6 ms·

I kind of share the opinion of the FSF Europe that it is less important where software comes from compared to whether it’s libre, but for cloud hardware I reall

by adrianN 9mo ago

I kind of share the opinion of the FSF Europe that it is less important where software comes from compared to whether it’s libre, but for cloud hardware I really hope that we manage to create competitive European offerings. Maybe we’re lucky and this European initiative will produce more than five Fraunhofer institutes and a gift to SAP.

nubinetwork 9mo ago
I thought I heard that hetzner was pretty cheap, haven't looked myself though...
- adrianN 9mo ago
  Price is probably not the only factor in competitiveness.
  - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    Well Hetzner's support's phenomenal too. Sure they might not have all the same offerings but they are really easy to abstract upon and personally I feel like hetzner is seriously one of the best cloud providers. Hetzner is absolutely 10x more competitive than AWS. It's actually hard to match the competitiveness of hetzner with their scale actually. I seriously can't understate this enough but AWS being competitive is really somewhat of a mass delusion or maybe the fact that Companies don't know other alternatives exist but I genuinely find it absolutely strange. Also, just go ahead and try hetzner and see their competitiveness out for yourself. Seriously, one of the best (netcup another german hosting is really great too and they can be even cheaper at times and its something I personally use and can vouch for both netcup/hetzner)
  - matt-p 9mo ago
    They are OK but I would not have them as my /only/ cloud.
- mark_l_watson 9mo ago
  I have used Hetzner off and on for years, nice products and services. I don’t care what provider you use, if your business or app use case needs any sort of reliability have a plan for reinstalling code and data on alternate providers quickly as possible. There are horror stories of people and companies being cut off because of pressure from the US government, or having one of the Google/Microsoft/Amazon tech giants cancelling accounts. Really, in today’s world, why totally rely on anyone? EDIT: it seems prudent to maintain a cloud account in Europe, US, and Asia and have a plan for moving application code and data around if required. Outside the US I have mostly only used Hetzner, but Alibaba has impressive looking services.
tirant 9mo ago
I would say there’s even less chance nowadays to generate a fully private set of European alternatives to American cloud offerings. Europes bureaucratization and the growth of the size of states has increased the last 10 years. I have less and less hope that we’re able to set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen. That doesn’t mean that won’t be alternatives to American offerings, but most probably will come from somewhere else (Singapore, China, Taiwan…)
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  > set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen Just as a curiosity, what exactly are those "right free market conditions" and where have those been successfully implemented before? Because I think most of us (Europeans) are desperately trying to avoid replicating the American experiment, so if that's the "right free market conditions" I think we're trying to avoid those on purpose. But maybe you're thinking of some other place, then I'm eager ears to hear what worked elsewhere :)
  - ada0000 9mo ago
    If the size of state and bureaucratisation are the main issues, one wonders how China got so far :-)
    - stefanfisk 9mo ago
      In what sense is china bureaucratic when it comes to business?
      - ada0000 9mo ago
        Tax breaks, operations of state owned industry, other incentives etc are guided by five year plans implemented by a party bureaucracy.
        dmurray 9mo ago
moffkalast 9mo ago
Without a viable MS Office/Google Docs alternative it's all rather performative. If those get blocked the entire bureaucratic machine stops dead. Hell block just excel and entire countries might actually collapse.
- Zardoz84 9mo ago
  Fucking Libre Office!
  - moffkalast 9mo ago
    Yeah if only.
- adrianN 9mo ago
  The dependence on US companies is deep and multifaceted. I don’t think we should attempt nothing until a perfect solution is available.
- omnimus 9mo ago
  I have seen transitions from MS suite at universities and I don't think what you are saying is true. First assumption is that there are no alternatives so you can't replace Excel as a software. Obvious ones for Excel - LibreOffice, Collabora, OnlyOffice or Grist (which i highly recommend). The paradoxical problem is there is no clear THE ONE so organizations get into decision paralysis and never move anywhere. The other assumption is that even if there were alternatives people will not adopt them. In reality this is rarely issue. Turns out users/employees/students actually don't care much what software they have to use. They just use what is available or what they are told to use. So the reason why people use MS Office is actually because it's mandated from the top. Lawyers use it because state/gov/court communication requires it. Students use it because they need to submit thesis in MS Word. It's socially locked in. I've been at a university which switched over the summer from MS Office to LibreOffice. The results were boring. 40k people just adopted it, no drama, some liked it more (works on linux yay), took some people few weeks to learn/adjust. People are used learning new things. So can we stop with that story that 40 year old software which barely changed in last 20 years can't be replaced? This whole digital sovereignty is i think extremely scary proposition for Microsoft because just as they are now mandated solution by most western world... they are one law away (all state/university communication must be with libre software) to be on the other side of their current mandate / lock in.
bambax 9mo ago
We already have excellent cloud providers in Europe. But most importantly, most businesses using the cloud would be better off with simple on-prem solutions. So much cheaper to operate and control.
- jeffrallen 9mo ago
  Right, but have you tried recruiting someone recently who is capable of running a pair of local servers (including organizing redundant power feeds), upgrading the OS on them with no downtime, and arranging for off-site backups of the enterpris's data? These used to be the skills of a generalist sysadmin for a small-site with on-prem services. Those skills are no longer available on the market. Students in the local apprenticeship program have one class about hardware, and they don't even touch it, just talk about it.
  - Nextgrid 9mo ago
    Offer just half of the typical AWS cloud bill and you'll magically have lots of candidates! But greed often doesn't let companies pay any more than "market rate" even if it means paying twice that to AWS or a vendor instead.
  - gtech1 9mo ago
    Just hired a 45yo who excels and loves and thrives doing this stuff. Proxmox, local storage, local backups + offsite backups. 1Pb of data, colocation costs are 5k/month. Guess AWS costs for similar
- 9dev 9mo ago
  > So much cheaper to operate and control. Until you factor in the salaries of the new employees you have to hire now, the cost of that hiring process, the compliance and security implications of operating servers on your premises, the ongoing maintenance of the software and operating systems, the new infrastructure to maintain, including but not limited to backup power supply and overall redundancy, the need to manage the lifecycle of the new hard- and software, the documentation for all of this… I could go on for a while. It's not like these cloud solutions are just solving laziness.

by adrianN 9mo ago

nubinetwork 9mo ago

I thought I heard that hetzner was pretty cheap, haven't looked myself though...

adrianN 9mo ago
Price is probably not the only factor in competitiveness.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  Well Hetzner's support's phenomenal too. Sure they might not have all the same offerings but they are really easy to abstract upon and personally I feel like hetzner is seriously one of the best cloud providers. Hetzner is absolutely 10x more competitive than AWS. It's actually hard to match the competitiveness of hetzner with their scale actually. I seriously can't understate this enough but AWS being competitive is really somewhat of a mass delusion or maybe the fact that Companies don't know other alternatives exist but I genuinely find it absolutely strange. Also, just go ahead and try hetzner and see their competitiveness out for yourself. Seriously, one of the best (netcup another german hosting is really great too and they can be even cheaper at times and its something I personally use and can vouch for both netcup/hetzner)
- matt-p 9mo ago
  They are OK but I would not have them as my /only/ cloud.
mark_l_watson 9mo ago
I have used Hetzner off and on for years, nice products and services. I don’t care what provider you use, if your business or app use case needs any sort of reliability have a plan for reinstalling code and data on alternate providers quickly as possible. There are horror stories of people and companies being cut off because of pressure from the US government, or having one of the Google/Microsoft/Amazon tech giants cancelling accounts. Really, in today’s world, why totally rely on anyone? EDIT: it seems prudent to maintain a cloud account in Europe, US, and Asia and have a plan for moving application code and data around if required. Outside the US I have mostly only used Hetzner, but Alibaba has impressive looking services.

tirant 9mo ago

I would say there’s even less chance nowadays to generate a fully private set of European alternatives to American cloud offerings. Europes bureaucratization and the growth of the size of states has increased the last 10 years. I have less and less hope that we’re able to set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen. That doesn’t mean that won’t be alternatives to American offerings, but most probably will come from somewhere else (Singapore, China, Taiwan…)

embedding-shape 9mo ago
> set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen Just as a curiosity, what exactly are those "right free market conditions" and where have those been successfully implemented before? Because I think most of us (Europeans) are desperately trying to avoid replicating the American experiment, so if that's the "right free market conditions" I think we're trying to avoid those on purpose. But maybe you're thinking of some other place, then I'm eager ears to hear what worked elsewhere :)
- ada0000 9mo ago
  If the size of state and bureaucratisation are the main issues, one wonders how China got so far :-)
  - stefanfisk 9mo ago
    In what sense is china bureaucratic when it comes to business?
    - ada0000 9mo ago
      Tax breaks, operations of state owned industry, other incentives etc are guided by five year plans implemented by a party bureaucracy.
      - dmurray 9mo ago

moffkalast 9mo ago

Without a viable MS Office/Google Docs alternative it's all rather performative. If those get blocked the entire bureaucratic machine stops dead. Hell block just excel and entire countries might actually collapse.

Zardoz84 9mo ago
Fucking Libre Office!
- moffkalast 9mo ago
  Yeah if only.
adrianN 9mo ago
The dependence on US companies is deep and multifaceted. I don’t think we should attempt nothing until a perfect solution is available.
omnimus 9mo ago
I have seen transitions from MS suite at universities and I don't think what you are saying is true. First assumption is that there are no alternatives so you can't replace Excel as a software. Obvious ones for Excel - LibreOffice, Collabora, OnlyOffice or Grist (which i highly recommend). The paradoxical problem is there is no clear THE ONE so organizations get into decision paralysis and never move anywhere. The other assumption is that even if there were alternatives people will not adopt them. In reality this is rarely issue. Turns out users/employees/students actually don't care much what software they have to use. They just use what is available or what they are told to use. So the reason why people use MS Office is actually because it's mandated from the top. Lawyers use it because state/gov/court communication requires it. Students use it because they need to submit thesis in MS Word. It's socially locked in. I've been at a university which switched over the summer from MS Office to LibreOffice. The results were boring. 40k people just adopted it, no drama, some liked it more (works on linux yay), took some people few weeks to learn/adjust. People are used learning new things. So can we stop with that story that 40 year old software which barely changed in last 20 years can't be replaced? This whole digital sovereignty is i think extremely scary proposition for Microsoft because just as they are now mandated solution by most western world... they are one law away (all state/university communication must be with libre software) to be on the other side of their current mandate / lock in.

bambax 9mo ago

We already have excellent cloud providers in Europe. But most importantly, most businesses using the cloud would be better off with simple on-prem solutions. So much cheaper to operate and control.

jeffrallen 9mo ago
Right, but have you tried recruiting someone recently who is capable of running a pair of local servers (including organizing redundant power feeds), upgrading the OS on them with no downtime, and arranging for off-site backups of the enterpris's data? These used to be the skills of a generalist sysadmin for a small-site with on-prem services. Those skills are no longer available on the market. Students in the local apprenticeship program have one class about hardware, and they don't even touch it, just talk about it.
- Nextgrid 9mo ago
  Offer just half of the typical AWS cloud bill and you'll magically have lots of candidates! But greed often doesn't let companies pay any more than "market rate" even if it means paying twice that to AWS or a vendor instead.
- gtech1 9mo ago
  Just hired a 45yo who excels and loves and thrives doing this stuff. Proxmox, local storage, local backups + offsite backups. 1Pb of data, colocation costs are 5k/month. Guess AWS costs for similar
9dev 9mo ago
> So much cheaper to operate and control. Until you factor in the salaries of the new employees you have to hire now, the cost of that hiring process, the compliance and security implications of operating servers on your premises, the ongoing maintenance of the software and operating systems, the new infrastructure to maintain, including but not limited to backup power supply and overall redundancy, the need to manage the lifecycle of the new hard- and software, the documentation for all of this… I could go on for a while. It's not like these cloud solutions are just solving laziness.