7 ms·

Europe does not need more open source, it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry. It doesn't matter if the email platform a government uses is

by fh973 9mo ago

Europe does not need more open source, it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry. It doesn't matter if the email platform a government uses is open source, but it should be able to pick a local alternative. It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one. Policy may help the European software industry, at least governments should actively work on getting away from their Microsoft addiction. Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software. Blindly preferring open source may kill otherwise viable local software businesses.

palata 9mo ago
> it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US. > It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one. I don't think they are talking about creating a mobile OS? But I do think that e-ID and similar government apps should be open source, so that people can trust them. > Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software. Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source.
- consp 9mo ago
  > Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. Or create an open source reference implementation and leave the final solution to the market. Everyone can use the reference implementation but if you think you can do better use your own. This includes a government doing it themselves either based on the reference implementation or not.
- cryptica 9mo ago
  > Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source. Yes. The government has more than enough leverage to demand this. Skill was never the problem. The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption. The problem with the regulations is that they were designed with the explicit intent to stifle competition. "Nobody got fired for choosing IBM" - This fact is pure corruption. I remember, when I was at university, one of the courses I took had a project management component and we did an assessment researching failed software projects and it turns out that there were a huge number of failed projects running in the hundreds of millions and even billions (and that was a lot of money at the time); always the same companies kept coming up. IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.
  - palata 9mo ago
    > The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption I keep hearing the "too many regulations" argument, and I totally disagree. Too few regulations (or rather no enforcement of them) resulted in the TooBigTech monopolies we have today. Of course, they got so successful because of the lack of regulations, but now it's simply impossible to compete with them. Removing regulations (assuming that there are regulations that impact them today, which I doubt) would help them, not the competition. And we have precedents: * Whenever the EU tries to do some antitrust, it impacts TooBigTech (which is almost exclusively US), and as a result the US bullies the EU to stop it. If regulations were weakening the EU, why would the US government fight them? * Let's continue with the US as the example of fewer bureaucracy in this case (the complaint is that the EU cannot compete with the US because of the EU's bureaucracy): look at examples where a non-US company takes over a market (or threatens to take it over). Huawei smartphones (not the infrastructure like antennas, this is different), TikTok, DJI. What do US companies do to win against them? They lobby like crazy to add regulations that will stop the competition. The US hasn't managed to compete with TikTok: they made it illegal instead. When Huawei was becoming very big in smartphones in the US, they got banned. The US hasn't managed to compete with DJI, and the biggest US drone companies are spending a ton of resources trying to get DJI banned. DJI is so superior that even banning them is tricky: it has to be done slowly because banning them right away would disrupt entire industries for lack of viable alternatives. That's how far US drones are from DJI drones. "Too many regulations" is wrong. The successful players get protection from their government (be it the US or China), and it's high time the EU protected its own players, too. With regulations, just like the US and China does (when they don't abuse their dominant position to bully the EU).
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  What is a European made operating system I can purchase for my computer?
  - fsflover 9mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049
    - carlosjobim 9mo ago
      Do they have any paid consumer offerings, with consumer support?
      - fsflover 9mo ago
        I assume if you come with money, everything is possible. Also, you don't have to get support from the same company: There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS unlike with proprietary software.
        carlosjobim 9mo ago
        I could purchase the fully fledged OS X operating system as a consumer for $20, and get customer support for it. Now the OS is free with customer support. > There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS I don't care about that as a consumer. I want software / a computer which works and easy customer support if I need it. People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know. Because FLOSS developers hate consumers and worship corporate enterprises.
        fsflover 9mo ago
        > I don't care about that as a consumer. Until this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075. Or, worse, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 or this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556. Megacorps don't care about your requests for support. > People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-hardware/certified-hardware.html https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-h... and much more. Have you tried using search?
- u8080 9mo ago
  Idk, europeans saying thing like "It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive" implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist.
  - palata 9mo ago
    > europeans saying thing like Where did I say I was European? > implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist Anti-competitive behaviours from TooBigTech are well documented, and they are regularly fined for that. I'm sure it happens from EU companies, but it has less impact given that the software industry is almost entirely dominated by US companies. Now I can't remember the last time the EU threatened the US to prevent them from regulating EU companies? Also are you aware that pretty much all governments in the EU rely on the US monopolies? I wouldn't call that "extremely protectionnist". As compared to e.g. the US banning Huawei or TikTok or DJI.
    - u8080 9mo ago
      I mean, EU has some de-facto BigTech giants like SAP which are on same anti-competitive side. It just happened that US was quicker and more successful in various areas including software. EU tactics on protectionism is creating legislative framework to apply tariffs to competing imports(i.e. import taxes and quotas(TARIC, etc), ecology-related fees, subsidies for local industries, restricting imports of goods for private citizens by postal limits and others)
      - palata 9mo ago
        I am not sure what you are trying to say. My whole point is that regulations are required for a sane market. The fact that the US wins because they don't play by the same rules does not mean that it is fair. And the fact that the US bans Chinese tech when they do to the US what the US does to the rest of the world shows that the US doesn't find it fair either. It's just easier to accept an unfair situation when we benefit from it.
  - 9mo ago
- rdm_blackhole 9mo ago
  > Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US. Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? Concretely no. What's stopping this is that most governments in Europe are taxing companies to death to fund social services that end up in deficit anyway. It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly. The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get.
  - palata 9mo ago
    > Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations. > It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly. Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly. But the big bad monopolies being US companies, they are protected by the US government who doesn't really care about having US competition in the US, but cares about domining over the rest of the world. > The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get. Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.
    - CrimsonRain 9mo ago
      Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US. eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion. It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.
PurpleRamen 9mo ago
> Europe does not need more open source, Europe is not one country, not even the EU is perfectly united. It's a dozen different countries, each with their own political and technical landscape, and Open Source is seen as the logical solution to unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator. > it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry. It has a good software industry, and it could of course be always better, but USA is still bigger and more dominating. Ther eis also a difference between software and service. Popular Cloud-services for common work is rare in Europe, building them is and making them popular, especially on a european level, is important. > It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one. It's all about control. Open Source matters, becausse it gives more control, more insight, less chance some other country is spying on your and someday switching off something important.
- pembrook 9mo ago
  > unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot. Instead of harnessing the best talent the EU has to offer, you're making sure they never get off the ground in the name of 'fairness.' Tall poppy syndrome in the extreme. I'm sorry but the free market-denial that's become endemic among European central planners is getting wildly irrational at this point. Every year we creep closer to USSR-level government spending as % of GDP, crowding out private sector activity. Do you understand that the entire tax base of the EU is dependent on private sector businesses competing with each other to offer better products and services? Unfairness and exceptionalism and its winners are what funds our entire way of life. We can redistribute some of the earnings from the winners to the losers after the fact (as we already do at 50% on average). But we absolutely need to have the market competition to drive value in the first place for there to be anything to redistribute!
  - PurpleRamen 9mo ago
    That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case. > If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot. That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour product, but because the company is better at playing the administration, which usually comes down to "investing more money". Open Source and open standards can remove some of the leverages they use, enabling smaller companies to play on a bigger field, and thus improving the market overall. And with the actual political situation in Europe, there is also the beneficial sideeffect that more players in the market, and less dependecy from single point of failures, will allow everyone to raise their survival-rate in case of hostile actions.
iso1631 9mo ago
We've seen that some open source licenses make way for American money to steal the monetisation -- Elasticsearch found this to their peril when Amazon swooped in and offered it as a service The other problem is the ability for American companies and funds to just buy European companies. If Europe wants to stop this is needs to be very aware of the licensing agreements, and to pass laws to limit foreign investment - like China, India etc do.
- wtarreau 9mo ago
  No, it needs first to encourage local investment. Companies who seek investors or who get sold do not do it by pleasure, but as a last resort before dying. And in the EU you don't get any offer to save a company that has a limited commercial activity. Many companies die every day by lack of money. It turns our that US etc are willing to take much more risk and invest sufficient money to transform such fragile companies into durable ones. And in the case of software it's great, because software is sold all over the world, and the income serves to hire more local people, so in the end it's a way to really develop EU sales to the rest of the world. It would clearly be better if the investors were EU-based, but at least it's better than nothing that some investors are willing to risk their money on such companies.
torginus 9mo ago
I disagree. Let's say there's an app that stores healthcare data in an EU compliant format, there's 3 possibilities: - Every country develops its own solution, which is good for employee demand, but can be inefficient - Every country standardizes on a proprietary solution. The problem will be that said solution will most likely come from one of the major EU countries (say Germany) and others will feel left out and forced to use that solution. Said solution will be Germany-first, so local demands will have to go a slow and expensive contracting process. Said company will sell access to APIs, meaning integrating and building innovation on top will be tied to that commercial entity - Every country uses the same standard software that's open source. There's no licensing fees, everyone can modify the code to accomodate local needs. Development costs are low. Proprietary local solution can be built on top without having to pay anyone. It's clear to me, that when the customer is the public, and open-source solution should be preferred.
- amunozo 9mo ago
  There is another option, to develop pan-european software as it has been done in other areas such as aerospace.
  - torginus 9mo ago
    As long as you define pan-europe as like 5 countries.
    - amunozo 9mo ago
      Fair enough. A better word would be multinational.
- fh973 9mo ago
  This app currently runs on Android or iOS. Anyway, open source is fine there. But you're not getting things like a Desktop or Web office suite (OpenOffice is an historical accident), an enterprise device management, endpoint security, ... this way.
tgv 9mo ago
It's not that simple. The Dutch government uses a commercial service for their digital id, and now that company is going to be sold into American hands.
orochimaaru 9mo ago
Why does the governments Microsoft addiction have anything to do with European software industry? Asking as an American whose governments are also addicted to Microsoft.
jszymborski 9mo ago
They say "open source" but they are looking for "no-profit motive" IMO. Which is fine, but they should be opening a generous fund for democratically-run non-profits whose primary activity is developing open software which is useful for the EU and is an alternative to US corp-controlled software. EU has plenty of these orgs it can generously fund, and scoping funding like this would create more. Some existing examples (many of which accept gov't funds but need a lot more to rival big tech): - https://framasoft.org/en/ https://framasoft.org/en/ - https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ - https://deuxfleurs.fr/ https://deuxfleurs.fr/ - https://www.chatons.org/ https://www.chatons.org/
- wtarreau 9mo ago
  In my opinion it's the opposite. This type of associations is welcome, and they are fine to promote free software and help people, but they are exactly like neighborhood associations: they're mostly local, relying on volunteers with limited time who become a new dependency for people who were not using these services. That's fine for limited use case but it doesn't scale at all, and causes a huge duplication of efforts (organization, software creation -- several of them reinvented stuff that already exists, advertising etc). And associations rarely if ever merge, because most often association creators have a very clear view of what they're seeking (often idealist) and are rarely willing to compromise it and accept to adopt another association's mostly similar but not exactly identical goals (it often works very similarly to political parties). GAFAMs would never exist under this model. The problem is that such services which proudly run on low budget, volunteers and recycled hardware, cannot be relied on by companies without risking to enter legal trouble in case of major incident, so it means that a higher-grade service is still needed, with a dedicate funding, and we're facing fragmentation. We must not reproduce the scheme of cloudwatt either. Too much money injected into a wet dream that was only used to spend lots of money in consultants coming here just to confirm their presence and get their check. What is needed instead is to sponsor the development of such activities by a few (2-3) well-established competing companies, so as to avoid the regular risk of monoculture that diverges from what users expect, and help them reach the point where their offerings can compete with GAFAM's for both end users and enterprise. The contract should be clear that services must rely on open formats, make it possible for leaving users to retrieve all their data, that software developed under such funding must be opensource, though technology acquisition is fine, and that these offerings must become self-sustaining at one point (i.e. a mix of free+paid services). The EU funders should have enough shares of these activities so that their permission is required for business acquisition and that they can restrict it to EU-based companies, so that such companies can still grow and seek public funding. What we need is a few durable big players, not 10000 incompatible associations each with their own software suite, that no enterprise can trust over the long term and that cannot resist a trivial DDoS by lack of a robust infrastructure, and who are not organized enough to run full-stack security audits to make sure that user data are properly protected. These ones are only fine for friends and family but that's not what we're missing the most (the proof is that they already exist).

by fh973 9mo ago

palata 9mo ago

> it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US. > It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one. I don't think they are talking about creating a mobile OS? But I do think that e-ID and similar government apps should be open source, so that people can trust them. > Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software. Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source.

consp 9mo ago
> Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. Or create an open source reference implementation and leave the final solution to the market. Everyone can use the reference implementation but if you think you can do better use your own. This includes a government doing it themselves either based on the reference implementation or not.
cryptica 9mo ago
> Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source. Yes. The government has more than enough leverage to demand this. Skill was never the problem. The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption. The problem with the regulations is that they were designed with the explicit intent to stifle competition. "Nobody got fired for choosing IBM" - This fact is pure corruption. I remember, when I was at university, one of the courses I took had a project management component and we did an assessment researching failed software projects and it turns out that there were a huge number of failed projects running in the hundreds of millions and even billions (and that was a lot of money at the time); always the same companies kept coming up. IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.
- palata 9mo ago
  > The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption I keep hearing the "too many regulations" argument, and I totally disagree. Too few regulations (or rather no enforcement of them) resulted in the TooBigTech monopolies we have today. Of course, they got so successful because of the lack of regulations, but now it's simply impossible to compete with them. Removing regulations (assuming that there are regulations that impact them today, which I doubt) would help them, not the competition. And we have precedents: * Whenever the EU tries to do some antitrust, it impacts TooBigTech (which is almost exclusively US), and as a result the US bullies the EU to stop it. If regulations were weakening the EU, why would the US government fight them? * Let's continue with the US as the example of fewer bureaucracy in this case (the complaint is that the EU cannot compete with the US because of the EU's bureaucracy): look at examples where a non-US company takes over a market (or threatens to take it over). Huawei smartphones (not the infrastructure like antennas, this is different), TikTok, DJI. What do US companies do to win against them? They lobby like crazy to add regulations that will stop the competition. The US hasn't managed to compete with TikTok: they made it illegal instead. When Huawei was becoming very big in smartphones in the US, they got banned. The US hasn't managed to compete with DJI, and the biggest US drone companies are spending a ton of resources trying to get DJI banned. DJI is so superior that even banning them is tricky: it has to be done slowly because banning them right away would disrupt entire industries for lack of viable alternatives. That's how far US drones are from DJI drones. "Too many regulations" is wrong. The successful players get protection from their government (be it the US or China), and it's high time the EU protected its own players, too. With regulations, just like the US and China does (when they don't abuse their dominant position to bully the EU).
carlosjobim 9mo ago
What is a European made operating system I can purchase for my computer?
- fsflover 9mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049
  - carlosjobim 9mo ago
    Do they have any paid consumer offerings, with consumer support?
    - fsflover 9mo ago
      I assume if you come with money, everything is possible. Also, you don't have to get support from the same company: There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS unlike with proprietary software.
      - carlosjobim 9mo ago
        I could purchase the fully fledged OS X operating system as a consumer for $20, and get customer support for it. Now the OS is free with customer support. > There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS I don't care about that as a consumer. I want software / a computer which works and easy customer support if I need it. People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know. Because FLOSS developers hate consumers and worship corporate enterprises.
        fsflover 9mo ago
        > I don't care about that as a consumer. Until this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075. Or, worse, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 or this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556. Megacorps don't care about your requests for support. > People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-hardware/certified-hardware.html https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-h... and much more. Have you tried using search?
u8080 9mo ago
Idk, europeans saying thing like "It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive" implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist.
- palata 9mo ago
  > europeans saying thing like Where did I say I was European? > implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist Anti-competitive behaviours from TooBigTech are well documented, and they are regularly fined for that. I'm sure it happens from EU companies, but it has less impact given that the software industry is almost entirely dominated by US companies. Now I can't remember the last time the EU threatened the US to prevent them from regulating EU companies? Also are you aware that pretty much all governments in the EU rely on the US monopolies? I wouldn't call that "extremely protectionnist". As compared to e.g. the US banning Huawei or TikTok or DJI.
  - u8080 9mo ago
    I mean, EU has some de-facto BigTech giants like SAP which are on same anti-competitive side. It just happened that US was quicker and more successful in various areas including software. EU tactics on protectionism is creating legislative framework to apply tariffs to competing imports(i.e. import taxes and quotas(TARIC, etc), ecology-related fees, subsidies for local industries, restricting imports of goods for private citizens by postal limits and others)
    - palata 9mo ago
      I am not sure what you are trying to say. My whole point is that regulations are required for a sane market. The fact that the US wins because they don't play by the same rules does not mean that it is fair. And the fact that the US bans Chinese tech when they do to the US what the US does to the rest of the world shows that the US doesn't find it fair either. It's just easier to accept an unfair situation when we benefit from it.
- 9mo ago
rdm_blackhole 9mo ago
> Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US. Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? Concretely no. What's stopping this is that most governments in Europe are taxing companies to death to fund social services that end up in deficit anyway. It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly. The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get.
- palata 9mo ago
  > Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations. > It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly. Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly. But the big bad monopolies being US companies, they are protected by the US government who doesn't really care about having US competition in the US, but cares about domining over the rest of the world. > The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get. Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.
  - CrimsonRain 9mo ago
    Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US. eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion. It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.

PurpleRamen 9mo ago

> Europe does not need more open source, Europe is not one country, not even the EU is perfectly united. It's a dozen different countries, each with their own political and technical landscape, and Open Source is seen as the logical solution to unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator. > it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry. It has a good software industry, and it could of course be always better, but USA is still bigger and more dominating. Ther eis also a difference between software and service. Popular Cloud-services for common work is rare in Europe, building them is and making them popular, especially on a european level, is important. > It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one. It's all about control. Open Source matters, becausse it gives more control, more insight, less chance some other country is spying on your and someday switching off something important.

pembrook 9mo ago
> unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot. Instead of harnessing the best talent the EU has to offer, you're making sure they never get off the ground in the name of 'fairness.' Tall poppy syndrome in the extreme. I'm sorry but the free market-denial that's become endemic among European central planners is getting wildly irrational at this point. Every year we creep closer to USSR-level government spending as % of GDP, crowding out private sector activity. Do you understand that the entire tax base of the EU is dependent on private sector businesses competing with each other to offer better products and services? Unfairness and exceptionalism and its winners are what funds our entire way of life. We can redistribute some of the earnings from the winners to the losers after the fact (as we already do at 50% on average). But we absolutely need to have the market competition to drive value in the first place for there to be anything to redistribute!
- PurpleRamen 9mo ago
  That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case. > If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot. That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour product, but because the company is better at playing the administration, which usually comes down to "investing more money". Open Source and open standards can remove some of the leverages they use, enabling smaller companies to play on a bigger field, and thus improving the market overall. And with the actual political situation in Europe, there is also the beneficial sideeffect that more players in the market, and less dependecy from single point of failures, will allow everyone to raise their survival-rate in case of hostile actions.

iso1631 9mo ago

We've seen that some open source licenses make way for American money to steal the monetisation -- Elasticsearch found this to their peril when Amazon swooped in and offered it as a service The other problem is the ability for American companies and funds to just buy European companies. If Europe wants to stop this is needs to be very aware of the licensing agreements, and to pass laws to limit foreign investment - like China, India etc do.

wtarreau 9mo ago
No, it needs first to encourage local investment. Companies who seek investors or who get sold do not do it by pleasure, but as a last resort before dying. And in the EU you don't get any offer to save a company that has a limited commercial activity. Many companies die every day by lack of money. It turns our that US etc are willing to take much more risk and invest sufficient money to transform such fragile companies into durable ones. And in the case of software it's great, because software is sold all over the world, and the income serves to hire more local people, so in the end it's a way to really develop EU sales to the rest of the world. It would clearly be better if the investors were EU-based, but at least it's better than nothing that some investors are willing to risk their money on such companies.

torginus 9mo ago

I disagree. Let's say there's an app that stores healthcare data in an EU compliant format, there's 3 possibilities: - Every country develops its own solution, which is good for employee demand, but can be inefficient - Every country standardizes on a proprietary solution. The problem will be that said solution will most likely come from one of the major EU countries (say Germany) and others will feel left out and forced to use that solution. Said solution will be Germany-first, so local demands will have to go a slow and expensive contracting process. Said company will sell access to APIs, meaning integrating and building innovation on top will be tied to that commercial entity - Every country uses the same standard software that's open source. There's no licensing fees, everyone can modify the code to accomodate local needs. Development costs are low. Proprietary local solution can be built on top without having to pay anyone. It's clear to me, that when the customer is the public, and open-source solution should be preferred.

amunozo 9mo ago
There is another option, to develop pan-european software as it has been done in other areas such as aerospace.
- torginus 9mo ago
  As long as you define pan-europe as like 5 countries.
  - amunozo 9mo ago
    Fair enough. A better word would be multinational.
fh973 9mo ago
This app currently runs on Android or iOS. Anyway, open source is fine there. But you're not getting things like a Desktop or Web office suite (OpenOffice is an historical accident), an enterprise device management, endpoint security, ... this way.

tgv 9mo ago

It's not that simple. The Dutch government uses a commercial service for their digital id, and now that company is going to be sold into American hands.

orochimaaru 9mo ago

Why does the governments Microsoft addiction have anything to do with European software industry? Asking as an American whose governments are also addicted to Microsoft.

jszymborski 9mo ago

They say "open source" but they are looking for "no-profit motive" IMO. Which is fine, but they should be opening a generous fund for democratically-run non-profits whose primary activity is developing open software which is useful for the EU and is an alternative to US corp-controlled software. EU has plenty of these orgs it can generously fund, and scoping funding like this would create more. Some existing examples (many of which accept gov't funds but need a lot more to rival big tech): - https://framasoft.org/en/ https://framasoft.org/en/ - https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ - https://deuxfleurs.fr/ https://deuxfleurs.fr/ - https://www.chatons.org/ https://www.chatons.org/

wtarreau 9mo ago
In my opinion it's the opposite. This type of associations is welcome, and they are fine to promote free software and help people, but they are exactly like neighborhood associations: they're mostly local, relying on volunteers with limited time who become a new dependency for people who were not using these services. That's fine for limited use case but it doesn't scale at all, and causes a huge duplication of efforts (organization, software creation -- several of them reinvented stuff that already exists, advertising etc). And associations rarely if ever merge, because most often association creators have a very clear view of what they're seeking (often idealist) and are rarely willing to compromise it and accept to adopt another association's mostly similar but not exactly identical goals (it often works very similarly to political parties). GAFAMs would never exist under this model. The problem is that such services which proudly run on low budget, volunteers and recycled hardware, cannot be relied on by companies without risking to enter legal trouble in case of major incident, so it means that a higher-grade service is still needed, with a dedicate funding, and we're facing fragmentation. We must not reproduce the scheme of cloudwatt either. Too much money injected into a wet dream that was only used to spend lots of money in consultants coming here just to confirm their presence and get their check. What is needed instead is to sponsor the development of such activities by a few (2-3) well-established competing companies, so as to avoid the regular risk of monoculture that diverges from what users expect, and help them reach the point where their offerings can compete with GAFAM's for both end users and enterprise. The contract should be clear that services must rely on open formats, make it possible for leaving users to retrieve all their data, that software developed under such funding must be opensource, though technology acquisition is fine, and that these offerings must become self-sustaining at one point (i.e. a mix of free+paid services). The EU funders should have enough shares of these activities so that their permission is required for business acquisition and that they can restrict it to EU-based companies, so that such companies can still grow and seek public funding. What we need is a few durable big players, not 10000 incompatible associations each with their own software suite, that no enterprise can trust over the long term and that cannot resist a trivial DDoS by lack of a robust infrastructure, and who are not organized enough to run full-stack security audits to make sure that user data are properly protected. These ones are only fine for friends and family but that's not what we're missing the most (the proof is that they already exist).