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Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options
- riskyingo 2y agoI hope more countries will follow suit
- Vinnl 2y agoLet's first see if the actual government follows suit - this is just a call by Parliament. And even if the government follows suit, we'll have to see how long it will take and how well they will do it. But still a good first step.
- oever 2y agoFrance and Germany are already taking steps and have deployed a significant systems. Dutch parliament gave a strong signal to the Dutch government to also move in that direction. The government has no plans to move their spending from Microsoft to European businesses. On the contrary, they are still very likely to move more systems into O365.
- keyringlight 2y agoI wonder if this would be a favorable time for someone within the EU to pursue MS with regards the windows user account being tied to an online account unless you jump through unofficial (or at least hidden) hoops. In the context of a business/office I doubt it's a big issue, but it'd be interesting whether there's any angle that businesses or individuals should be able to run their computers independently. There's been a strong distaste for the compulsory online user account for years now, although knowing luck if forced MS would find a way to only comply within territories they have to rather than making it a basic opt-in for all users wherever they live.
- regularjack 2y agoThis is the way.
- ForTheKidz 2y agoI guess it's better than nothing.
- eurocopium 2y ago[flagged]
- spiderfarmer 2y agoWell, let’s see how that changes the coming years.
- eurocopium 2y agoSpoiler: it will get worse. Manufacturing is quitting Europe. (chemical, auto, metal)
- Tor3 2y agoExamples?
- eurocopium 2y agothe latest trend is Dubai. High earners in Europe moving to Dubai because they double take home salaries when they drop the european government mafia
- onion2k 2y agoThe upside is lower tax, but the downside is that you have to live in a boiling hot construction site where the main form of entertainment is going shopping. It's not a simple decision.
- asdof 2y agoI can think of a few more downsides, especially if one considers more factors than personal material gain and comfort.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spiderfarmer 2y agoI have a goal to get rid of all US based software. I already replaced some services but I will continue to look every chance I get. This is the best thing to ever happen to EU based tech companies.
- damnitbuilds 2y agoYeah, that Military-Industrial Complex thing that we hated? Well, now we want one.
- spiderfarmer 2y agoIt’s like a mortgage. I want one. I need one. But I still hate it.
- thibaut_barrere 2y agoWe don’t hate our Rafales, submarines and nukes at the moment though!
- dtech 2y agoThe dislike is for the influence, not the existence of a military industry. See Eisenhower's original speech: > we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
- dralley 2y agoExactly, everybody misunderstands this. Eisenhower realized that we were crossing a threshold where the US would need a specialized military industry and equipment stockpiles, where you couldn't just mobilize and convert civilian production to military production over the course of 2-3 years anymore like we did in WWII. Should war with the USSR break out, things were going to move too fast for that to be viable, and you simply couldn't take your eye off the ball with respect to developing new technologies either. The military industrial complex during the Cold War is like the tech giants in the 2010s. Everybody understands their importance, and yet you still have to be vigilant about letting them leverage that into too much political power. That's the point he was trying to get across. The MIC would be highly necessary, but vigilance was required to avoid letting their interests push the government around.
- michaelcampbell 2y ago
- dist-epoch 2y agoMakes sense to prepare for the Greenland war
- Vinnl 2y agoA heads-up in case there's any confusion: Greenland is part of Denmark, whereas the Dutch Parliament is the parliament of the Netherlands. Both are part of the EU, of course (although Greenland isn't).
- lordnacho 2y agoAs a Dane I've always wondered why so many English speakers think "Dutch" goes with "Denmark" when "Danish" is what you're actually after.
- lurk2 2y agoIt’s a similar thing with Switzerland and Sweden but even more confusing because the Netherlands doesn’t start with a D. It’s very rare in the English language for a country’s name to not be a part of its demonym. They also share common stereotypes in terms of being educated, North European welfare states. I read about geography quite a lot and I still often mix them up. Similarly, the difference between North and South Dakota is probably obvious to the people living there, but so far as the two of us know they are both exactly the same.
- Vinnl 2y agoHonestly for German it somewhat makes sense, since "Deutsch" (German for "German") sounds like "Dutch", but Danish is farther-fetched. Then again, I can imagine the two countries (and a couple of other similar ones) melting into a single concept if you're on the other side of the planet - I'd have a hard time telling most US states or Latin American countries apart as well.
- Scarblac 2y agoAnd more importantly, all are part of NATO. So if Greenland is attacked, the Netherlands has to help defend.
- stego-tech 2y agoCalled it, again. Data sovereignty is the true trend of the next decade. Not Quantum, not AI, but the new multi-pole world order divesting from Americentric technologies and back into the sort of locally-grown economies that children of the Cold War would be familiar with. Local vendors serving local needs with a focus on regional, not global, scale and service. Us Cassandra types have been screaming for years that the US-centric technology catalog (from hardware to software to services to clouds) cannot be trusted long term, as just a single bad administration will expose how easily the US Government could disrupt “business as usual” or turn into a hostile state actor a la China or Russia. Welp, now we’re here. Man, I hate being right.
- api 2y agoWhile I don't like the politics giving rise to this, de-globalization combined with the great social media unbundling and other trends means we might finally see decentralization be a major trend (outside of the cryptocurrency ghetto). Overall I think this is a good thing. It could mean the end of the monolithic closed SaaS era, which is the absolute worst possible model for software if you care about privacy or any kind of personal or business sovereignty.
- yladiz 2y agoI would guess that for the most part we won’t have “true” decentralization, but given the EU has mandated interoperability between big providers like Apple and Facebook I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric (either in certain markets or most/all of the EU), and there will be ways for people to use their own setup as well (basically multi polar distribution, plus the ability for someone to do it themselves).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- berkes 2y ago> I can imagine that we will eventually have major services that are EU centric I work in a research project in a EU country that looks at how educational certificates (diploma's, degrees, credentials) will be done in the future. A big part of it, are requirements and frameworks imposed, dictated or assumed by governments, commissions, universities, etc. The most important¹ parts of these requirements are: - it must be self-sovereign. Not decentralized per-se, but technically often one step further than decentralized. My diploma, in my wallet (mobile?) is mine. I hold it, I am free to share it, delete it, copy it. - it must be separated from the issuers. A person getting a degree might outlive a university, high school, or their servers/services. - it must be privacy preserving - GDPR and better. These constraints tell me that the EU, and EC are serious about decentralization and self-sovereign-identities. Which is very different from what local or current governments like and want - At least one EU government is in conflict with its universities and wants to be the gatekeeper of diploma's - they truly want the ability to deny or retract diploma's from people who they don't like. Which, ironically, makes these constraints and requirements all the more important and critical in e.g. our projects. It went from a "decentralization is nice because in theory someone could..." to "decentralization is critical to ensure no-one, on any end of any political spectrum can take away diploma's as is currently being attempted". (And for the curious: I work with W3C, openId, IETF and many more standards and -bodies. Verifiable Credentials, OpenBadges v3, OIDC4VCI, VP, etc) ¹ Edit: well, maybe not "most", as there isn't a clear prioritization. And obvious requirements such as "you cannot just fake a diploma" are probably higher in priority.
- schnitzelstoat 2y ago> Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four of the motions, told The Register. "If we continue outsourcing all of our digital infrastructure to billionaires that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets, there will be no Dutch expertise left." This kind of casual anti-technology attitude among European politicians is part of the reason we are in this mess.
- latentcall 2y agoAnti-technology is just a dog whistle for anti-capital. Billionaires have made things exceptionally worse. Facebook was started as a way to rate women’s faces, is the foundation our data collection industry is built off of. We need to tear down the entire system and rebuild something else.
- epistasis 2y agoI still can't even see what supposed anti-technology content there is in the quote. But perhaps there's a broader context to incorporate that those from Europe could explain to Americans?
- spiderfarmer 2y agoNo. The main reason we got in this mess is because the US is a better market for startups, simply because of the amount of available money, and the fact that it’s easier to start in a market with 340M people who speak the same language.
- Grumbledour 2y agoBut, at least speaking for Germany here, the anti-technology stance of politicians and Germans in general certainly has a huge part in hampering the startup scene. This always goes both ways. It's not wrong to be skeptical and wanting privacy etc., but it also means it's harder to make bank by tracking everyone and selling their data, which has been a huge part of American technology startups for over a decade. And it often also just means, people don't trust new things and will not try them. Not sure this applies equally to the Netherlands though.
- Mvandenbergh 2y agoI mean, ok, fine guys but this is just more empty gestures from a club of empty heads in the GroenLinks/PvdA clown-car. I don't recall that they were against (in fact they were in favour) of the removal of the 30% tax rules intended to attract expats in, among other things, tech businesses. I don't recall that they've ever done or said anything to make the country a more attractive place to start or grow a business of any kind, let alone the kind of venture capital funded technology startups that would allow us to move a substantial fraction of our tech consumption to homegrown alternatives. Maybe they're at least in favour of permitting for data centres so that we can at least host our own services... oh wait, they don't want those either.
- Vinnl 2y agoNot all these motions were by GL/PvdA (but a few were), and they haven't been in power for a long time, and aren't now, so there's not much more than "gestures" you can expect of them at the moment. But yes, the key thing will be how the government (current and future ones) will followup.
- wesselbindt 2y agoIt sounds like you have a bone to pick with GL, which is totally fair. But do you have any thoughts on the proposal itself?
- Mvandenbergh 2y agoIt's fine but a proposal to do something without the political will to make any of the difficult compromises required to achieve them is meaningless.
- frodo8sam 2y agoI don't vote for this party but you sre totally straw manning them with respect to data centres. The whole reason those became controversial is because American big tech companies would come in and negotiate deals with municipalities to consume all the energy of newly built green energy projects so they could claim they would make their green goals withouth making any investments themselves. Also you can question if the Netherlands is the right place being so densly populated resulting in issues with both the electricity grid and general land shortage.
- FlorisWie 2y agoI am curious if this post will be deleted by the moderators, like the last time a discussion about European tech sovereignty was brought up on this American website.
- cinntaile 2y agoThey don't remove posts that discuss European tech sovereignty. It was probably flagged by the community instead.
- lawn 2y agoEverything that can be connected in a negative way to the current government gets flagged, so this will probably get flagged soon too.
- hsuduebc2 2y agoYou would say that they are shielding themselves from Trump or his minions and are as opportunistic as every other tech based company? To be fair I do not see much of the critiques to the "other side" either. Someone can just perceive this as a politics and just doesn't need it in his information space.
- jeromegv 2y agoThis feature has definitely been abused by fans of the current US administration. Anything close to being critical gets flagged and needs manual intervention to be brought back.
- pbiggar 2y ago100%! Between US tech surveilling the population, selling their data to data brokers, controlling what content they see, and surveilling even their customers customers, this has to happen extremely quickly. The end goal has to be that EU businesses should be able to easily ensure that their customers' data is never accessible to US companies. This is incredibly challenging at the moment due to SaaS - the amount of subprocessors that a company uses, and then transitively uses, makes it impossible at the moment imo.
- bittermandel 2y agoFinally! At least one parliament wants to invest in local technology and give the region a fair chance, rather than going with the (today) technically superior hyperscalers. There's no discussion that e.g. Azure solves a lot of problems that EU clouds don't solve today, but diversifying some bets to a local market will definitely pay dividends in terms of local economy and knowledge growth. I hope it pays off.
- gryzzly 2y agoHopefully this will also be a push for public sponsored open source / free software dev.
- evandrofisico 2y agoIt would be the fastest way to bootstrap a local hyperscaller, I mean, most of AWS is open source software with a HUGE integration to make it easy to administer.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xbmcuser 2y agoLets see if they put cash where there mouth is they should have been pouring billions of dollars into opensource software instead of paying Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle etc in the first place. Europe countries have been client states of the USA for decades and just do whatever USA wanted first time USA has hurt their own interests so are waking up to the fact.
- zwnow 2y agoAnd there were so many wakeup calls... Microsoft alone would be reason enough to not use any of their software. They've been breached how many times in the past years?
- tony2016 2y agoMicrosoft is huge and produces a ton of software. The bigger the surface area and the bigger is their popularity and number of consumers, the more the breaches. It's not like there's a breach every day. They're being good a patching their software and we have Patch Tuesdays where often they often patch zero day holes.
- zwnow 2y agoLast time I've checked they didnt even know if they were still breached after losing highly important keys, for months. And sorry, thats inexcusable.
- tossandthrow 2y agoI was pondering in why the EU never really got targeted directly like Canada and Mexico with Trumps tarifs. I think this is it. And it would be incredibly bad for US tech billionaires if the EU started to move home all these contracts.
- andrewflnr 2y agoNothing so rational, I'm sure. Tariffing Canada was already insane and he didn't care.
- egorfine 2y agoAnd replace with what, more regulations? Source: am a startup in the EU. The amount of bureaucracy is kafkaesque.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoWhere in the EU?
- egorfine 2y agorn I'm in Poland, where things are still sane. I have tried in Germany as well, and that's just impossible.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoOh, it’s possible in Germany. What problems do you have in Poland?
- egorfine 2y ago> Oh, it’s possible in Germany Of course. How do I fire an employee? That's right, I don't. Otherwise sure it's possible.
- 4ggr0 2y agoalways amusing when people realize that workers have and deserve rights in other parts of the world.
- egorfine 2y agoSocial security is an incredibly good thing. It defines Europe. There's a price for it and that's what we're discussing here.
- cess11 2y agoIf you have a reason, just terminate the contract? That's how it works in pretty much all of the EU.
- kalium-xyz 2y agoSomehow i doubt it coming from a country which could be described as a datacenter for big US tech
- Matthyze 2y agoI'm Dutch and genuinely confused by what you're getting at. There are foreign datacenters here but AFAIK not particularly many.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago8th in this list of number of datacenters per country [0], most of the countries listed being much larger. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228433/data-centers-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228433/data-centers-wor...
- amelius 2y agoI wonder what they will replace their MacBooks with ...
- layer8 2y agoMacs aren’t that widely used in Europe. If anything, Windows is a problem: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoTulip computers, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_Computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_Computers
- Scarblac 2y agoI've never seen anyone in Dutch government with a MacBook. On the other hand every single government agency is addicted to Office 365 / Outlook / Teams / Azure, and I don't see them getting rid of those any time soon.
- hnthrow90348765 2y agoHopefully we'll see non-US tech salaries increase due to its importance.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoFingers crossed, we're seeing some brain drain because people are working for US companies (not necessarily moving there though) who offer Dutch contracts but with American salaries. Over €100K / year in some cases.
- DaveMcMartin 2y agoTBH, while I feel like this is the way, I’m noticing more and more politicians using this as a way to simply gather more votes with a "cause US bad" angle. Companies are eager to get your money, so they'll try to get an "EU made" label and use it as marketing as hard as they can, even if 90% of their operation happens outside the EU. And the way they talk, it seems like decoupling from the US is something trivial done overnight. No, it is not, it’s a kind of a slow process in some areas, and pragmatic decisions must be made along the way.
- drpossum 2y ago> I’m noticing more and more politicians using this as a way to simply gather more votes with a "cause US bad" You typed that like they're wrong
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- epistasis 2y agoMore and more politicians will use this obvious own-goal by Trump to their advantage, and so will more and more competitors to US companies. Yes, it will be a long and slow process. The Buy Canadian, Bye America campaign from the US's northern neighbors won't change things on a dime, and if the US administration gains some basic common sense the movement might be killed before it grows too large.
- debo_ 2y agoRelated: "Dutch parliament calls for end to reliance on US software" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43401487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43401487 "Dutch government urged to stop using "unsafe" US cloud services " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411061
- tonijn 2y agoThe Dutch government however transferred everything to Microsoft Cloud last year.
- donohoe 2y agoWhat’s the Google Sheets/Excel of Europe?
- tonyhart7 2y agolibre office lol
- layer8 2y agoCollabora: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabora_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabora_Online
- donohoe 2y agoThank you. The overall site design and UX makes me pessimistic. Its not just depresses me to use it. I really wanted to be enthusiastic and pleasantly surprised by it. https://www.collaboraonline.com/ https://www.collaboraonline.com/
- maciejw 2y agoEurope's problem in this area seems to be inability to build a mechanism to realize large, unprofitable projects. It looks like the whole continent operates on thin margins, and has no resources set aside to pursue strategic initiatives. US is building its pile of resources by capitalising on its current advantage, but also by pushing larger and larger parts of society into poverty. Europe is maybe more fair, but ultimately unable to keep up and very vulnerable because of that. Even Russia, a country with much smaller economy is able to concentrate its resources to affect politics and develop few important techs (missiles). Of course it achieves the goal even more by expoiting its own population. Few people benefit from it, but their wealth is immense. Before 2022 whole regions of Europe catered to needs of foreign millionaires, not few homegrown ones. Lack of large projects translates to little opportunities to become rich. I have no idea how Europe can build institutions to develop large projects without impoverishing lots of its citizens.
- schnitzelstoat 2y agoEurope isn't that far behind and often produces new technologies. It has some of the best universities and research labs in the world. The problem is the uncompetitive business environment.
- maciejw 2y agoHow do we make it more competitive? Work 996 like the Chinese? Have no maternity leave like Americans? It would certainly make us more competitive...
- vladms 2y agoThere are lots of people (both in and out) perceiving Europe in different ways, but is this a result of facts or of repetition of some ideas in the news? Can you give without searching 5 examples of large unprofitable projects in Europe and the USA? Each time I look for examples, I find more than I knew before. And anyhow the purpose is not for the project to be unprofitable or large! If (just as an example) Europe obtains 50% of the result with 25% of the investment is that bad? I (as European) also want to live a good life, I don't care that Europe is that first at throwing money around like crazy. And is it about size in monetary value or impact? Anybody talks about UK Bio Bank? No, while the impact on healthcare is amazing and they don't even try to make it for profit (ofc lots of US companies are crazy to use it)...
- everfrustrated 2y agoThis would be the same country (The Netherlands) that is prohibiting construction of new data centers... Really joined up thinking!
- edwinjm 2y agoOnly in certain areas, not in general.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoThis is because our energy grid is full, American companies have come in to take advantage of our investments in green energy by buying up capacity of newly built offshore windmill parks subsidised by the Dutch and EU governments [0][1], and they're using millions of liters of drinking water to cool their datacenters [2]. Sure, they bring in some money, but is it worth it? We have carbon emission goals to meet as well, but if the projects intended to replace carbon emitting power generators are used for datacenters instead, that won't happen. And using clean drinking water, which is treated, used, and dumped again in surface water, is just a huge waste of our aquifers, especially with climate change. We already saw the water companies reduce pressure and trigger other such water saving measures a few years ago when the stores ran empty, why should a data center take precedence over people? They should pay a premium for this kind of thing. [0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2350450-opening-grootste-windpark-van-nederland-meeste-stroom-naar-datacenter-microsoft https://nos.nl/artikel/2350450-opening-grootste-windpark-van... (translate link: https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2350450-opening-grootste-windpark-van-nederland-meeste-stroom-naar-datacenter-microsoft?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2350450-opening-groots...) [1] https://news.microsoft.com/2017/10/09/microsoft-ge-sign-agreement-on-new-wind-project-in-ireland/ https://news.microsoft.com/2017/10/09/microsoft-ge-sign-agre... [2] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/drought-stricken-holland-discovers-microsoft-data-center-slurped-84m-liters-of-drinking-water-last-year/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/drought-stricken-...
- sebazzz 2y agoI'm sure we could annex some from Microsoft. You know, for security reasons. Also, data centers from big tech have a large environmental impact and cost a lot of energy, yet do not bring any jobs.
- janaagaard 2y agoI really hope Europe seizes this as an opportunity to start pushing public money, public code. https://publiccode.eu/en/ https://publiccode.eu/en/
- hsuduebc2 2y agoIt always surprises me that people only act when a problem becomes undeniable, rather than preventing it in the first place. In a country with a voting system and power structure like US, where a single person can abruptly shift the entire nation's direction, this has always been a security flaw for others. It's the same as relying on Russian gas, people pretend the worst can't happen because it would be harmful to everyone, right up until it does.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DoingIsLearning 2y agoReminder that Russian gas is not a closed topic. Several European countries are still financing Russia's war economy by buying Russian gas. There is no 100% embargo ... yet. I see a lot of people discussing this as if we are all running on windmills and nuclear, it is absolutely not the case... yet.
- hsuduebc2 2y agoI know, but it's always former Russian colonies that fall for their propaganda—partly because some still see Russia as an "old friend." These countries are also much poorer than those in the West, which is pretty ironic since the Russian gas they get isn’t even that much cheaper. It’s more about having the infrastructure in place and simply being used to living next to the Russians. Nord Stream 2 is beyond repair—just like Russia’s reputation for the coming decades. There may be trade again in the future, but they will never be the sole supplier again.
- andsoitis 2y ago> but it's always former Russian colonies that fall for their propaganda—partly because some still see Russia as an "old friend." The largest importers of Russian gas in the European Union are Germany and Italy, accounting together for almost half of the EU's gas imports from Russia. Other larger Russian gas importers in the European Union are France, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Slovakia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...
- jmyeet 2y agoThis is simply the American empire in decline. Maybe with the ascendancy of China, we'll at least get trains. This is what people need to understand about the current US administration: there's no grand plan. There's no deep strategy. The people in charge have absolutely no idea what they're doing. I'm not even sure if people at the top even know how tariffs work, like is the idea that foreign countries pay it just propaganda? I hope so. But do they believe it? I'm actually not sure. It's just a bunch of Ayn Rand devotees who are out to destroy the government that made their wealth possible to begin with. to try and recreate a "traditional" society like the 1950s, just without the 91% top marginal rate of taxation that made prosperity possible. It's only when neoliberalism fully took hold in the 1970s did the standard of living start to decline and the wealth gap rise, just so the very wealthy can have just a little bit more wealth. Gutting USAID says it all. That money mostly went to US firms, so they've lost that income, and the purpose was to project US soft power. Through organizations like NATO, the US used its military to get allies to do what they want and to buy US arms. Withdrawing F16 support to Ukraine, for example, completley undermines confidence in US arms. The rush for US tech CEOs to kiss the ring and fall in line was always going to alienate other countries. They really are going to kill the golden goose.
- edwinjm 2y agoI understand that most of what Trump does fits in Project 2025.
- nexawave-ai 2y agoI wonder what the implications are for AWS’s efforts in building the "AWS European Sovereign Cloud" in Dublin, Ireland. They are recruiting aggressively, even offering a relocation budget of up to €9,000. Although I was tempted to interview for an SDE role, I felt it would be wrong to uproot my family and relocate from the Netherlands to Ireland. And for what? A higher-paying role at a FAANG company? Still tempting, but I decided to put my family first.
- suraci 2y ago[flagged]
- JSR_FDED 2y agoI love the idea of a bit of inspiration and invigoration of tech in Europe. But for some reason Estonia is the only country that can execute on this, I don’t know why. The rest of Europe loves their bureaucracy too much.
- niemandhier 2y agoI like Estonia, but if their approach was valid it not can only be judged after the Russians tried to disable all those shiny new digital services or the American decide to invalidate all IT contracts or the Chinese’s mandate Chinese’s products don’t work in Estonia. Paper works even if the electricity goes away and we have to live in caves again … or bunkers.
- dr_dshiv 2y agoI gave a workshop yesterday on the effective use of large language models. We had participants from numerous Dutch corporations. There is a lot of unmet demand for a non-American LLM. I suggested DeepSeek, but that's Chinese. I suggested Mistral, but that's French (joke!). I found OpenGPT-X from a European consortium, but it seems quite immature as yet. https://huggingface.co/openGPT-X https://huggingface.co/openGPT-X Perhaps there will be a European DeepSeek replica soon -- it should be quite affordable to build. But that's just one piece of the ecosystem -- there is a need for a lot of digital infrastructure.
- everfrustrated 2y ago>I suggested Mistral, but that's French (joke!) You joke but there is a lot of truth behind this. Europe is a very divided place and often prefers to do business with a foreign company than help their literal neighbour due to historical baggage.
- cs702 2y agoInteresting. For the government of a country like Denmark, with 1.4% the GDP and 1.7% the population of the US, the only viable way to build homegrown alternatives that avoid relying on software controlled by big US tech companies is to invest in open-source projects like GNU/Linux. Many other governments around the world are in the same position as the government of Denmark. Should they decide to invest in open-source projects, the impact could be significant.
- scryers_bloom 2y agoAlthough this isn't foreign related, I started a regional freelance software company to help build websites or software for local government and businesses or other kinds of software/IT help. It sucks to know that there are state funded organizations that just impede any sort of locally homegrown software development. And it made me realize that software is one of the strange fields where competition both feels like its extremely lacking or flourishing, depending on which sect your in.
- anvarik 2y ago> there will be no Dutch expertise left I'm curious about the kind of existing expertise they are referring to
- crote 2y agoEver heard of ASML? NXP? Philips? Booking.com? ElasticSearch? Adyen? Messagebird? Just Eat Takeaway? Just because you are not familiar with the expertise doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
- light_triad 2y agoData and cloud sovereignty has been a theme in Europe for many years. Most efforts to develop European 'clones' of popular US services have had mixed successes (compared to China for example). Number of declared meetings with EU officials since 2014: Google (381), Airbus (318), the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (241), and Meta (235) https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/02/24/big-tech-banking-energy-who-are-the-biggest-spenders-on-eu-lobbying https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/02/24/big-tech-banki... The documents from Uber released a few years ago revealed a lobbying effort by some EU officials. In that context growing homegrown options will be difficult: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321
- pembrook 2y agoJust some food for thought. The percentage of GDP generated by centrally managed government spending vs. free market participants [1]: - US: 35% - China: 33% - EU avg: 50% The disparity is again similar for interstate integration (in the US) and inter-province integration (in China) vs. inter-country integration (in the EU) being the outlier. Europe needs deeper inter-country integration and more decentralization of capital to private market participants (less taxation). Europe can play Soviet-protectionism and build the digital-equivalent of the Lada all it wants, but the above issues are the root cause of why Europe is lagging behind the other two in terms of growth and innovation. You can't build a tech industry without venture capital and a big cohesive market to sell into, and you can't build a venture capital industry without deep pools of decentralized, risk-tolerant private capital. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
- madsbuch 2y agoNumbers do lie - it would be nice to have a breakdown of this. Maybe the difference, 16% points, is what affords the European a fair treatment upon illness where half of that is "shareholder value" in the US. Feel free to link the study you used so we don't just have to trust some internet rando.
- pembrook 2y agoJust google 'percentage of GDP driven by government spending' for your country of choice. This is some of the most basic and widely available economic data that exists. https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/... (edited my original comment to include the source as well)
- madsbuch 2y agoCommon source, great! First, you seems to conflate "free markets" (Whatever free means here?) with decentralized spending. How does that make sense? And more importantly: If we can agree that a democracy ought to be an aspiration for a society, and a functioning democracy requires some minimum level of equality, how will you ensure that under your "free market"?
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- DiscourseFan 2y agoThis is practically impossible, however. The entire population of the Netherlands is only about twice the size of the entire US tech sector. That would mean dedicating half the population of the Netherlands to tech work to compete with the US. The reason why China and India are competetive is because those countries have similarly sized tech sectors as the US. A single European country cannot compete with the behemoths of today’s industry. Perhaps if the EU, as a whole, sought such sovreignty it would be possible. But that infrastructure needs to be built up and that won’t happen overnight, at least not in just 4 years.
- eigenspace 2y agoThat's why the Netherlands is in the EU, and the EU has a Sovereign Tech Fund for helping fund and organize the development of (mostly FOSS) non-US reliant technologies.
- Vinnl 2y agoIf you're talking about the STF that I'm thinking of, that's purely a German project.
- iteratethis 2y agoMaybe actually read the article.
- stodor89 2y ago"The best time to ditch tech giants was 15 years ago. The second-best time is now." -- Dutch proverb
- BjoernKW 2y agoWhile this might sound reasonable on the surface, here's the thing: Not only are there hardly any homegrown options in the EU, but the EU is actively regulating against such homegrown alternatives. At the same time, people regularly call for the authorities to pitch in and provide such alternatives. There are numerous ridiculously expensive - and now defunct - projects (e.g., Quaero and Theseus, just to mention two of those) that have tried to achieve something to that effect already, with little - if anything - to show for. Why people seem to think this is going to work this time around is beyond me.
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoIt's always the same song and dance. We need to move away from US tech? Ok Great, where to? The European AWS or Google Cloud? Those don't exists. What about the European Stripe which is a big pillar of the new digital economy? Still no. What about the payment cards? Mastercard, Visa, Amex? Where are the EU alternatives? The EU is all talk and no bite. We fine US companies for breaking the law but instead of using that cash to foster innovation, we use it to hire more paper pushers in Brussels to come up with the next idiotic regulation like the bottle cap one. The best time to replace US tech was 10 years ago but that did not happen and it's not going to happen now. Do you know anyone who is ready to give up their IPhone or Mac?
- lycopodiopsida 2y agoI could easily give up my iPhone or Mac, even though I do use them exclusively for ~10Y. The issue with Linux is not that it impossible to use (I did it for several years) but that there is no incentive to support hardware and corner case software given Win/Mac prevalence. The moment they disappear the problem will solve itself within a year or two and we would be certainly better off afterwards, given the current course of corporate technology - not even including politics.
- everfrustrated 2y agoWhile I agree with your general point, Europe does have Adyen which is a strong competitor to Stripe.
- xaldir 2y agoBig talk. Let's see if it will survive another media cycle.
- ceva 2y agoNice move Ducks! :)
- Aldipower 2y ago[flagged]
- penguin_booze 2y agoGlobalization and trickle down irrigation are... wait, that should have been economics... anyway, are the worst scams of the century. Sure, there were some benefits from globalization. But consumers lost sight on the notions of self-sufficiency and sovereignty, and played nicely into capitalism's 'extend, embrace, extinguish' philosophy. In my view, the net exports from the US to the rest of the world has been negative. Therefore, in due time, the rest of the western world, or wherever there prevails some notion of democracy, should strive to excise the US out in all shapes and forms--politically, culturally, technologically, and everythingally. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the next best time is now. And, no: the irony of my writing this on a US-based platform is not lost on me!
- Reedpher 2y ago[dead]
- thewileyone 2y agoNow do ASML ...