies in order to dominate the world, its been going of for decades. I refuse to use the NHS here in the UK because of the widespread use of Microsoft everywhere.
- throw827474737 4y ago
  less secure? can it get worse than ms, outlook and active directory foo? they incepted their own industry around their unsecurity, lol. terrible and more expensive is also a joke, but not as big, you still could got to ibm or oracle if you want to pay more for less, admitted
- ekianjo 4y ago
  your whole argument is based on the assumption that proprietary software is superior in every single metric. thats just patently false.
- PontifexMinimus 4y ago
  > would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source. > and more expensive to the tax payer As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    > As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?
    - ehnto 4y ago
      The assumption here seems to be that the government would be writing the software, but it would go out to market. This would be a fantastic opportunity for a local software company to put out something in the space. I'm foreseeing more of this kind of thing as data sovereignty becomes a more considered issue by governments. The other undertone I'm getting from this thread is that people think America has a monopoly on building software, and that's simply not the case. It's not hard to find companies doing really good work outside of the US. There is also nothing special about Office 365, it doesn't have a technology moat, it just has a surmountable interoperability moat and a social moat.
    - PontifexMinimus 4y ago
      Zero. Start off with using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Then add stuff as needed.
- inopinatus 4y ago
  The legal and moral question is one of data sovereignty, not tools vendor. I suggest the GP comment be read with that context in mind.
majormajor 4y ago
How far does "separating corporate interests from governmental ones" go? Can the government purchase a car? Hire a private corporation to build a road? Hire a consulting company to check the security of their (now-free-and-without-a-support-contract FOSS?) computer setup?
- clairity 4y ago
  where to draw the line is a fair question in any policy debate, and one i'd expect to draw plenty of lively discussion. it's pretty clear to me that surveillance tech is on the outside of that line, but i'm open to reasonable arguments otherwise.
- Noughmad 4y ago
  It's actually quite simple. The government can buy things services from specific providers, but it cannot force you to buy services from specific providers. In other words, it can buy BMWs for government use, but it cannot say "you have to buy a BMW to enter the municipal office". The same applies to websites. If a government website uses Google analytics, it is essentially requiring you to do business with a specific company (in this case Google) in order to use a government service.
  - inlined 4y ago
    And if the government uses Cloudflare or GoDaddy or aws it’s requiring you to do business with those companies. This goal is impossible to achieve with any government run service.
    - kevincox 4y ago
      It's easy. You just need the government to run fiber to every citizens house so that the can connect directly to the government data center. Of course some citizens are living over seas so we can provide a satellite uplink for them.
    - Noughmad 4y ago
      No, those do not see any benefit from me visiting the site beyond what the government is paying them for. Analytics does, they get my data.
adamrezich 4y ago
> in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones I don't think you comprehend the scope of what you're suggesting. I work for a school district and I'm currently migrating our system from using one commercial bus routing service to another... using Windows, SQL Server, Teams, etc. from Microsoft... using a laptop, dock, three monitors, keyboard, and mouse from HP... and today the elevator was broken so we called a repair company to come fix it... oh, and some company makes the school buses, and the networked phone on my desk, and the printer around the corner, and all of the paper in it... the fluorescent bulbs above me don't grow on trees... you can't just expect governments, even at the national level, to roll their own everything without interfacing with corporations in any way—this is a hopelessly naïve view of the world. I am just as uncomfortable as you are with data being shared with corporations, but you're going to have to figure out a more realistic set of political goals than what you've outlined here.
- clairity 4y ago
  it's not really aimed at governments, so much as corporations that feel entitled to sneak in ancillary interests into their products, like surveilling the public. basically, it's to force companies like microsoft to remove all that other shit and provide just the core software, if they want access to government largess. this has beneficial externalities for us, the residents of said governments.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    sure, and like I said, I agree completely. but you can't just say "i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones", unless you're proposing that all corporations should be state-owned and -operated, and that's not really a viable solution, plus it introduces a whole host of other problems. but even if you just mean to say "government should not share citizens' data with corporations", well, there are presently two (until our license with one is up at the end of summer) separate corporations that both know where every kid in my school district lives, what their special ed needs are, what their parents names are, what their parents' contact information is, if they live between multiple households, and so forth, because that is the explicit purchase of their business, and that why we purchased their software. the same goes for another piece of SaaS we recently purchased a license to involving food service management for the school system. when designing the data export we opted to not follow the part of the schema that wants SSNs for the students (because why would they need that?!), but that might not be the case for other districts using the same software. my point is there are a lot more interconnected corporate software services sharing citizen data at play in contemporary government systems than you probably think, and, once again, even though I agree with your position with regards to sharing citizen data with corporations... I think that ship might've pretty much sailed sometime in the past few decades.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones How is that possible, since corporations are, by definition, creations of government through law?
- clairity 4y ago
  i mean, that's like asking how is it possible to compartmentalize anything. as elaborated elsewhere, it isn't about literally separating all interests, just those that harm the public. it's about removing the negative externalies that companies like google impose on us via such government contracts.
  - ta_5628952 4y ago
    > just those that harm the public But it’s not that simple. What harms the public? Many would argue being able to use data google collects (legally through subpoenas or grey-legally through any of the number reports that have come out since Snowden) helps government agencies by increasing public security—thus the opposite of harm. Being
    - clairity 4y ago
      in that case, it's pretty simple. the snowden leaks elucidated the government's desire to create a surveillance state with the help of corporations, not that a surveillance state would be a net-good for society.
hulitu 4y ago
They tried with the church and did not succeed. Why do you think they can succeed with SW.
skrebbel 4y ago
FWIW I think the "church and state" analogy is genius, it totally resonated with me. I'm going to steal that!
saiya-jin 4y ago
Not only state... I see absolutely 0 reason for my swiss ebanking in the secured web interface to se google analytics and similar trackers. I can clearly see them being blocked by the likes of ublock origin and ghostery in my firefox. Why the f*k should google know where I go in such private matters (and there are tons more, ie if you are lgbtq+ in one of the many restrictive locations, have some less mainstream political preferences etc.). The data once acquired have no reason to be deleted, ever. Too juicy info, and 7 billion humans is not that large group to aspire to track. I get why google et al want it for their growth/sales, but they are a private entity not owning internet in any way, extremely foreign to Europe with no clear friendly intentions. One of few times I can say I am proud to be living on old continent.
- clairity 4y ago
  exactly, we need to decentralize power, and knowledge (information) is power. it seems innocuous when we each leak a little here and there, but surveillance tech is vacuuming up every tiny bit of it. living in europe doesn't much matter, given the reach of these companies and their interweaving into government systems, along with reciprocal surveillance agreements (however-many-eyes countries).
strawhatguy 4y ago
I understand the feeling, but that's not possible, and moreover, after reflection, why should it be so? If government can literally fine/shutdown your business arbitrarily (as they do for lockdowns, permits, etc.), then they should have a voice in the government that could treat them so terribly. Unless you mean to say that government should be so much smaller that it doesn't impose separate business taxes, import/export controls, require permitting and licensing and follow arbitrary regulations on those businesses, which I could get behind. Ideally, if there's no advantage or penalty to avoid by petitioning government, won't everyone stop paying attention to government? No gaming the game can happen then! The problem is that we can't have it both ways, can't restrict a group from petitioning and then pose rules they MUST follow, without a say. That's not democracy at all. Companies are just groups of individuals after all, and should have just as much voice as an activist group does, like ACLU or Americans for Tax Reform or whatever.
- danielheath 4y ago
  The government of Italy makes rules that apply to Italians and those doing business with them. If you’re Italian, you do have a say, and if you’re doing international business in Italy then you accept the sovereign risk of dealing with a foreign state.
- clairity 4y ago
  you seem to be arguing from the corporate personhood stance. corporations still have an outsized voice via their rich owners. they shouldn't, however, be privileged with extra voice unaccorded the ordinary citizenry.
throwntoday 4y ago
I agree 100%. I have nearly all google domains blocked in my hosts file and was frustrated to find out google captcha was required on a few government websites. I understand rolling your own can be difficult or expensive but it's the government we're talking about here. They're no strangers to spending.

abarwick 4y ago

This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.

clairity 4y ago
ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard. also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  > ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. GP never says that you’re naive, but the comment was.
  - clairity 4y ago
    either way (intent can also be multi-modal), it signals a triggered response and is entirely superfluous and distracting. it's worth setting that aside, even after writing it, and examining the emotional underpinnings that led to the response in the first place. we learn a lot about our own subconsciousness that way.
    - ska 4y ago
      >, ... it signals a triggered response This is, at best, a stretch.
    - simonswords82 4y ago
      I have no idea what it is you're trying to say but I did laugh that your username is clarity! :)
      - clairity 4y ago
        excellent, my diabolical plan to rule the world via dry humor is working as designed.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-saas-apps-yearly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s... I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software. Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - clairity 4y ago
    not sure that it's relevant and 'large' is subjective, but yes, i stewarded the technology migration of a core product suite for a prior employer, which incidentally had government agencies as a prominent customer segment. i'm not suggesting that governments can only use internally developed or open-source software, i'm saying corporate interests should be firewalled away from goverment. so a locally-installed office suite incorporating no surveillance tech doesn't have the ancillary corporate interests attached to qualify it for being firewalled.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      You migrated a product. Were you involved in migrating the entire infrastructure of an entire state? Yes, I speak from experience, migrations and modernizations are kind of my job.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - quantum_magpie 4y ago
    And if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.
- mmanfrin 4y ago
  > ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument, e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.
  - clairity 4y ago
    arguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.
    - lovich 4y ago
      A car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately
      - clairity 4y ago
        if you look carefully, the 3 sentences are disconnected. they don’t form a line of reasoning. if it had been starter, engine, and transmission, maybe you’d have a point, but instead it’s corroded battery, door handle, and tailpipe.
        lovich 4y ago
        I looked at it carefully, and I’m not seeing what you’re seeing unfortunately. I interpreted the naive comment as a separate summary of their opinion, and then the rest of the paragraph was the supporting explanation. He didn’t dismiss the idea because it was naive, it’s the reason it is naive is why he was saying it wouldn’t work
        jasonlotito 4y ago
        Ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      None of it was ad hominem.
alsetmusic 4y ago
I didn’t read it as government can’t use commercial products. Just that the corps couldn’t influence politics. But I’m not the OP, so I can’t speak to what was intended.
- scale8 4y ago
  More around the storing of data. This is why Scale8.com is on EU servers...
itronitron 4y ago
Most developed countries have several offices/agencies that already run 'home built' solutions, they just don't get talked about much.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 4y ago
  They get talked about incessantly at the local Microsoft HQ.
einpoklum 4y ago
> are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?
- TurningCanadian 4y ago
  Sharing a link to a document that others can edit in the cloud is much more convenient than emailing around a _final_v3(2).docx document.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    Well... there's Collabora online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo or Box/DropBox/other cloud storage services, which is less convenient than proper collaborative in-pace editing, but you can still get the file at the link, edit it and upload it.
- abarwick 4y ago
  I obviously can’t speak for all, even most, but back in my consulting days I can say the many US federal and state agencies use Azure AD and a litany of AWS services that are core to vital work streams. Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.
  - oska 4y ago
    > Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department. You've just identified one very good reason that they shouldn't be dependent on a single, proprietary vendor. Really, I was surprised to find your original comment on Hacker News, especially with you ironically fronting it with calling other people naive.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Russia has that. Just typewriters and stationary.
jcelerier 4y ago
Idk here in France there are cities and state-wide administrations with free/libre stacks based on Linux, LibreOffice, Zimbra and others and things seem to JustWork™. For instance the french Gendarmerie, the cities of Rennes and Arles...
- pyrale 4y ago
  Arles is getting suckered by Microsoft, sadly [1]. Unfortunately all it takes is one idiot to get in office once to kill this kind of successful initiative that has been running for almost two decades. [1]: https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carolis-fait-planter-le-service-informatique https://larlesienne.info/2022/02/22/la-municipalite-de-carol...
- spoonjim 4y ago
  Are there any high functioning large companies that use Linux/LibreOffice/Zimbra? I suppose governments rarely aspire to be high functioning.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run. In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting. With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      "Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run." Depends. When odf would be the standard maybe, but it isn't. Standard is microsoft office, and libre office is not 100% compatible. But you will still have to deal with lots of microsoft documents, from all the other agencies, ordinary people, companies, .. Meaning, when Munichs government tried to switch to oss a few years ago, they did indeed lost a lot of time with broken documents, templates, layouts etc. so they ultimately switched back (direct microsoft lobbying with even Bill Gates getting personally involved might have played a role, too). So I am all for an open standard, but this easier said, than done.
sam0x17 4y ago
Sounds like it would create jobs too, that's a plus not a minus lol
- tvink 4y ago
  "Creating jobs" to inefficiently solve a solved task is not a good thing, it is society burning it's tax income. It is only good to create jobs when the output of those jobs is increased value.
  - the_other 4y ago
    Slowing the flow of money out of the public purse and into a very small number of barely accountable global megacorps and private equity funds, whilst improving the employment prospects of the local population, sounds like it's worth the cost of repeat work. Also, nature loves a bit of redundancy. And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised but if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok).
      - tildef 4y ago
        > Somehow, restrictions against US firms are praised By whom? > if US imposes restrictions that is condemned (e.g. TikTok). By whom?
      - the_other 4y ago
        > > . And capitalism loves competition. You can't have competition under a monopoly. > And the govt. is the biggest monopoly of all. I didn't say shut down the megacorps. Maybe they have use; I don't know. What I do know is they're unaccountable (like the shit bits of government). If government had to use open systems, the quality of those open systems would improve and compete better with the similar commercial ones. The public (and companies and other countries) then have a choice between the tools from the megacorps and the open tools. The public also gains/improves a resource. More competition. Probably better for everyone.
Terry_Roll 4y ago
Rubbish, there has been a concertive effort by the US to undermine other countries including so called NATO allies in order to dominate the world, its been going of for decades. I refuse to use the NHS here in the UK because of the widespread use of Microsoft everywhere.
throw827474737 4y ago
less secure? can it get worse than ms, outlook and active directory foo? they incepted their own industry around their unsecurity, lol. terrible and more expensive is also a joke, but not as big, you still could got to ibm or oracle if you want to pay more for less, admitted
ekianjo 4y ago
your whole argument is based on the assumption that proprietary software is superior in every single metric. thats just patently false.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source. > and more expensive to the tax payer As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  > As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?
  - ehnto 4y ago
    The assumption here seems to be that the government would be writing the software, but it would go out to market. This would be a fantastic opportunity for a local software company to put out something in the space. I'm foreseeing more of this kind of thing as data sovereignty becomes a more considered issue by governments. The other undertone I'm getting from this thread is that people think America has a monopoly on building software, and that's simply not the case. It's not hard to find companies doing really good work outside of the US. There is also nothing special about Office 365, it doesn't have a technology moat, it just has a surmountable interoperability moat and a social moat.
  - PontifexMinimus 4y ago
    Zero. Start off with using the latest Ubuntu LTS. Then add stuff as needed.
inopinatus 4y ago
The legal and moral question is one of data sovereignty, not tools vendor. I suggest the GP comment be read with that context in mind.

majormajor 4y ago

How far does "separating corporate interests from governmental ones" go? Can the government purchase a car? Hire a private corporation to build a road? Hire a consulting company to check the security of their (now-free-and-without-a-support-contract FOSS?) computer setup?

clairity 4y ago
where to draw the line is a fair question in any policy debate, and one i'd expect to draw plenty of lively discussion. it's pretty clear to me that surveillance tech is on the outside of that line, but i'm open to reasonable arguments otherwise.
Noughmad 4y ago
It's actually quite simple. The government can buy things services from specific providers, but it cannot force you to buy services from specific providers. In other words, it can buy BMWs for government use, but it cannot say "you have to buy a BMW to enter the municipal office". The same applies to websites. If a government website uses Google analytics, it is essentially requiring you to do business with a specific company (in this case Google) in order to use a government service.
- inlined 4y ago
  And if the government uses Cloudflare or GoDaddy or aws it’s requiring you to do business with those companies. This goal is impossible to achieve with any government run service.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    It's easy. You just need the government to run fiber to every citizens house so that the can connect directly to the government data center. Of course some citizens are living over seas so we can provide a satellite uplink for them.
  - Noughmad 4y ago
    No, those do not see any benefit from me visiting the site beyond what the government is paying them for. Analytics does, they get my data.

adamrezich 4y ago

> in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones I don't think you comprehend the scope of what you're suggesting. I work for a school district and I'm currently migrating our system from using one commercial bus routing service to another... using Windows, SQL Server, Teams, etc. from Microsoft... using a laptop, dock, three monitors, keyboard, and mouse from HP... and today the elevator was broken so we called a repair company to come fix it... oh, and some company makes the school buses, and the networked phone on my desk, and the printer around the corner, and all of the paper in it... the fluorescent bulbs above me don't grow on trees... you can't just expect governments, even at the national level, to roll their own everything without interfacing with corporations in any way—this is a hopelessly naïve view of the world. I am just as uncomfortable as you are with data being shared with corporations, but you're going to have to figure out a more realistic set of political goals than what you've outlined here.

clairity 4y ago
it's not really aimed at governments, so much as corporations that feel entitled to sneak in ancillary interests into their products, like surveilling the public. basically, it's to force companies like microsoft to remove all that other shit and provide just the core software, if they want access to government largess. this has beneficial externalities for us, the residents of said governments.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  sure, and like I said, I agree completely. but you can't just say "i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones", unless you're proposing that all corporations should be state-owned and -operated, and that's not really a viable solution, plus it introduces a whole host of other problems. but even if you just mean to say "government should not share citizens' data with corporations", well, there are presently two (until our license with one is up at the end of summer) separate corporations that both know where every kid in my school district lives, what their special ed needs are, what their parents names are, what their parents' contact information is, if they live between multiple households, and so forth, because that is the explicit purchase of their business, and that why we purchased their software. the same goes for another piece of SaaS we recently purchased a license to involving food service management for the school system. when designing the data export we opted to not follow the part of the schema that wants SSNs for the students (because why would they need that?!), but that might not be the case for other districts using the same software. my point is there are a lot more interconnected corporate software services sharing citizen data at play in contemporary government systems than you probably think, and, once again, even though I agree with your position with regards to sharing citizen data with corporations... I think that ship might've pretty much sailed sometime in the past few decades.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones How is that possible, since corporations are, by definition, creations of government through law?

clairity 4y ago
i mean, that's like asking how is it possible to compartmentalize anything. as elaborated elsewhere, it isn't about literally separating all interests, just those that harm the public. it's about removing the negative externalies that companies like google impose on us via such government contracts.
- ta_5628952 4y ago
  > just those that harm the public But it’s not that simple. What harms the public? Many would argue being able to use data google collects (legally through subpoenas or grey-legally through any of the number reports that have come out since Snowden) helps government agencies by increasing public security—thus the opposite of harm. Being
  - clairity 4y ago
    in that case, it's pretty simple. the snowden leaks elucidated the government's desire to create a surveillance state with the help of corporations, not that a surveillance state would be a net-good for society.

hulitu 4y ago

They tried with the church and did not succeed. Why do you think they can succeed with SW.

skrebbel 4y ago

FWIW I think the "church and state" analogy is genius, it totally resonated with me. I'm going to steal that!

saiya-jin 4y ago

Not only state... I see absolutely 0 reason for my swiss ebanking in the secured web interface to se google analytics and similar trackers. I can clearly see them being blocked by the likes of ublock origin and ghostery in my firefox. Why the f*k should google know where I go in such private matters (and there are tons more, ie if you are lgbtq+ in one of the many restrictive locations, have some less mainstream political preferences etc.). The data once acquired have no reason to be deleted, ever. Too juicy info, and 7 billion humans is not that large group to aspire to track. I get why google et al want it for their growth/sales, but they are a private entity not owning internet in any way, extremely foreign to Europe with no clear friendly intentions. One of few times I can say I am proud to be living on old continent.

clairity 4y ago
exactly, we need to decentralize power, and knowledge (information) is power. it seems innocuous when we each leak a little here and there, but surveillance tech is vacuuming up every tiny bit of it. living in europe doesn't much matter, given the reach of these companies and their interweaving into government systems, along with reciprocal surveillance agreements (however-many-eyes countries).

strawhatguy 4y ago

I understand the feeling, but that's not possible, and moreover, after reflection, why should it be so? If government can literally fine/shutdown your business arbitrarily (as they do for lockdowns, permits, etc.), then they should have a voice in the government that could treat them so terribly. Unless you mean to say that government should be so much smaller that it doesn't impose separate business taxes, import/export controls, require permitting and licensing and follow arbitrary regulations on those businesses, which I could get behind. Ideally, if there's no advantage or penalty to avoid by petitioning government, won't everyone stop paying attention to government? No gaming the game can happen then! The problem is that we can't have it both ways, can't restrict a group from petitioning and then pose rules they MUST follow, without a say. That's not democracy at all. Companies are just groups of individuals after all, and should have just as much voice as an activist group does, like ACLU or Americans for Tax Reform or whatever.

danielheath 4y ago
The government of Italy makes rules that apply to Italians and those doing business with them. If you’re Italian, you do have a say, and if you’re doing international business in Italy then you accept the sovereign risk of dealing with a foreign state.
clairity 4y ago
you seem to be arguing from the corporate personhood stance. corporations still have an outsized voice via their rich owners. they shouldn't, however, be privileged with extra voice unaccorded the ordinary citizenry.

throwntoday 4y ago

I agree 100%. I have nearly all google domains blocked in my hosts file and was frustrated to find out google captcha was required on a few government websites. I understand rolling your own can be difficult or expensive but it's the government we're talking about here. They're no strangers to spending.