I agree with others here that focusing your eyes on _using_ open source is, at least, an incomplete view of the problem.
What we (European software engineers) have been arguing, is that software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak. Thinking that open source software will help solve your budget and/or political problem is not something we're interested in doing for free. This excerpt here:
> In the last few years, it has been widely acknowledged that open source – which is a public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed – has
suggests they see it as free candy, rather than the result of love and hard work, provided for free because it's nice. Pay for what you use, especially at the government level.
Of course, I strongly encourage the European governments to invest in open source. And if you're interested in giving money, I'm interested in doing work. Same as ever.
While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable.
For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels.
All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for these services, or anyone can use official Web clients, but none of the code is open source.
This is in contrast to previous governments that tried to implement all of this using proprietary standards where the companies hired were paid billions to deliver a system and they ended up owning the data exchange protocol and a client they distributed in binary only form. And they also profited from commercial software that implemented their proprietary protocols.
That worked (for the company hired)for taxes and they made billions. But for other stuff like medical, when they had no way to sell their proprietary standards they wasted billions and years of time and delivered nothing. Then subsequent govt threw the entire project out and built it on open standards.
So based on this experience I think using well documented open data exchange standards is much more important than software itself being open source.
Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
Well, not all, for example mObywatel was recently open-sourced (in a ridiculous way, but still).
I think you raise some important points. In my opinion, a lot of code funded by public money should be open-sourced, but it's not as clear-cut as some people believe. I'll use this comment to point out some of fallacies that people responding to you make:
>Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
This is completely unrelated. French government won't deploy a Polish public health management website just because they found it on Github. For projects of such magnitude you need deep mutual cooperation between both governments, and a lot of changes. Making the code open-source is the least important part, the code can be just shared privately.
In fact, there are many such European code, data and information sharing initiatives. There are meetings and conferences where countries can discuss this on a technical level. The code is shared, just not via public channels.
>The government - and taxpayers - should care that having closed-source software means they are tied to the company that wrote it forever, so changes and bugfixes will be much more expensive.
If a private company owns code used by government for critical purposes and can take the government hostage it's outrageous and taxpayers should riot. This probably happens[1], but most code is either written by government itself, or at least government owns the code and can switch contractors if necessary.
In particular, AFAIR the government code we're discussing right now was written by COI (~central informatics department), which is a public institution.
[1] For example, governments use Azure and GCP, even though - to me - it's clearly shortsighted. Fortunately there was a wake-up call recently, and it changes slowly.
>> Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
> This is completely unrelated.
This is an option which does sometimes happen. And there is motivation to make happen more often, at least for EU-wide services. And there is also the side that it's doesn't have to happen between countries, it could be also happen the local level, like between administration of cities in the same country. The main reasoning here is more about spreading awarness and building the mindset that sharing code on all levels and working together even on such internal tools, can be good and should be increased.
> French government won't deploy a Polish public health management website just because they found it on Github.
Some governments have also their own platforms, specifically for co-working on code accross administrations. They are usually not public for reasons.
> For projects of such magnitude you need deep mutual cooperation between both governments, and a lot of changes. Making the code open-source is the least important part, the code can be just shared privately.
You still have to put it under a licence when you are co-working, even when it's shared privatly. Open Source does not neccessaly mean that the source is automatically accessable to the whole world.
Because if everything the government does is open source by default, the standards will be open standards by default. You can then add non-default code (closed source) for some applications (health, military).
Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
So your argument here is that while the software can be open source, it matters less, if whatever the software does isn't actually an open standard? Wouldn't "being open source with own custom protocol" essentially be as open as "open source or not, but software implements open standards" anyways?
Especially for the use case they’re talking about. It makes sense to have open standards for something like filing taxes so many companies can compete.
Having source code for the tax system itself is interesting, but I think the market for “run software for processing incoming taxes for polish citizens” is exactly one.
Unless they expect pull requests, which could be fun, but as OSS maintainers know, it’s a ton of work and boy would there be a ton of spam on something like this.
Many protocols (even open) are complex, and partially undocumented.
It would be nice to have both (open source and open protocol), but I kind of agree that if we should push for one, an open (decently explained) standard will probably be easier, simpler and with longer term impact, not to mention the interoperability benefits between countries.
"Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?"
The government - and taxpayers - should care that having closed-source software means they are tied to the company that wrote it forever, so changes and bugfixes will be much more expensive.
> Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
The management, the government and the eventually the tax payers.
If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code, if it's not an open source software, they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it in the first place. That's when the companies tend to jack up the prices to crazy numbers.
I have personally witnessed companies winning the initial government contracts by undercutting everyone and then charging them 10X for even the tiniest of modifications. Some times the companies even flat out reject the future contracts because they are stuck with a better project elsewhere and the government is stuck with useless old binary.
If the server side software is open source, depending on the policy, you can also submit your changes to that software that lets you submit your taxes with your own python script.
I think it can be a reasonable assumption that the government has access to the code, while it is not being open to the public.
There is a difference between "visible to everyone" (i.e. open source) and "visible to selected parties".
Having a different company do contract work does not require the source to be open, it just requires that the government owns it (as they get to choose what to do with it then).
Also, if no company is on a payroll because they are stuck with better projects, what makes you think someone that is not familiar with the code base would accept a merge request from an unknown party? Or if it was accepted, what makes you think this wouldn't immediately be abused to create loopholes and vulnerabilities?
> If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code [...] they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it
This is a very strange statement and you probably have some specific situation in mind that isn't really representative.
Normally when you hire people to write your code they do a work for hire, unless your contract says otherwise, you own the rights. There are some minor exceptions, typically for countries that treat commercial and artistic copyright differently, but that's it. I've been hired to add changes to people's software thousands of times, and it's never been on the table that I get some kind of ownership of their source code.
The license said source code is under is completely irrelevant. Especially in this question of tax authorities. That source code is normally not under some public license at all because it's their internal processes anyway, they may change at any time and the employ a number of programmers to do so. Plus a handful of consultants.
> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed
That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.
Free Software should rename to Liberty Software. Instead, advocates loaned Spanish "libre" in the ugly FLOSS acronym (Free/Libre Open Source Software). If only we used "liberty" then we could stop quibbling over the multiple meanings of "free" and just talk about software liberty.
"Free software" is a fine descriptor. It's needlessly confusing to repeat that "beer as in slurred speech" thing, though. Free software can be free "as in beer"[0], but the way it gets said makes it sound like it zero cost software is an anti-goal, rather than pointing out that it's not the true goal. Then the "free as in speech" thing is kind of pointless because you can just say "free as in freedom".
Free software is about fundamental computer freedom -- freedom to own your computer, inspect and modify, etc. -- we already have this word.
[0] where who why free beer ever? 0% relatable, 0/10 would still like a free beer though
Newcomers keep tripping on Free Software vs Freeware, therefore "Free Software" doesn't describe well. We could call it Freedom Software. (There now exist 15 competing jargon files.)
The current socio-political climate is actually making this analogy less US-centric by the day :(
edit: I'm specifically referring to people losing their jobs and similar retaliations due to being on the left, or making public statements that the current administration and supporters don't like.
"People losing their jobs on the right" can, in every case I'm aware of, be reworded as "people losing their jobs because they oppose basic human rights for certain categories of people."
Over the past few decades, and especially since about 2008, "the right" has become the refuge for every kind of bigotry (especially, though not solely, in the USA). Trying to defend that bigotry by crying about political neutrality is...well, to be polite I'll just say it's pretty ugly and leave it at that.
Not as wild of a claim as you might think, as opposition to gay marriage falls starkly along political lines in the US. If you are a republican and you support gay marriage, you are solidly in the minority (41%). 12% of democrats oppose it.
> In May 2025, a record-high 88% of Democrats supported same-sex marriage, support from independents stood at 76%, while Republican support dipped back down to 41%
Due to discrimination and bullying. There goes freedom of expression out of the door. Fortunately that crazy ship has long sailed and nowadays he'd have enough support to resist and publicly voice his opinions without personal attacks.
I think there is a very large difference between citizen activism (i.e. boycotts which can lead to resignations) and government authoritarianism. I have no problem with people exercising their right to free speech - including both Brandon Eich, and Firefox users.
No government official spoke up to have Brandon Eich fired, or bullied him or anything like that. His defenestration wasn't driven by government. Brandon Eich said some things, and the community around him judged those things and reacted to it. That's means that we're not talking about free speech any more. You have no right to speak and force other people to listen without social consequence, you do have a right to speak without the government retaliating. But other people are free to react to your speech as well, and to speak out in opposition to you.
A lawyer once described what you are calling Free Speech as merely "Protection of the First Speech." You believe that Brandon Eich should be able to speak (the first speech), but that the other people around him should not be able to say what they want in reaction to it (the second speech). Brandon Eich did say things without any government retaliation- and the people who worked at Mozilla didn't want to be associated with that, and so he chose to resign before the organization fell apart. Because those people around Mozilla have free speech rights as well, they are not forced to associate with Mozilla.
Similarly, a company choosing to fire an employee because of their speech is not really a free-speech issue. The company can fire you for pretty much any reason (at least in America- some countries have stronger worker protections), because they don't want to be associated with you any more. On the other hand, if a Government official suggests that you should be fired for something you said in your private life, then your free speech rights are being violated, even if the company does not fire you. It is only when the government gets involved that it becomes a Free Speech issue.
Obligatory XKCD to help you understand why you are wrong about what "Free Speech" means: https://xkcd.com/1357/
No need for "government official". There were plenty of non-government official branches such as media and social networks that were demonstrated to work as shadow tools for imposing heavy censorship around specific agendas. Up until the recent election so was the case for the large majority of mainstream social networks and legacy media.
The whole corona fabrication wasn't that long ago when governments directly mandated to silent dissident voices (even the scientific ones) and push a whole group of normal people into burning anyone who'd point out the obvious inconsistencies.
The First Amendment right exists in large part to enable and encourage non-governmental news reporting - to avoid a world in which government officials can dictate "reality" or "truth."
The Guardian is actually a British publication, which is a bit orthogonal from the original discussion of US free speech. It might be more accurate to say that this was part of an international political conversation. This is because Bradon Eich, the leader of an organization which provides products internationally, made public donations to political groups that seek to strip rights from others. He has a first amendment right to do so.
As OP states, the rest of the world has a right (in the US, legally; elsewhere, perhaps morally) to respond to Brandon Eich, and Mozilla. If they believe that his views may influence the organization negatively - either due to bad press or through his other behaviors within the organization - they are also granted free speech to call out this behavior.
What we are seeing now is actual government agencies and officials working hard to remove people from their jobs - both in the public and private sectors - in response to views that don't align with their own.
It's not clear to me what your argument is exactly.
My argument is that he contributed to a ballot initiative that passed (meaning the majority supported it), but he was still targeted and lost his job because media platforms targeted him.
To quote Andrew Sullivan
> "McCarthyism applied by civil actors".
When people with large platforms target you, you're just as screwed regardless of their status as elected officials. To be outraged by one and excuse the other is laughable.
Its not just left. Right had to face this too. As a moderate, it's hilarious sometimes that one side would do something and when the other side does something similar, they are all up in arms about it.
We should be allowed to discuss openly without being worried of losing job and humiliated.
Right now, I cannot discuss openly. Majority are silent. And loud ones are a minority.
Kevin hart losing Oscar hosting for a comment 12 some years ago. People who tried to cancel Eminem for his old songs and Rowan Atkinson's speech comes to mind on the top of my head.
Getting offended is a YOU problem. Not a me problem.
Until it's possible for us from both sides can talk openly, these will continue. Just like opposition political parties when one side is in more power, they will try and punish the other.
Ah, this is the first time I understand the analogy because my mother tongue has two different words for "free", so I did not realize there was a need to differentiate
Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech
(Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")
Today, we take the term "open source" for granted, but this wasn't always the case. There wasn't a single, universally accepted term to describe software that was freely shareable. "Free software" was one of the terms used, but it wasn't clear to non-programmers how this was different from proprietary software that was downloadable without having to pay for it. If you're not a programmer anyway, how should one type of "free software" be different from another?
Proponents of what we now call "open source" wanted to distinguish between two senses of the word "free". One sense is not having to pay for something, as in "Come over to my party, the beer is free." Anther sense is "I can criticize the government, because the country I live in is free." People in the free software and open source movement began to phrase the dichotomy in these terms to illustrate how one sense of the word "free" is much more important than the other. The fact that you don't have to pay for some piece of software is nice, but what's more important is that you aren't beholden to the company that developed it.
Many projects made with government money are developed under the EUPL. Including some of the ones I've worked on. Oddly enough, they aren't available for download anywhere.
Just to second what you are saying, over 2025 we saw some cases where small open source projects that underpin massive infrastructure are struggling for funding, and they don't even need that much! To me this is a place where the EU can spend a few dollars and have a massive influence on the sustainability and direction of open source projects.
European software industry is so interesting because my impression is that the (Western) OSS sector is largely supported by talented European developers. Just a vibe from interacting with hundreds of successful OSS projects.
Europe clearly has endemic talent, and I'm not even sure it's a funding problem rather than an organizational/leadership one. They could throw money at developers who already have decent if humble QoL, or they could bring them together to build large systems that can compete with American big tech.
I wonder if this is useful feedback to give? It would probably need to be more actionable. I’m hopeful the European open source community will take this invitation seriously.
> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions
I think that might be the wrong approach, at least in this day and age. The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue. It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce.
Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
>The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue
Obviously, but most of university research - at least in Europe - is funded by public money. The idea is that research funded by public money should be public by default, unless there's a reason to do otherwise.
>Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it.
And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?
American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.
30 years ago, one of the things we were all naively hoping for was that a globally connected network would help to reduce the tribalism, obsolete these "American money" and "European bits" and "Chinese protocols" ideas and stop all the cross-border fighting over what's mine and what's yours. When a piece of software has contributors from 50 countries, how could it "belong" to one country? Obviously we are in an even worse spot, global cooperation wise, now than we were in the 90s.
I've seen this work in certain situations, CERN and the LHC for example (I was on a data team for a detector). Everyone was driven by the science, where you came from didn't matter. With that said, and this part is going to be inflammatory potentially, people who are fear and tribal/in group driven are likely never going to be swayed (and building the mental model up via comments to properly contextualize this is beyond the scope of this thread). Tech doesn't fix people problems.
It might have been a bit naive, and very much reliant on a more open, more liberal, and less neo-liberal, international order than we have right now. Greed and power are not (<-edit: I had skipped that bit) conducive to such ideals.
Indeed, it appears they are upset that "the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value" from American open source spend in some way.
> It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce.
When it is funded publicly it certainly is. A key feature of the university research system is that it is where people are supported without the expectation that their work is going to be commercially useful in any near-term time frame. If something is going to be commercially valuable then people should develop it in the private sphere. Nothing stopping them. In fact, that is basically what the US does and it has been wildly successful and relegated the EU to being a technical backwater trying to figure out how to get out from under the US's commercial dominance.
> Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
Yes. Knowledge is for everyone. Even the Americans. Trying to hold back the progress of the entire species because the US knows how to pump out software is a remarkably myopic strategy.
> A key feature of the university research system is that it is where people are supported without the expectation that their work is going to be commercially useful in any near-term time frame
Idk where you got that idea from, but it's not an accurate picture since the mid 1980s. Yes, there is "fundamental" research, which is mostly a label for commercially not that interesting work (and cannot be expected to yield much open source anyway), but short-term project work and third-party funding are big. Also, much of the research is done with an eye towards profit, certainly in the medical and tech sector. And in the US, universities rely on a lot of private money.
> Knowledge
Knowledge isn't OSS. This (part of the) thread is specifically about (usable) software.
That seems contradictory with the idea that software should be developed in the private sphere: closed source, proprietary APIs, patents and trade secrets are the antithesis of sharing knowledge.
Those were mantras of the Free Software movement. The open source movement (despite creating a lot of free software) was never about the moral stance of software freedom, but the practical benefits
The EU definitely has no concept of "love". It was founded to make trade easier. All the fuzz about humane values and morals has been tacked on more or less recently, to keep up the support for it from the population. It is the literal wolf in sheep's clothing.
It was founded to make world war 3 impossible /through/ trade. By intertwining the economies of countries that considered each other hereditary enemies (Erbfeinde in German), it sought to make war too costly to consider. Humanitarian values are a core part of what became the EU.
That's one of the reasons the EU has had so many political problems with Hungary and Poland in the last decade: their drift to authoritarian forms of government (including weakening the judiciary in Poland) didn't impact trade at all. Nonetheless, it went against the humanitarian values.
I'm no EU fanboy (there's plenty to criticize), but regarding chat control and surveillance, it's important to see from which part of the EU institutions the push comes: the council. The council consists of the governments of the member states. It's not the big bad EU trying to force surveillance on the innocent countries; it's the governments trying to push domestically unpopular surveillance through the EU. The directly elected EU parliament has so far always prevented this push.
Wait, requiring a passport to cross a border did prevent people from forming relationships? I really don't follow. It is not like we were prisoners in our home countries before the EU was invented. And "love" has always been a huge driver of immigration, way before the EU. I even know people who sold marriage so that the buyer could immigrate. So why exactly was the EU a driver for international love?
Well, the EU is pretty firmly in conservative hands. Ask a random EU citizen if they know that EPP is secretly leading the EU since its conception? They will likely not realize, because they fall for the piece&love propaganda. Just look at what VDL has done since she overtook the lead? Know where she comes from? Used to be defense minister in germany. Was called "Flintenuschi" back then. And now, magically, we are supposed to invest a shitload of money into military. Thats what I call a wolf in sheep's clothing.
What exactly makes you assume that the persons arguing for open source here are not the same people who has helped us defeat earlier attempts to make chat control happen?
Subsidiarity has been a key building block of the EU and has failed the EU for unexpected reasons. Subsidiarity was pursued for accountability and to make the EU less centralized - decisions should be made at the lowest, most local level possible, with central authorities only stepping in when a task cannot be effectively handled locally.
However, it means that here in Sweden govt bodies are all individually moving to Azure, because each one makes that local decision in their best interest. The same thing has happened all over the EU - and very few govt bodies would ever take the risk of investing in using EU cloud or data platforms. We need public procurement to help kickstart life into the Eurostack.
The EU has Schleswig-Holstein (a German state) as an example; office software and email replaced by open source alternatives. Look overthere, I would say. But overthere is a politician who actually understands what he is talking about.
I don't feel the need to provide governments/politicians with open source software who think like this: "open source – which is a public good to be freely used".
Start understanding how this works, because your American and Chinese counterparts do a better job at this.
By the way, don't come lazily asking for input. Go out proactively and find the answers yourself.
> By the way, don't come lazily asking for input. Go out proactively and find the answers yourself.
The EU very regularly asks for input on new policy initiatives, it's one of the better aspects of the legislative/policy-making process. They are asking citizens' opinions on a policy that will potentially affect them, if you tell them to f off and do it themselves then don't be surprised when you hate the policy that comes out of it.
I don't tell them to F off, I give them my citizen opinion on HN. I expect their policy to be in their best interest, and I stopped hating on that a long time ago.
> The EU very regularly asks for input on new policy initiatives, it's one of the better aspects of the legislative/policy-making process.
And then it basically ignores all the input and moves forward with policies like chat control that are widely unpopular anyway. So much for consulting the people and asking for feedback.
Yes but we gotta understand that sometimes some things the citizens suggest end up on the law. So we should just continuously fight to keep that happening.
Additionally, the EU and its administration, is a big group of people. There are probably different people or teams pushing for this idea, which all in all, is a very good one, maybe even fellow (ex) open source contributors, and the ChatControl thing, surely comes from other groups with entirely different interests.
Yes. Probably someone in power is getting kickbacks to ignore the public and specialists. Once that hurdle is settled, whatever the way it happens, saner people can re-use previous requests for opinion to guide them on better paths.
Waste some - but not too much - of your energy poking our EU orgs to the right way.
A long time ago Amazon tried to acquire a good online business diapers.com and initially the owners refused.
Amazon proceded to get investors or lenders to funds 200 million dollars to undercut sales of diapers.com. Fast forward they were close to bankruptcy and owners were forced to sell it off for a bargain to Amazon. Since then the price of diapers have risen to be very profitable.
The point being that any businesses that sell proprietary software will do the same to kill competition, but in the long run they will end up costing more.
The real issue is government spending is that procurement is very broken even if you would opt for buying support for open source
Software. This is not a problem China nor North Korea have due to how corporations have no easy way to influence politics in those Authoritarian countries.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
EU (software) industry is a dream for mediocre skilled people. Secure a job once, can't get fired, do bare minimum and never be proactive.
It is a hell for people who work hard and fast. The whole culture is geared towards dragging down anyone who is proactive and makes others look bad by being too good.
I agree with some reservations about this being completly generalised. There are still some successfull companies that rewards good players. But yes, there are very few and most of the rest are stuck coasting at a glacial pace, doing stuff that are not very competitive on so many levels it is impossible to describe succintly.
I would also argue that it is not just about the software industry. Many EU industries have become extremely uncompetitive on so many level.
Even when you are ready to pay more for EU made products, it is not easy to find something that is decently competitive and not just a pale copy of better offerings.
It is clear that the EU has become too collectivist but they are still stuck blaming capitalism (just like the soviets I guess).
In France, even old big players that were once at the top and/or were (semi)public organisation have fallen very hard or have been scandalously sold piecemeal to foreign actors.
The problem is not even that they are governement funded but it really is rooted in the collectivist organisation model that gives too much power to politics and very little lattitude to consumer/key actors choice.
Those systems become necessarily corrupted because they rely too much on human behaviors and most humans are fundamentally corrupt.
It is, at this point, an easily verifiable fact that software engineering jobs in Europe are en masse poorly paid relative to the equivalent positions in the US, and the majority of the EU companies that actually pay well are actually US based. This causes a lot of outflow of talent. That VC funding in Europe is atrocious is obvious to anyone who has had to go through it, and have fun letting a poor performer go from your 5 person startup.
Your polite wishful responses are frustrating to read to anyone who's had to go through this hell.
Yes that is what OP is saying and OP is correct. If you are young, talented and you have a crazy idea that might just work and if you are given the opportunity then you go to the US every-time.
Why? Because it makes sense. Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US or better yet, start your own company there and then expand in Europe after building it knowing that if you eventually sell it, you get to keep a lot of the sale price.
Talented people don't work for nothing. Motivated and ambitious people don't work for nothing.
If Europe wants to see it's own tech giants emerge, then it's needs to compensate founders and employees well. That's as simple as it is.
Unfortunately it's just not the case at the moment and until that changes, the most ambitious Europeans will continue leaving and building companies on the other side of the Atlantic.
> Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US
Exactly. This sentence on its own is enough to explain your opinion, there is no need to explain anything else. Those who are against regulations are the ones who benefit from the lack of regulations.
And those who are in a dominant position generally think that they are there because they deserve it, because they are superior.
> And those who are in a dominant position generally think that they are there because they deserve it, because they are superior.
And this sentence explains your opinion. Business owner = superior = bad
You haven't responded to anything anyone has said despite the fact that a few of us seem to agree on these issues.
You basically brush aside anything that does not conform to your narrative and you also dismiss the entire report of Mario Draghi on European competitiveness: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-r... who agrees that there are many issues currently with the entire tech industry in Europe.
The facts are simple:
- the EU tech scene is minuscule compared to the US tech scene
- the average salary of a tech worker is higher in the US than in Europe
- there are many incredible challenges in Europe that stop Europe from competing properly with the US companies
- there is a clear lack of innovation and a very real risk aversion and less cash spent on R&D in Europe compared to the US
- European competitiveness is lacking and decreasing as time goes on compared to the US
> Those who are against regulations are the ones who benefit from the lack of regulations.
But you are right let's keep adding more rules and regulations, I am sure the next one will do the trick and help us expand our tech sector.
That would be a great narrative except that even the European commission disagrees with you since they are now exploring the option of scaling back some part of GDPR and even delaying the new AI laws because they suddenly realized that it was a major impediment to a healthy tech sector in Europe: https://iapp.org/news/a/european-commission-proposes-signifi...
In conclusion, you are arguing in bad faith, you believe what you believe because it's easier than to face the facts that Europe dropped the ball 20 years ago and missed the boat on many new technologies and that it is now trying to play catch up and unfortunately catching up will take many decades if that ever happens.
Nope. I said that business owners are generally in a dominant position, and those who are in a dominant position generally think that they deserve it because they are superior. I didn't say "bad", I explained the bias. Everyone is biased.
> you also dismiss the entire report of Mario Draghi on European competitiveness
Maybe we can do that: I will look into Mario Draghi's report, and on your end you could have a look at what Cory Doctorow has to say about the US monopolies and antitrust policies?
So that at least we would get some amount of open-mindness out of this not-so-constructive discussion :-).
> In conclusion, you are arguing in bad faith
Yeah, I too think that you can go ** yourself :-). But I will read about Mario Draghi's opinion, maybe you can get some perspective from Doctorow. Bye!
It always amazes me that there is a subset of EU people here on HN who are so detached from reality that it makes me wonder if these same people are sitting in Brussels board making decisions. According to the sh*thole in which EU ended up, it is not completely implausible. Can't agree more with what you're saying. My experience is the same.
Not yet and I'm not sure I'm gonna receive it ever but one of the most important things I learned for myself is to understand my limits. I advise you to do the same.
It's frustrating really to have these conversations with people who will deny the reality this much.
Instead of using this opportunity to ask the questions that everyone should be asking, which are amongst others "how can we fix this mess?" , you end up with people who think you are simply attacking the EU for spite when it couldn't be further from the truth.
It's sad but not surprising and until that changes then nothing will change.
Europeans need to start being humble again and need to get to work otherwise then we shouldn't be surprised if the US squeezes us from one side while China out-innovates us from the other side. In the meantime the EU is debating if/when it should amend it's cookie law, I am not sure if I should laugh or cry at this point.
> you end up with people who think you are simply attacking the EU
That's not what I think. But you obviously lack the level of empathy you would need to accept that I may think differently. I accept that you think the way you think: you benefit from it as a business owner.
> Instead of using this opportunity to ask the questions
Yeah, because you are so superior to everybody else that people should ask you question, and their opinions are not worth your time.
"I am the best, I am so frustrated that so many people don't recognise it".
When one has no response it's easier to blame the messenger. A nice cop out if I may say so.
> Yeah, because you are so superior to everybody else that people should ask you question, and their opinions are not worth your time
You are putting words in my mouth and arguing in bad faith but that's easier than making a compelling case with facts and figures.
> "I am the best, I am so frustrated that so many people don't recognise it".
If I was the only one highlighting these problems then maybe you would have point but as I have demonstrated in my other comments, the EU commission disagrees with you, the Draghi report disagrees with you and a few people here also disagree with you.
Unfortunately instead of engaging in a healthy debate and addressing the points that have been raised, you have brushed aside all the arguments and refuse to respond with anything that supports your point of view.
You decided that you were right so you are right but you don't seem to have a problem calling out other people by telling then that their opinions are not facts, while yourself ignoring all the facts presented to you. That is a clear case of double standards if I have ever seen one.
> Unfortunately instead of engaging in a healthy debate
Take it from my point of view: I said that I don't believe that Europe has no software industry at all. And I said that I don't believe that regulations are the reason Europe's software industry stuggles against the US monopolies.
What the US monopolies have been doing to maintain their position is very well documented, and has nothing to do with regulations.
You claim that it's possible to compete with a monopoly if you are not regulated, and you call it a fact. I disagree. I believe that we as a society should prevent monopolies, and the way to do that is regulations. And of course, if you prevent monopolies in Europe but play against monopolies who are allowed in other countries, it's hard.
Did I use the word "all" anywhere in my comment? There are good developers in Europe. What I am saying is that there would have been even more of them had the incentives not been so lackluster. More talent seems to generally result in a greater competitive ability.
Fwiw, I have doubts that currently Europe can compete with the US at the startup level, let alone at the bigco one.
I am not trying to drag Europe down - it worries me that sophisticated complacency, overconfidence based on the achievements of previous generations, and addiction to comfort, will start eroding the very aspects that make it a great place to live at.
> 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.
The reason why there is no other Google in the US currently is because for the average person Google works fine so if you go to a VC fund and ask for USD 100M to build the next Google, you are going to have to sell them on your vision and explain how you are going to do things better and maybe just maybe someone will be crazy enough to invest.
As of this moment that has not happened but it certainly could.
However for Europe it is not the same calculations. Everyone keeps repeating that Europe is too dependent on US tech but what do we do about it? Not much.
It should be a top priority to start a competing search engine that is better than Google in Europe and it should be so good that people start using it without being forced to do so by bureaucrats in Brussels.
Instead, the risk aversion is such that no VC in Europe will ever consider that for one, it is doable and that two, it warrants such a massive investment (which it does). So the conclusion remains the same. There will be no European Google and there will be no European Apple.
> Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.
I am only repeating your words. You say big bad monopolies stop other from competing properly. I am not seeing the evidence for your claim. Anyone can start a competing OS in Europe. Is Microsoft somehow stopping everyone from doing so?
If not, why is there no European Windows or European MacOS? Is it because of these monopolies?
You put the blame of the big bad monopolies and I say that the reason these monopolies exist in the first place is because we haven't even tried to compete and therefore de facto we are giving the entire market to the US tech.
> whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.
The laws are not going to fix this issue when you have no other competing products to replace the US tech products. Is there a better search product out there than Google (despite all its flaws) for the average person? A better Windows?
Secondly, the fact that the US can "bully" Europe is simply a second order effect of the problem we are facing now. Since there are no good competitors in the critical tech sectors of Europe then the US knows there is nothing the EU can do.
That is why the "bullying" as you put it work here and it doesn't work in China which has developed it's own ecosystem of apps and tech companies and it doesn't have to bow to the US on that front.
> 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.
The average salary of tech worker in the US is higher than in Europe. Denying this fact is simply putting more blinders on.
If you want to make good products you need talent. If you want innovation you need talent and you need to have people who are motivated to start something new and usually for most people motivation takes the form of money.
Then to get talent you need to pay them properly and/or they need to understand that they will reap the rewards of their labor somehow.
That is why you see so many founders going to the US to found their company there instead of Europe. That is why some of the founders who start in Europe end up moving to the US when they get big enough because they know that there they can get the best talent and they stand to make some potentially life changing money if their company does well.
Then these founders exit their companies and what do they do next? They invest in other companies, the create their own VC fund, they foster the next unicorns and then these unicorns come knocking on Europe's doors with their product and once gain Europe has no response or a very weak response because there are no competitors or very small ones that are merely a blip on the US's radar. Then the cycle repeats again and again.
At the end of the day, if you take into account the potential risks, the legal hurdles, the lack access to capital, the potential monetary gains and the access to talent, then the conclusion is simple: The US wins every time.
Does that mean that everyone who creates a company in Europe eventually leaves or that no company get started at all? Certainly not. But since the incentives are not there, they are just less companies getting started, less unicorns being built, less access to capital, less access to talent and if you compound that year after year you end up in the situation we are in now.
And if you think that this is somehow misrepresenting the current state of Europe, it is not. Mario Draghi himself has tried to explain these things to the EU governments and made many recommendations in order to try to close the gap. 1 year later and basically nothing or almost nothing in his report has been implemented.
The EU likes to cry foul every-time a US tech giant comes in and steamrolls the competition in Europe and it thinks that just one more law, one more regulation will fix the problem.
If the EU/Europe was instead fixing the real problem which is the lack of good competitors in Europe, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because the monopolies you mention would not exists here.
You can disagree all you want, the facts don't lie but if you prefer to stick your head in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening, then by all means continue to do so.
This is a real problem with most Europeans honestly. Not being able to admit when things are not working. And then finally we wake up 5 years too late and the writing is on the wall.
> 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.
> 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.
The big system integrators are often pretty terrible at their jobs but it isn't the only cause.
Extremely expensive software projects in government have a common thread in every case I have first-hand experience with. The government has no consistent vision of what they want or who is the final arbiter of these decisions, and no person in the government is accountable for the outcomes. Both the requirements and responsibility are spread across so many people that for all practical purposes there are no clear requirements and no accountability.
The government software programs that run well in my experience have the organizational equivalent of a BDFL. A BDFL doesn't really exist in government; even when someone acts in that role they are often reassigned to other projects at random.
> IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.
I have been in companies getting money from government programs. It's not fraud from the government side, at least not for what I've seen.
The problem is that companies see government programs as a way to make easy money. If the government pays a company for X, that's because that company has expertise in X. So it's easy for the company to bullshit the government employees and sell them crap.
Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government. And on top of that we would want fewer regulations? If you want to be able to punish abuse from companies, you need regulations, and you need to apply them.
>Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government.
So, in well-known conditions of ineffective spending without competition government chose to waste money bypassing market? How that's not government's fault?
Not sure if you have a specific example in mind or speaking generally.
What I am saying is that generally, private companies abuse the government money when they can. Just like private companies enshittify their products to make more money. It's all about making money.
Why are governments getting bad software from companies? For the same reason users are getting bad software as well. The software industry produces money, not good software.
My point is that "private companies abuse the government money when they can" is well-known fact. Thus, government as a customer should make everything possible to buy software on competitive market basis. If govt chose easy way to blindly gave shitton of money to some company with vague acceptance criteria and got bad result in return - this is 100% govt fault.
My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots.
They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems.
If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse their dominant position by convincing (sometimes downright lying) to the government employees.
It is a very difficult position to be in. It's not about buying a car and being able to just test it. Many times the government funding goes for some kind of R&D. Which makes it easy for the experts to bullshit them and never produce anything useful.
Those who say that it's 100% the government fault should maybe try to go work there. They could truly help their country, if they could actually do better. But chances are that they can't.
I am sorry for good people genuinely trying. I understand that it is a hard problem to solve - but private companies chose their contractors and suppliers and as well facing similar issues. Somehow private companies are managing to evaluate results and found accountable persons while governments are known for being very undemanding customers.
"We have tried hard, but failed" is still failure despite any good will. Good will with courage and having skills with competence are very different things and often govt employees have neither because otherwise they will be more successful using this skillset in private companies.
* The government is often in the situation where they want to fund some effort, like R&D. Say China is way ahead of the US in drone technology, and the US wants to catch up because that's a risk (we see how drones are used in the military now). So someone will have money to spend on US companies who will do everything they can to get as much money as possible. How can the government employee know which company is abusing? First they are all abusing, and second they are all failing already (otherwise the government wouldn't be in this situation where they need to fund them). This is a very hard problem.
* When it is about buying e.g. an IT solution for the company, I have seen private companies fail just as much as governments. McKinsey and their friends do the same bullshit to everybody, be it government or private companies. Don't think that private companies don't waste money. It's just that when it is the government, it is transparent and we like to complain about the government.
> 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).
That seems like a lot of words to basically just admit that Europe’s regulations are anti-competitive.
I especially enjoyed reading the logical fallacy of drone companies that are so small/non-existent that DJI cannot be banned quickly, but those same companies mysteriously have enough money to bribe politicians for a ban (and the much bigger DJI can’t outbid them).
Also: You wrote in a previous comment that nobody can compete with Apple due to lack of antitrust regulation:
> > 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.
But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?
Wow, that's a lot of bad faith. I'll try once, and once only:
There has been a ton of money thrown at US drone companies in the last 10 years. A TON. From the government and from VCs. It's not that those companies are so small or non-existent: it's just that consumers do not buy their products. Which is why most drone companies have conveniently pivoted to the military now. And with the military funding, they have money.
And they have been lobbying A LOT to ban DJI, and they are winning that fight. But that does not mean that the consumers want to buy their US drones. DJI drones are still vastly cheaper and better, and professional users (including US government entities) rely on DJI. So much that it is unreasonable to just ban all existing DJI hardware. It has to come progressively so that those consumers can get used to paying a lot more to get worse drones.
There is no question here: without regulations, NOBODY can REMOTELY compete against DJI, period. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the drone industry.
> But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?
Huawei and TikTok and DJI are Chinese companies. US people never forget to mention that they don't exactly play by the same rules (e.g. they can grow in their protected market until they reach a size where they can try in the rest of the world). US companies cannot do that (try to build a US smartphone manufacturer and compete with Apple in the US, just for fun).
But in those very rare situations where US companies get competition (and that will happen more and more from China), and those US companies suddenly find themselves in the weaker position, the VERY FIRST thing they want is more regulations.
"When I win, that's because I am the best. When I lose, that's because the rules are against me". You think Europe sucks because their tech companies lose against the US? Have fun comparing the US to China then :-).
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.
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.
This all seems like enterprise solutions. As a consumer, I shouldn't have to look at a list of consultants, as if I was trying to find support for a heavy industrial machine.
FLOSS or non-FLOSS, there is no real European consumer offering for an operating system. That should be the starting point for people who want a thriving European IT industry.
It could very well be based on Linux or whatever. But consumers need support. They need a phone numbers they can call and an e-mail addresses they can write to.
Focusing on consumers instead of corporate or academia is how Apple became so successful.
But this is US operating system, Linux trademark is registered to US citizen(Linus T.), it is being mainly developed by US companies and complies with US sanction laws.
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.
> 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.
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)
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)
That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?
> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?
The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.
You're talking past my criticism and haven't addressed the core logic flaw in your argument.
If government is competent enough to build its own software solutions (and these creations would be valuable enough that open sourcing them would create opportunities for startups in the private sector as you've claimed!)...then they are also competent enough to buy the correct software product from a European private company.
If they cannot be trusted to buy the right software for themselves without the process being corrupted, they sure as hell can't be trusted to BUILD that software from the ground up (a much harder task!).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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).
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.
It’d be a shame if MS was compelled by the current US administration to shutdown EU users of CoPilot/365/whatever. Whole agencies within governments lose all of their data and can barely function.
A move to alternatives is an imperative! I hope it works for them and stimulates their tech sector.
As a Linux guy for many a year, I've often said that going all-in on Microsoft tech stacks is like painting yourself into a corner. It all looks like it's going fine until you decide that you want to leave the room.
It'd be a shame if an asteroid struck earth tomorrow as well.
But given limited resources, we tend not to devote a ton of resources to every possible tail risk since there's millions of them.
Europe should focus on building domestic tech capacity for other reasons (our own future prosperity being one), but being worried about Microsoft Word access over some silly news headlines is not one of them.
Every single productivity suite can open/modify word docs and powerpoints and excel formats. This is not a huge issue.
Didn’t the International Criminal Court went through a test run of this which shows it’s at least feasible [0].
While MS didn’t cut off the whole organization and try to soften the language around what they did, it seems they could be compelled to do so under more strict executive sanctions.
I don’t think an entire institution would suddenly come crashing to its knees but it would certainly be a pressing problem to be facing if the US or some other state actor was also mounting some other form of pressure or attack.
The US doesnt recognize many of the bodies you would use as enforcement against aggressive action on EU bought US products. Or for some it does, it gives itself immunity from them like the ICJ.
Also considering the US's unilateral and often violent and aggressive and illegal way of doing things, especially with this administration, I think we're a bit past hypothetical meteor-like hypotheticals.
At this point any usage of destructive leverage the USA has over Europe should be seen as a real possibility, if not a likely one, when it comes to negotiation with or the expansionist desires of the USA.
Again, pulling Microsoft Office from the EU would be an extremely minor nuisance (libre office can open the same formats) at the expense of the US's national champion ever being used by any country outside the US ever again.
This is never going to happen (killing Microsoft would not be seen favorably by anyone in the current or future administration) and even if this magically did happen, it would barely cause a blip in the (lack of) productivity in the EU's performative planning meetings about future meetings where nothing happens.
On the list of things to worry about I would put this dead last.
This performative, melodramatic nonsense you're spewing here is doing us no good when ultimately our biggest threat is in the east, which you will happily continue ignoring as they eat our private sector and tax base.
"Orange man bad" is not a delusion I want to see spread any further in Europe. Turn off the news and start thinking rationally again please.
The US Implemented sanctions on the ICJ and they have to emergency migrate out of their O365 tenant. The US also recently stationed the former EU commissioner who was the architect of the Digital Markets Act.
So while unlikely, it is not a huge jump for the Trump administration to try sanctioning EU institutions they don't like.
How many tech people deep into open source are also going to be able to build convincing cases for governments? More importantly, to be more convincing than the sales people of MS/Amazon/Google who also have financial incentives to give away?
I don't think you'll get a complete switch here, this is looking more like "let's cultivate a backup option in case they really do start turning stuff off"
In the same way Poetin accelerated the move from his own fossil fuels to renewable energy, Trump is accelerating the move to non-US based technology. At least in my surroundings, "non-US based company" is a big plus in the purchasing process.
I don't think anybody understand how bad it really is. Forget about Greenland. Trump can say "give me Germany or I'll shutdown Azure ID" and we will have to give him Germany. At this point we are just praying that neither him or any of his hawks realize this.
I agree that many countries are indeed very vulnerable to this, but you somehow managed to overstate the case by some orders of magnitude.
Silicon Valley flipping the switch on a country would sure cause short-term chaos and longer-term significant inconvenience. But when push comes to shove, bureaucracy gets moved aside, creative workarounds pop up, and people make do, somehow. We've seen that happen during COVID-19 lockdowns.
And after some time, the boycotted regions will find themselves with a healthy independent software industry. Silicon Valley's global impact would be greatly reduced, because any mildly sensible country would want to reduce its exposure and some serious competition will finally get traction.
I think the hawks realize all this. Though it's of course impossible to predict what the Chaos Monkey in Chief will do.
My view is that there is commodity software and niche/specialized software. You find commercial solutions for both. But OSS is great for commodity software.
Everything becomes a commodity eventually. There's a lot of niche software that then goes mainstream, gets imitated by others, and becomes important to a wide range of sectors. A lot of that software usually ends up with very decent OSS alternatives. If it's worth having in OSS software form, usually somebody ends up working on it.
A lot of OSS projects are already leaning heavily on contributions from individuals and companies inside the EU. That's a good thing for the EU and something to stimulate and build on.
What the EU should do is keep an eye out for commodity software where it relies on non eu commercial software. Identify key areas where that is risky, e.g. communication software, IOT, or finance. And then stimulate members to switch to OSS alternatives if they exist and invest in the creation/support of such alternatives if they are important. OSS software doesn't just create itself, it needs backing from companies which could use the support in the form of grants.
That could include support for non EU OSS projects. There's nothing wrong with OSS from abroad. As long as this software is properly governed and vital to the EU, the EU should ensure those projects are healthy and future proofed. It should ensure local software companies get the support they need to do the right things here. This should ensure projects that are important don't run out of funding. And the EU can stimulate OSS development into strategic new areas with incentives. And make sure that EU companies that back this are successful internationally. This turns the tables on other countries maybe depending more on EU sourced software. The EU doesn't have to follow; it can lead.
> Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.
I think at this point we're beyond that, we already have these programs and they seem to be expanding. EU-STF is one such example, then there are other organizations supported by the EU in various ways, that also helps fund OSS, like NLnet Foundation.
Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"? If we leave aside all of the bureaucratic bs, political connections and corruption when it comes to obtaining these funds (for the most cases), how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?
50K EUR is OK to start. There's no point in trying to outspend the top private firms.
Like many other people said there are already thousands of unpaid volunteers doing quality work.
If the EU wants "domestic" stuff they need to mandate/incentivize it. It's not like if shit hits the fan the local employees cannot run the local stuff of non-EU companies. (Therefore the important thing is to have full control locally, no outside-EU kill switches allowed - eg. what Uber had and used.)
50k EUR is a salary that only someone coming fresh out of the University will accept and only someone who has no other choice, e.g. someone not quite competitive on the market. If you want to make a difference then this is not the pool of people you're looking for.
> Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"?
Yes, they currently fund people working full-time on contributing to FOSOS. If that's no "beyond decency", I don't know what is. Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?
> how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?
Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid. Once you reach a certain level of income so you're financially safe, increasing that generally doesn't increase your happiness that much, so most of us focus on being fulfilled in other ways, mainly about caring about the work we do.
As someone who used to work full-time in FOSS, it is a great feeling to contribute to something not just because it pays, but because it actually improves something in real life. I can't speak for everyone, but this is still mostly why I do FOSS.
I think fundamentally there seems to be a difference between "European FOSS" and "American FOSS" where the latter focuses more on basically CV-driven FOSS projects, with the hope of the FOSS leading to you somehow getting paid more in some for-profit company. While European FOSS seems to mainly be concerned about making things sustainable, grow a healthy community, and remaining FOSS long-term.
> Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?
No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant since serious products of larger scale (impact) necessitates more than a single expert.
How do you build an alternative cloud or alternative database or alternative AI model with a 50k grant? Or how do you attract 10, 15 maybe 20 people to work on it? How much money do you consider would be enough for these people to be "financially safe".
> Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid.
Most? I believe not. Most experts in the field are working for a beyond average salary and not for the FOSS projects. You need a leverage to attract those people to leave their jobs to contribute to something bigger (in terms of society) and yet this leverage is, as you say, "experts care about what we work with, not how much we get paid". This is laughable and at the same time worrying because you're genuinely convinced that this is an attitude everyone should follow. Such an ignorant view, sorry.
> No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant
Who said you have to? Software is not a "winner takes all", you can solve a niche problem, get paid OK for it, and have a better standard of living than the average person in your country. This is widespread in Europe already, not sure why it's so foreign to so many.
I'm sorry, but that you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is, but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.
Lol, imagine relying on underpaid volunteers in mission-critical software infrastructure. How about actually giving good encouraged people pay they deserve?
> Lol, imagine relying on underpaid volunteers in mission-critical software infrastructure
Why would anyone imagine that, when no one has suggested that?? How about coming up with arguments against something, if you're against it, rather arguing against some imaginary point no one made.
Discussion around grants here is the critics of insufficiency of EU grants to fund proper alternative software supply chain.
"imagine" is just ironical note for what is happenning in reality(you are advocating for (subjectively) improper financing model which expects to provide over-the-market quality with under-the-market cost)
Did you miss the topic that is being discussed, as in:
> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.
> you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is
No, I have never done that and I couldn't have done it because of a very simple reason - there was no market at the time I was starting with my profession and what I am still doing today is a direct consequence of what I found appealing most at that time and during my Uni days - bleeding edge computer science and computer engineering coupled with the bleeding edge hardware.
> but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.
You live in a fantasy world. And the only issue I have with that is that you spread your claims as something that is (EU) universally true, which is not. Please leave your utopistic comments elsewhere and not on this topic where it's relevant to stay objective.
> Please leave your utopistic comments elsewhere and not on this topic where it's relevant to stay objective.
There is no objectiveness in cultural assessment. They didn't express their opinion as something that is universally true, or at least I wasn't able to read it that way.
They did because they imposed their opinion in such a way that my opinion on the subject is trying to be made as something marginal or not usual, and theirs, consequentially, as something more universal. Therefore, I disagree.
I get your pain point, but the stated objective is "Sovereignty" so having a fully localized OSS ecosystem that is anchored (can't be bought or moved) and operates independent of outsider (US, China, Russia, ...) upstream is in that case non negotiable.
Whether the EU will ever produce the necessary public investment to achieve this remains an open question.
> I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one
Yes, with all their configs, packages and certifications that were needed. Not really a problem.
> It failed horrendously
Because Microsoft came in, promised to relocate their HQ to Munich, and surprise, it was decided to come back to Windows. This was after reports found that although it took longer than expected, adoption was widespread (only a small minority of desktops remained on Windows for the few Windows specific apps they had), things were working well, user happyness was good, stability was good, and tons of taxpayer money had been saved.
I don't know details, but my guess is was more the latter.
The problem is that instead of having people assigned to working with Debian to make Debian useful in a government setting, they just did their own fork/distribution.
Yes, the former involves a lot of Debian politics and isn't as fast because other Debian members might insist on proper/more generic solutions.
If the objective is "Sovereignty", as clearly stated in the context, then Open Source is potentially a good strategy, but in itself not sufficient. E.g. Switching from Windows Server to RHEL gives you an Open Source initiative, but leaves you (arguably less, but still) dependent on the US.
For Open Source to work "Sovereign" you need to establish an local independent EU maintenance, development and distribution ecosystem for the specific packages that can operate autonomously and independent of upstream.
No, I mean an entire EU software ecosystem that can keep the lights on even under extreme sanctions from US (or Russia, or China, but we are in practice mostly dependent on US). You can have your local GitHub mirror, but if projects are forced to stop exporting to and collaborating with EU developers, who in the EU will maintain and further develop the now isolated EU codebases?
I feel like now, more than ever, the time is right for the EU's move to open-source to succeed.
Linux Desktop is now simply better than Windows, by far. Open office is good. There are many high-quality, commercially supported open-source products available now, developed by full-time, highly talented engineers.
There's every chance that this will work & breaking up oligopolies is great for everyone, not just Europe.
Don't know if they will get valuable feedbacks but yes, what is needed as always is money. Ever by financing projects or buying solutions that would develop them.
As said by someone else, not do the usual wasteful:
- Create a big global project with a tender directed at bullshit consulting companies and big groups.
- Giving millions/billions to recreate a crappy version of something instead of pushing existing solutions.
Also, I have the feeling that an important point is that "open source" software is Open Source, and the proper solution is to fund good OSS software or stacks wherever they come from and not be short sighted of taking to much care of the dev or project location. Even if obviously it would be better that money goes to European devs)
I find it endlessly fascinating how governments always get lost in the symptoms of the problems at hand instead of addressing the underlying problem itself.
The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market, etc).
The lack of domestic EU software/hardware products sits entirely downstream of that issue. The open source community will not magically solve this problem for them.
What if we stopped wasting time on anything that is not solving the core issue. The symptoms will take care of themselves after you solve the disease.
How is this not solving the core issue? You need to do both. Ensure the software is made (pay devs), and if you're funding this, make sure it is licensed as a public good (free, oss).
The problem with putting on band-aids over core structural issues is the government projects are going to run into the same fragmentation issues that private sector ones have. Open source is not a magic wand you can wave to fix that.
You only need to the solve the core issue. Unless you believe humans born on the European continent are inherently less intelligent or motivated than those born on American soil, then quite literally the problem will solve itself.
All humans are the same species and respond to the same incentives. Just create similar incentives here and stop trying to top-down solve all the symptoms with bandaids after the fact. It just doesn't work.
Name me one example of EU government created software that people have ever chosen to use voluntarily. Or heck, even one that people are forced to use but isn't downright terrible compared to a private alternative.
> The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market…
Yes incentives matter. They are not the only factor when figuring out the outcome. Competitive structures, and the type of good being traded has a bearing as well.
Software is not like physical goods. Given the marginal costs of making additional units of software is effectively nil, and that network effects tend to lock users in, you will see the rise of behemoths that shrug off competition.
You see more competition when it comes to startups than a stalwart like Excel or word.
I can of course be wrong - but For major daily drivers type software (Gmail, word, etc.) , the incumbents aren’t going to be moved by simply increasing competition.
I think you are just decribing one factor that caused the problem. There is many a detailed analysis, the most respected being the one by Draghi.
Previously this also wasn't much of a problem. The US tech companies were international companies and less "US" companies. Now they aligned themselves with the US regime and are e.g. a supply chain vulnerability and properly taxing them causes issues in national defence (via Ukraine). I for one did not anticipate this own-goal w.r.t. Europe by the US.
They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape. It's impossible to start a tech business under the amount of bureaucracy they throw at you.
I'd love to give it a go, but to get even started I have to pay accountants, banks, lawyers, pre-taxes, etc before I even have made a single cent.
Draghi report made it abundantly clear that this is the big issue. Despite being outwardly unified, EU market is horribly fractured, with regulations building on top of EU standards in almost every state and every area of business.
Then there are high energy costs, high salary costs, limited mobility of the workforce (partly due to ongoing housing crisis), entrenched overseas competition that doesn't have to deal with same challenges.
Together, these add to a deadly mix. Paradoxically, software is less affected than other industries. But even here it's bad.
Is it? If you're not interested in limited liability it's 85 euros to file for a company. If you do want limited liability, you have to visit a notary to found, but even that's only like 500 euros.
Sure, you have to do your taxes every year and that's annoying, but it's not _that_ hard.
Why is that even necessary in the first place? Thats what people hate about bureaucracy. Why can't we just submit a form somewhere from home and someone looks over it from a queue. In the meantime you are allowed to start your business already. Bad process here. No process is 100% times better. An async one with forgiveness is getting you 80% there.
What kind of business would you like to run that it needs to be established today and cannot wait a few weeks? There are many repercussions, social security and tax wise. Do you expect a government to keep up with a free-for-all form that creates companies ?
These are fair points but the weight of their impact is a misconception. Times and times again, lower capital and investment risk aversion are shown to be the limiting factors.
As a South American, it’s striking to see how the current U.S. administration has forced other countries to confront the risks of not having their own digital infrastructure.
And this isn’t just about software or the cloud. What happens if tomorrow the U.S. forbids Apple from selling iPhones outside its borders? Or starts requiring built-in backdoors or kill switchs?
Scenarios like these raise a deeper question: could this push the most powerful players, the US, EU, China, and India to eventually rebuild entire technology stacks from scratch in the name of self preservation?
China is on the path to doing just that, and I expect the heads of the government (or at least the people behind the scenes) in both EU and India consider this.
The US has, unfortunately, proven to be a very unreliable partner.
The problem isn’t only the U.S. China is also unreliable, and Russia as well. Just look at what happened to the EU with its dependence on Russian gas: once the war in Ukraine started, that dependency immediately turned into a major vulnerability.
That's the goal of the nationalists, which includes the current US administration and many in business and prominently in SV. Why do they want to sacrifice their own wealth, and freedom and peace worldwide? It's an important question.
Did people here see the Cory Doctorow thing a few days back about DMCA and "Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive"?
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
Basically without open source, the rest of the world will have to keep paying a tithe to American companies, and hence tax in the USA.
One of the most useful steps would be to support codeforges like Github on European soil, and development of the ForgeFed project, so that those forges can talk to each other.
There was a grant in 2023 which was supported by the European Comission. So I think the topic itself isn't entirely unknown.
https://nlnet.nl/project/Forgejo/
> We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro's — which should get you on your way.
Am I the only one to think this is completely ridiculous amount of money?
So, you want me to leave my very well paid job to innovate for the sake of EU competitiveness but you don't to invest more than 50k EUR (max grant). And as an individual you don't even stand a chance so this 50k EUR has to be distributed across several people. Did I get this right?
Ah, and I almost forgot about the double standards ... the same EU commission is on a spending spree when it comes to the development of a fkn EU website which you use to apply for these funds. Each Brussels-based developer doing that very innovative work is paid ~100k EUR. What a blasphemy.
No, they don't want to you leave your very well paid job for this grant, they want to chuck a few bounties at some FOSS projects and pay for some people to attend hackathons or conferences if they can fill in a form giving sufficiently compelling reasons. How dare they!
You're missing my point. "Chucking in a few bounties" is very different from what this topic is about. Let me spell it out for you once again:
> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.
The point you expressed was indignation at FOSS bounties paid by the Fediversity project out of a fraction of a single EUR 3m EU grant their consortium won being less than the full time salary of EU devs.
If you were trying to more widely insinuate that this third party dosing out small-to-modest incentives to individuals to do a bit of hacking on Fediverse stuff was the only thing the EU was doing to support Open Source or represented some sort of ceiling on the amounts EU-funded projects working on FOSS could pay their developers, it would be even more wrong.
Plenty of valid criticisms of the EU's cyber non-dependence strategy or the detail of grant and equity funding programmes for research and building stuff and how they weight FOSS (that's part of the reason for the consultation!) but you need to have the slightest idea what exists to get into those...
I took the Fediversity project as an example because it was mentioned above in the comment and not an example of something I wanted to specifically point it. Truth to be told 90% of other EU funds are similar if not the same in the context of grants, and no, I don't find it sufficient, and no, I don't think such strategy will yield anything worth the salt. You will keep the developers have fun with their projects but something worthwhile? Forget. It doesn't exist at such minuscule scale.
The only bigger denominator in terms of funds is Horizon which is completely political, and not worth mentioning at all, if that's what you wanted to suggest. It also operates under minuscule scale in terms of grants (up to 2.5M over 2 years) or funding (1-30M). No possibility for seed rounds which implies you already must be in the business and already have an almost viable product ready to deploy to the market tomorrow (EU bureaucracy calls it TRL6-8). This is all ridiculous and shows how detached from reality people making decisions there are. They even hire "experts" to weigh your application for which you know ... ta-da ... have to hire yet another "expert" to write that application for you. 100s of pages to prove your idea worthy. Once a year. World innovation runs at much much higher pace.
So, sure the R&D environment in EU is built on a very fertile ground and Brussels is doing their best to "call for an evidence" because open-source software is going to save the economy??? Right.
I'm currently a participant under a NLNet grant. I'm unemployed at the moment so getting a trickle of 1-2K of donation money per month working on my passion project is a pretty decent proposition.
You can also be a participant alongside your well paid job, because once the memorandum of understanding is signed you have a year to work through the proposal at your own pace, during weekends or moonlighting.
I don't doubt that at all and I'm glad for anyone who is managing to make some money from their open-source contributions, even more so in today's age where market is so volatile. I am being empathetic for that cause. But the point I am rather trying to convey is that this is not the strategy that will converge to something substantial that will make EU more competitive on global landscape.
I don't know how I could convince you, or anyone that's educated under the American capitalist system, that working for a commons is better in aggregate than relying on companies to pay for innovation and then keeping it a secret. "Competitive" is a slur in my opinion, I'd rather my work be "useful".
Working on things that make you happy instead of pushing the agenda of your employers, which in majority is unethical, immoral, or plainly unhealthy, is dystopian? It sounds utopian to me. :)
From my experience, people against open source often have buyers remorse. They often paid egregious sums of money for proprietary software that, to be fair, works well and includes enterprise support. When the same someone encounters the same solution but free and open source, they start rationalizing. The difference is mainly marketing, where open source projects have little to no marketing budget and are largely denied by market makers. Proprietary solutions can afford the seminars, thousands of dollars a week on ads, and other perks which increase discovery.
The moral of the story is to be careful listening to people actively tarnishing open source as they are a crowd of bitter people. A tell-tale sign is that they don't talk about the benefits of proprietary technologies such as the level of customer support and technical expertise that comes with the bill and instead only bash on open source.
Opensource is a bit more complex than being a "public good". They're focusing on the low cost as a jump starting point, which make me doubt their sincerity/understanding about managing that relationship healthily.
Has the EU commission still not understood that becoming a paid-by Washington lobby group, does not work for Europeans? So, why are they so slow in pushing into action here? Rather than money going into US corporations, have EU citizens work on specific open source projects, many of them, with clear goals. Simple example: libreoffice - improve interfacing with it. ALL governments, universities etc... would benefit from this. Not only in the EU but elsewhere too. I don't understand this insane slowness here, unless lobbyists run Brussels already.
This sounds more negative than I want it to, but it seems like this is missing the forest for the trees. There's absolutely a real problem here and I am fully supportive of projects seeking to address this.
Governments around the world throw public money at private enterprise to solve all of their IT problems. This sounds good, I guess, to the Americans in the room. Until recently the US actually had a great number of "open source" projects -- NASA, NOAA, come to mind (the weather satellites are still going). Open projects, owned by the people -- this is the obviously correct way to do things. You can engage the business sector when it makes sense to do so, but a country shouldn't be run by -- be dependent on -- a Microsoft, or a PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Then they delete the production database and write the people a post mortem about how they'll improve for next time. Then they profit from war crimes that your government even quietly admits are a bad thing occasionally. Then they <if you aren't aware of the UK post office scandal, you should be>.
"Open source" isn't a solution. Free software would be a better look. But the entire world is completely dependent on IT systems and goverments don't employ enough software developers. Not "developers" to "refresh" the UI again, not Autodesk certified Call of Duty Black Ops 9 Micopilot Copilot 666 developers -- normal boring software developers -- public servants.
Make it dull. It's your people you're fucking with. Flashy app bad, boring UI good -- it's a tax return.
The thing that should be happening is serious public sector software development. By the people, for the people. Keep it in-house. I shouldn't have to say to keep it open. It belongs to the people.
I feel bad saying this as open source software developer, but what EU needs is in-house produced x86 compatible cpu to run the software they want as long as they want.
I see some people donating money to open source. I'm currently discussing with my bookkeeper but she says it's all personal, so I pay income tax (in the Netherlands) and then I can donate. Is this really true? Why can't I just give some money to the devs that develop the software I use in my business, as a business? It makes it twice as expensive.
I consider much bigger problem dependence on foreign ecosystems and data storages. This is of course useful but I would consider much more efficient some kind of incentives to build domestic alternative to ms office cloud solution which basically run all corps.
I'm going to send them my wishlist to see what happens. I'm not optimistic about this, but I'm not pessimistic either and am very curious to see what happens.
If I was better versed in writing and happened to be someone relevant, at the very least I’d support the viewpoint that open source is good for preventing takeovers and software dependencies turning hostile (e.g. Valkey and OpenSearch at least existing) and preventing being held financially hostage in times of uncertainty (e.g. many Linux server side distros are free and FOSS relational DBs won’t bankrupt you).
Yet perhaps far too often people opt for Windows Server or SQL Server or Oracle DB, or other software like that - if you have a good reason to use them, sure, go ahead, but that shouldn’t be your default. I don’t want my tax money to be wasted so much when for at least a significant amount of projects out there, alternatives exist.
I’ve literally heard people say in person that “we need paid support” even when they don’t and while I’m not sure what lead to that behavior of trying to shift blame and cover your own asses, but cut it out. If you need support so bad, get an org for FOSS projects or contribute directly in exchange for it!
This also has implications on development that you normally don't think about - I have personally suffered due to having to use a shared Oracle DB for development (one dev breaking something breaks it for everyone) and not being able to easily setup containers especially because Oracle XE doesn't have feature parity and refuses to run the migrations. Just fucking use PostgreSQL, or even MariaDB.
Same goes for file formats, it made me quite angry when my university mandated that I use Microsoft Office for writing my bachelor's and master's papers, when LibreOffice is mostly good enough (only caveat was the references tracking being kind of jank, but in large part due to the university having very specific requirements in regards to how the references have to be formatted; personally I'd just prefer thesis.md/LaTeX/whatever but I guess we can't have everything). Same for Windows on pretty much all the computers. My country is already poor as shit, we might as well just acknowledge that and stop overpaying for literally everything to greedy orgs. They didn't even buy local and use something like OnlyOffice or paid someone that provides managed Nextcloud hosting or whatever.
At one point code I had written protected half the passwords on the entire Internet, and today around a quarter of all HTTP(S) traffic on the internet goes through software I have written ("Varnish").
That, and the fata morgana of retirement shimmering on my horizon, makes it my considered opinion that FOSS is the gift EU does not deserve, and runs a great risk of destroying on first contact.
However, closed source as we know it, is not compatible with an open, free and fair society, so I am more than aboard with the EU's long overdue recognition of FOSS as the way forward and out of the grubby, greedy claws of "Big Tech" and their endless enshitification of our lives.
The kind of FOSS software relevant to this discussion is usually rock steady and dependable in ways much commercial closed software, precisely because of the secrecy, can never be or become.
But the human communities which produces the FOSS software are fragile, fractious, and as a general rule, composed of people who may be great programmers, but who have absolutely no experience, and no interest, in fostering and stewarding stable human communities.
This is literally why there are who knows how many, different "distributions" of the Linux operating system, "window managers", "web-site frameworks" and programming languages.
Therefore the absolutely most important thing for EU to understand about FOSS, is that it probably is as close to the "ideal market", in the sense of economic theories, as anything will ever come: It literally costs nothing to become a competitor.
But that also means that if the EU member countries were to pick, no matter how fair and competently, a set of FOSS software to standardize on, and pour money into the people behind it, to provide the necessary resources to support and sustain the need for IT systems, for all the administrations in the EU countries, that software would instantly stop being FOSS - no matter what words the license might contain, because it would no longer be part of the market.
In other words: EU cannot "switch to FOSS", it would no longer be FOSS if EU did.
At the most fundamental level, the EU has three options:
1. Pick and bless a set of winners, consisting of:
a) Operating system, portable to any reasonable computer architecture.
b) Text-processing, suitable for tasks up to a book.
c) Spreadsheet
d) Email client.
e) Web Browser
f) Accounting software, suitable for small organizations.
and fund organizations to maintain, develop and support the software for the future as open source, turning that software into infrastructure like water, power and electricity, free for all, individuals, startups and established companies alike, to use and benefit from.
2. Continuously develop/pick, bless and meticulously enforce open standards of interoperability, and then "let the competition loose".
3. Both. By providing a free baseline and de-facto reference implementations for the open standards, "the market" will be free to innovate, improve and compete, but cannot (re)create walled gardens.
To everybody, me included, option two seems the ideologically "pure" choice, because we have all been brought to believe that "governments should not pick winners".
But governments have always picked winners. Today all of EU has 230VAC electrical grids, because EU picked that as a winner, thereby leveling the market to everybody's benefit.
Therefore I will argue, that the wise choice for EU is option three.
First, it will be incredibly cheap, as in just tens of millions of Euro per year, to provide all EU citizens with a free and trustworthy software platform to run on their computers.
Second, it can be done incredibly fast: From EU makes the decision, the first version can be release in a matter of months, if not weeks.
Third, it will guarantee interoperability of data.
"It literally costs nothing to become a competitor"
but
"The new strategy will address the economic and political importance of open source, as a crucial contribution to a strategic framework for EU technological sovereignty, competitiveness and cybersecurity." (as per the call document)
This means OSS, but with an ecosystem that does NOT rely on anything non-EU for development, maintenance and distribution. This brings the price from "literally costs nothing" to hundreds of millions Euro.
Evidence of what? Of the existence of open source? Of "open source" what? Software? Hardware? Its usage? The the communities behind various open source projects?
All the European Commission is interested in is getting software cheaper or for free.
If they were truly interested in freeing themselves from non-EU software, thereby preventing potential interference from (mostly) the US, they wouldn’t have chosen the path of soften the GDPR - that move mainly made the big tech happier.
Not quite. Harshness of regulations like GDPR is perhaps the primary reason why European tech entrepreneurs overwhelmingly choose to emigrate to the US when given choice.
70 propositions from the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, written in part by yours truly (in early 2025, i.e. before the "Trump effect" was in full force) and published by the Commission in July 2025:
Here is the complete list of proposals from the roadmap, translated into English and organised by pillar.
### Pillar 1: Technological Development
- Define technical specifications as open standards for European Open Source cloud, edge and IoT environments.
- Fund interoperability pilot projects that prioritise the use of European Open Source technologies.
- Require all EU-funded digital infrastructure projects to adhere to these interoperability standards.
- Promote and enforce the implementation of open standards throughout the EU.
- Create a ‘European Open Source Sovereignty Fund’ (EOSSF) dedicated to essential projects. [NB: this would now be called the EU-STF].
- Offer targeted grants for the security, maintenance and strengthening of the sovereignty of Open Source projects.
- Foster in-depth collaboration with European academic institutions and Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs).
- Develop a practical guide for public procurement managers to evaluate European Open Source solutions.
- Create sector-specific reference architectures based on European Open Source technologies.
- Launch large-scale demonstration projects to illustrate the practical benefits of European Open Source solutions.
- Produce and distribute comprehensive ‘playbooks’ for the deployment of European Open Source solutions.
- Implement policies to actively encourage the adoption of these reference implementations in public procurement.
### Pillar 2: Skills Development
- Organise industry-focused training workshops with a European emphasis on Open Source tools and platforms.
- Offer targeted training grants to SMEs and public sector organisations for European Open Source skills development.
- Launch certification programmes for mastery of European Open Source technologies and standards.
- Establish EU-funded retraining programmes to help professionals transition into European Open Source roles.
- Collaborate with industry partners to create hands-on learning and placement opportunities in Open Source.
- Offer financial incentives to companies that participate in retraining programmes and use European Open Source.
- Develop a European Open Source resource platform that brings together training materials, best practices, and case studies.
- Integrate European Open Source principles into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula from secondary school to university.
- Support the creation of European Open Source ‘centres of excellence’ in universities.
- Develop EU-wide coding competitions and hackathons focused on European Open Source solutions.
- Introduce training on European Open Source business models into vocational training.
- Create vocational training modules for European Open Source project management.
- Establish certification for mastery of European Open Source business skills.
### Pillar 3: Public Procurement Practices
- Launch a consultation with public sector bodies and Open Source providers to identify challenges related to public procurement.
- Make ‘Public Money, Public Code, Open Source First, European Preference’ policies mandatory in public procurement.
- Develop comprehensive guidelines for public procurement to evaluate and select European Open Source solutions.
- Fund demonstration projects showing the success of replacing proprietary systems with European Open Source.
- Establish clear criteria for defining what constitutes a ‘European’ Open Source solution.
- Provide a practical guide for public procurement managers to evaluate Open Source solutions.
- Collaborate with industry and standardisation bodies to develop accessible evaluation criteria for Open Source.
- Create a public directory of recommended European Open Source solutions.
- Encourage public sector organisations to adopt solutions developed under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative.
- Launch cross-border pre-commercial procurement (PCP) projects focused on European Open Source.
- Create knowledge-sharing platforms for feedback on PCP initiatives and Open Source best practices.
- Actively involve European Open Source providers in the co-design of solutions in the PCP process.
- Publish guidelines to help public sector organisations manage and support European Open Source.
- Promote the active participation of public sector representatives in European Open Source communities.
- Support training programmes for public sector staff on project management and Open Source compliance.
- Engage stakeholders to collaboratively refine and simplify procurement practices for Open Source.
### Pillar 4: Growth and Investment
- Create a European Open Source Investment Platform (EOSIP) to centralise information on funding.
- Organise information workshops for European SMEs and start-ups on how to obtain investment.
- Establish partnerships with private investors to form a network of venture capital funds focused on European Open Source.
- Expand the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative with a focus on Open Source cloud, edge and IoT.
- Regularly assess the impact of funding programmes on community growth and market adoption.
- Allocate dedicated funding to high-impact European Open Source projects that meet strategic needs.
- Develop co-investment models that combine public funds with European private sector investments.
- Launch accelerators and incubators specifically designed for European Open Source technologies.
- Develop an EU-wide branding strategy to highlight the quality and sovereignty of European Open Source.
- Showcase European Open Source successes on international platforms through marketing campaigns.
- Form strategic partnerships with European industry organisations to increase project visibility.
- Establish public-private R&D consortia on European Open Source for high-priority projects.
- Offer incentives for private sector contributions to critical European Open Source initiatives.
- Develop platforms for knowledge exchange and cross-sector collaboration within the European ecosystem.
### Pillar 5: Governance
- Conduct vulnerability assessments for critical European Open Source projects.
- Collaborate with European cybersecurity agencies to develop threat models for Open Source environments.
- Publish findings and best practices from security assessments to the European ecosystem.
- Offer tailored compliance advice to help European Open Source projects navigate EU regulations.
- Facilitate accessibility to Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) certification for European Open Source projects.
- Provide resources and support for the documentation and auditing of European projects.
- Ensure stable, long-term funding for core European Open Source infrastructure.
- Establish mentoring programmes focused on developing European talent for critical projects.
- Create a European Open Source Advisory Board to oversee project funding and direction.
- Require EU-supported European projects to adhere to transparent governance and accountability practices.
- Support European community involvement in Open Source project governance.
- Facilitate community input into European Open Source policy development.
- Publish guidelines on best practices for managing the lifecycle of European Open Source projects.
- Provide resources for responsible maintenance and end-of-life support for European projects.
- Encourage comprehensive documentation and knowledge sharing within the European ecosystem.
It's some utopian dream to think the death of the EU would decentralize power. It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony. Without the EU, the world is controlled by the US and China.
> It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony.
How can I opt out of this "necessary evil"?
I don't want to be part of this feud between powers as I don't want the EU to be a world power since in all world powers 90% of the wealth just concentrates to the top 1% anyway, so becoming one would not benefit me. Will housing be more affordable once we become a "world power"? Or fix healthcare shortages?
Like for example, the public transport and healthcare where I live have been going to shit past 10 years plus housing become unaffordable. Those issues are not China's fault, Trump's fault and not Putin's fault no matter how much they try to gaslight us otherwise. Putin and Trump didn't come here and inflate our currency creating speculative bubbles that popped, our own politicians did.
So no, it's not a "necessary evil", it's a manufactured one via FUD and scaremongering, to deflect blame and responsibility for failures of local politicians and copot public option in the direction the 1% financieres desire since their kids won't be on the frontline of this new world war they're trying to stir up, we'll all be just casualties and I don't want to be one.
Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now.
Look at Ukraine, look at Greenland.
Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.
As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.
>Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now.
It's not just "right now", it's how it has always been. International law was never a thing to begin with. It was just a sham created by the world powers after WW2 nuremberg trials, so they could add a veneer of legitimacy when they enforce their will over weaker countries in disputes, never the other way around. It was still just "history is written by the victor" business as usual. Otherwise they would have prosecuted leadership of France, Belgium and UK for their crimes in their colonies if there was any actual objective justice in international law.
As a smaller country you never had a say in your sovereignty if you didn't have nukes or the blessing of powerful allies to enforce laws for you via their more powerful militaries. "Might is right" is the undefeated fact that has been true for 10k years of human history, and will still be true 10k years in our future.
>Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.
Then demonstrate and prove it wrong.
>As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.
So you agree with me that CoL is fucked, just like I originally said. Just because it's fucked in other countries, doesn't invalidate my statement.
To me this is the most amazing thing people that would turn themselves inside out against communism/socialism because of the lies they have been told. When it actually comes down to it are all for communism ie open source
Open source is not communism. Communism would entail that we collectively own Linux, which we don't. It's private property, and if we want to use the code, we need to abide by its licensing terms. Licensing terms that are built upon the existence of copyright, a concept that allows for private ownership of intellectual property.
Communism is about a would-be utopia after the workers own the means of production.
For us tech workers, it could be argued that the means of production are source code. Thus, there is a socialist aspect to open source - but that's a good thing!
Just because it's free? Let's talk again when all open source projects are funded and controlled by the state with zero competition between them and no consumer choice. Only one Linux distro, only one database, only one web framework, etc. And it's decided top-down from the state what to work on. I doubt though that these projects would have started in the first place in a communist setting.
There is no reason such a state would have to set things up this way.
As an example: you probably know that germany has socialized healthcare. It is, however, not implemented as a single-payer model. Instead there are tons of different insurances competing with each other, while having a highly regulated floor of what they MUST offer.
Is the model perfect? Hell no, it has tons of issues - though overall it's pretty solid. My point is just that social policies and "no internal competition ever" does absolutely not have to go hand in hand. There is a massive middle ground.
See: social democracy as a concept and in its current implementation.
Problem here being that those terms aren't used as defined in regular discourse. Language changes and casual use differs from academic use.
When on an american-centric board anybody writes about "communism", I assume they refer to anything from marxism to stalinism to socialism to democratic socialism to social democracy up to anything non-hyper-capitalist. Not great, but sadly something to be taken into consideration.
Especially when looked at in context - parent was criticizing the EU initiative by essentially claiming something like that leads to a kind of monoculture like in a planned economy reminiscent of "communism", here probably meaning stalinism, from what I assume is a radical libertarian position. Which tells me the person is likely american, implying a rather ... minimal awareness of the nuance here.
Please, look at the actual comment chain and it should be rather trivial to make out what everybody is talking about. Does your comment really add value here?
The fundamental reason why terms are confused is because malicious
actors (bad faith) intentionally set up to at best muddy the waters
and at worst associate things they fight against with the worst
adjectives. That doesn’t reflect on anyone present right here, just a
process that took decades.
I don’t care if someone “doesn’t know” about the nuance when they
breathlessly throw back with One Cereal For Everyone Decided By The
State. Come on.
> Please, look at the actual comment chain and it should be rather trivial to make out what everybody is talking about. Does your comment really add value here?
I can understand that you think my reply is pedantic noise. That’s
simply because we have different goals and things that we intend to
communicate. I’m content with setting the record straight. You
apparently want to calmly explain the difference between apparent
Stalinism and Bernie Sanders-style Socialism.
I think I am able to make out what people are talking about. But you
can’t seem to, right in this context, imagine that we all have different
goals ourselves about what we wish to get out of commenting here.
This is as usual confused. People keep discussing communism as if they were (via analogy) talking about capitalism being about men in suites with fake smiles, green paper, bank vaults, and powerpoint presentations. Every time people have to respond with paragraphs upon paragraphs just unrolling all that nonsense.
Try to update your knowledge on the subject instead of talking like an alien in Trafalgar Square.
Politics should never drive technical decisions unless the people involved actually understand the technology. When policy is made without that expertise, open source becomes a political slogan instead of a sustainable ecosystem.
What the European Commission is doing is the right thing, then.
It is a "call for evidence", not a directive. It can be summarized as: for our software needs, we depend too much on non-EU countries, we heard about this open source thing, will it solve our problem?
They studied the political aspect (dependence on non-EU countries), that's their job. They are now asking experts about the technical aspect.
This can never be true. Politics drives all decisions.
National politics may not. But assuming technical decisions are made on an aethereal plane above humanity is just assuming away complexity. It's the excuse of a technical team that developed something superb for no actual user.
I actually think it's a great idea to minimize government dependence on specific vendors at a policy level.
Perhaps these policies shouldn't be too detailed, but signing away future freedom ('nobody ever fired for choosing $entranched_bigcorp') should not be the path of least resistance for decision makers.
At first your comment reads as negative, but you actually like this "call for evidence" then, as they're explicitly asking for feedback about it? Not sure why it reads so negative when you're actually seemingly agreeing with the submission.
Can't you have some idea, yet want to validate this with the broader ecosystem? I frequently ask people for their opinion about stuff, even when I have my opinion. Should commissions/governments not do that? Seems like a fantasy to think your government could know everything without asking the population what they think.
This is exactly the kind of backwards thinking that pushes people against inquisition and consultation. They people in charge have a good idea of the playing field but it's always good to ask for input.
I think this was disused a few days ago in a similar HN comment thread. Turns out, the US has way more data-tapping anti-privacy laws than the EU - only that the US more or less secretly adopted them and forbids any company from telling their end-users.
Whereas you hear more about "data regulation-attempts" in the EU because it actually still has very strong privacy-rules and when trying to alter them there is a real public debate and not a hush-hush secret commission that gives security agencies access to all user data without public notification.
Europe already have a thriving software industry, and in fact is probably the leader when it comes to having the most influential and biggest FOSS projects, since so many of them originate in Europe :)
If I had to chose between "control and regulation and healthy community of FOSS" vs "no control or regulation, and healthy community only for for-profit companies", I know what side I'm choosing.
When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but
As someone who has watched on the sidelines how Opensource governance turns projects into hydra monsters (Redhat, Jakarta EE). I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
But who knows, maybe they will just become end users of a popular distro and other opensource software.
Finland (where Linux comes from) is in the EU. There are also a few European linux distributions you may have heard of: e.g. Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu (UK), Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia, Knoppix, etc.
I am not claiming "invention", my whole point here is that place of origin means nothing, especially for a FOSS project - despite Linus being important part of it.
If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions as US citizen.
Active kernel contributors are spread all around the world, with a pretty even distribution across USA, Western Europe and Asia.
Your suggestion that the US government would lean on the citizenship of Torvalds in order to exert control over the kernel should be laughable but I concede that anything is possible these days.
Linus Torvalds, imo, is the reason we have open source, through Linux & Git. He’s the open source philosopher king.
I think he’s put enough in to know where his allegiance lies, over a 2010 US citizenship - a very different world.
There is also 0 chance, US/MS government hasn’t put a lot of pressure on him over the last 34 years of creating and spreading, at least the OS form of socialism
It is not laughable, Linux directly complies with SDN list[1] and US sanction policy(i.e. removing of russian developers by Linus). Thus, US does have and execute control over Linux kernel currently.
I think you have some confusion about the role of the Linux Foundation in relation to the kernel. They provide financial, organisational, and infrastructural support and neither own nor control its development.
Linus is the BDFL and lead maintainer and if he wanted to move the kernel development anywhere else he could do so, but Linus Torvalds has stated that he personally agrees with them.
That is not the US controlling him, it is his own decision. Moreover he has dual citizenship and could renounce his US citizenship if he chose. When Greg takes over maintainership things may be different.
Why should Linus renounce US citizenship, not finnish? He is living with family in Oregon for 20+ years.
This is my main point here - not much things connecting Linus and Linux to EU. In question of US and EU tensions I am not really sure US citizen BDFL will party with EU, also because companies who spend money and contribute to kernel are located in US mainly.
That you are trying to strip him of his own identity speaks volumes.
Anyway, clearly you have some misguided patriotic agenda here. You can thump your chest if it makes you feel better, but theres little point in continuing this discussion.
Is all the distributions where most core developers already live in Europe/EU not enough for you? Take a look at where most of the active contributors live for some distributions, and I think you'd be surprised :)
With my original flippant comment I was trying to highlight that despite the many Opensource projects and the many awesome people who contribute to them, they should stay at arms length from EU and its legislators.
When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but I am skeptical, so I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
> despite the many Opensource projects and the many awesome people who contribute to them, they should stay at arms length from EU and its legislators.
But despite that, they exist today, successfully so, and continue being funded by the very people you claim they should stay away from.
I'm not sure if you looked into how this whole "funding FOSS" thing works like, but governments are not opening a fund, letting any FOSS developer expense stuff to it and calling it a day. Usually they contract a company to work on things, that then end up FOSS.
Even if the end result is FOSS or not, they have the same people they can blame if they want to, the people they paid for certain results. The license of the finished thing doesn't change who's responsible for doing the job they've been paid to do.
I think until you actually understanding how the funding works, it would be fair to avoid doing flippant comments who basically only try to add some fuel to some fire, with some completely out of place comparison to a NK Linux distribution.
The funding mechanism isn't really the point, its the product that comes after.
Sure, the EU contracts developers to build features they want, but when those requirements start coming from regulatory mandates rather than user needs, you're not just adding features to Ubuntu anymore.
You're forking it into something fundamentally different.
"EUbuntu"? :)
Look at how the EU handles tech regulations:
- GDPR a good thing on paper; with some terrible side effects - cookie banners, data bureacracy, walled gardens between US-EU websites.
- AI legislation; lets wait and see
- Digital sovereignty; fundamentally trying to gain access control for EU citizens data from Google and Apple.
Anyways, let's see what happens. Maybe I'm being too cynical and they'll just become savvy end-users of existing distros. But given the pattern, I'm not holding my breath.
> - GDPR a good thing on paper; with some terrible side effects - cookie banners, data bureacracy, walled gardens between US-EU websites.
I was gonna reply to your comment in good faith, but I realize right here that you don't actually understand what you're talking about. Cookie banners have nothing to do with GDPR, at all, and thinking they're somehow connected, grossly misunderstands regulation in the EU. How am I supposed to take anything else you say about these topics with a straight face?
So with that said, I hope you have a continued nice day :)
I agree with others here that focusing your eyes on _using_ open source is, at least, an incomplete view of the problem.
What we (European software engineers) have been arguing, is that software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak. Thinking that open source software will help solve your budget and/or political problem is not something we're interested in doing for free. This excerpt here:
> In the last few years, it has been widely acknowledged that open source – which is a public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed – has
suggests they see it as free candy, rather than the result of love and hard work, provided for free because it's nice. Pay for what you use, especially at the government level.
Of course, I strongly encourage the European governments to invest in open source. And if you're interested in giving money, I'm interested in doing work. Same as ever.
> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak
Anyone who agrees with this should sign this petition made by Free Software Foundation Europe: https://publiccode.eu
While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable.
For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels.
All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for these services, or anyone can use official Web clients, but none of the code is open source.
This is in contrast to previous governments that tried to implement all of this using proprietary standards where the companies hired were paid billions to deliver a system and they ended up owning the data exchange protocol and a client they distributed in binary only form. And they also profited from commercial software that implemented their proprietary protocols.
That worked (for the company hired)for taxes and they made billions. But for other stuff like medical, when they had no way to sell their proprietary standards they wasted billions and years of time and delivered nothing. Then subsequent govt threw the entire project out and built it on open standards.
So based on this experience I think using well documented open data exchange standards is much more important than software itself being open source.
Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
>None of the code is open source
Well, not all, for example mObywatel was recently open-sourced (in a ridiculous way, but still).
I think you raise some important points. In my opinion, a lot of code funded by public money should be open-sourced, but it's not as clear-cut as some people believe. I'll use this comment to point out some of fallacies that people responding to you make:
>Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
This is completely unrelated. French government won't deploy a Polish public health management website just because they found it on Github. For projects of such magnitude you need deep mutual cooperation between both governments, and a lot of changes. Making the code open-source is the least important part, the code can be just shared privately.
In fact, there are many such European code, data and information sharing initiatives. There are meetings and conferences where countries can discuss this on a technical level. The code is shared, just not via public channels.
>The government - and taxpayers - should care that having closed-source software means they are tied to the company that wrote it forever, so changes and bugfixes will be much more expensive.
If a private company owns code used by government for critical purposes and can take the government hostage it's outrageous and taxpayers should riot. This probably happens[1], but most code is either written by government itself, or at least government owns the code and can switch contractors if necessary.
In particular, AFAIR the government code we're discussing right now was written by COI (~central informatics department), which is a public institution.
[1] For example, governments use Azure and GCP, even though - to me - it's clearly shortsighted. Fortunately there was a wake-up call recently, and it changes slowly.
>> Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty. > This is completely unrelated.
This is an option which does sometimes happen. And there is motivation to make happen more often, at least for EU-wide services. And there is also the side that it's doesn't have to happen between countries, it could be also happen the local level, like between administration of cities in the same country. The main reasoning here is more about spreading awarness and building the mindset that sharing code on all levels and working together even on such internal tools, can be good and should be increased.
> French government won't deploy a Polish public health management website just because they found it on Github.
Some governments have also their own platforms, specifically for co-working on code accross administrations. They are usually not public for reasons.
> For projects of such magnitude you need deep mutual cooperation between both governments, and a lot of changes. Making the code open-source is the least important part, the code can be just shared privately.
You still have to put it under a licence when you are co-working, even when it's shared privatly. Open Source does not neccessaly mean that the source is automatically accessable to the whole world.
Because if everything the government does is open source by default, the standards will be open standards by default. You can then add non-default code (closed source) for some applications (health, military).
Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
So your argument here is that while the software can be open source, it matters less, if whatever the software does isn't actually an open standard? Wouldn't "being open source with own custom protocol" essentially be as open as "open source or not, but software implements open standards" anyways?
Especially for the use case they’re talking about. It makes sense to have open standards for something like filing taxes so many companies can compete.
Having source code for the tax system itself is interesting, but I think the market for “run software for processing incoming taxes for polish citizens” is exactly one.
Unless they expect pull requests, which could be fun, but as OSS maintainers know, it’s a ton of work and boy would there be a ton of spam on something like this.
Maybe auditing companies can run their own tax servers?
Many protocols (even open) are complex, and partially undocumented.
It would be nice to have both (open source and open protocol), but I kind of agree that if we should push for one, an open (decently explained) standard will probably be easier, simpler and with longer term impact, not to mention the interoperability benefits between countries.
"Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?"
The government - and taxpayers - should care that having closed-source software means they are tied to the company that wrote it forever, so changes and bugfixes will be much more expensive.
> Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
The management, the government and the eventually the tax payers.
If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code, if it's not an open source software, they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it in the first place. That's when the companies tend to jack up the prices to crazy numbers.
I have personally witnessed companies winning the initial government contracts by undercutting everyone and then charging them 10X for even the tiniest of modifications. Some times the companies even flat out reject the future contracts because they are stuck with a better project elsewhere and the government is stuck with useless old binary.
If the server side software is open source, depending on the policy, you can also submit your changes to that software that lets you submit your taxes with your own python script.
I think it can be a reasonable assumption that the government has access to the code, while it is not being open to the public. There is a difference between "visible to everyone" (i.e. open source) and "visible to selected parties".
Having a different company do contract work does not require the source to be open, it just requires that the government owns it (as they get to choose what to do with it then).
Also, if no company is on a payroll because they are stuck with better projects, what makes you think someone that is not familiar with the code base would accept a merge request from an unknown party? Or if it was accepted, what makes you think this wouldn't immediately be abused to create loopholes and vulnerabilities?
> If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code [...] they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it
This is a very strange statement and you probably have some specific situation in mind that isn't really representative.
Normally when you hire people to write your code they do a work for hire, unless your contract says otherwise, you own the rights. There are some minor exceptions, typically for countries that treat commercial and artistic copyright differently, but that's it. I've been hired to add changes to people's software thousands of times, and it's never been on the table that I get some kind of ownership of their source code.
The license said source code is under is completely irrelevant. Especially in this question of tax authorities. That source code is normally not under some public license at all because it's their internal processes anyway, they may change at any time and the employ a number of programmers to do so. Plus a handful of consultants.
> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed
That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.
English centric, although other languages may have collapsed gratis and liber into a single word.
> That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.”
It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
I see it as English-centric, rather than US-centric. That differentiation isn't necessary in most (all?) languages.
Adopting the word "gratis" when the speaker means "at no monetary cost" also helps clarify things.
Would it be more correct to say it doesn’t necessarily mean free as in beer?
Someone can give you a free beer and a complimentary license to manufacture and distribute that same beer, and even make changes to the recipe.
> Would it be more correct to say it doesn’t necessarily mean free as in beer
Yes, I believe so.
Free Software should rename to Liberty Software. Instead, advocates loaned Spanish "libre" in the ugly FLOSS acronym (Free/Libre Open Source Software). If only we used "liberty" then we could stop quibbling over the multiple meanings of "free" and just talk about software liberty.
"Free as in bonus" vs "free as in liberty".
later, ... there are 14 competing jargon files.
"Free software" is a fine descriptor. It's needlessly confusing to repeat that "beer as in slurred speech" thing, though. Free software can be free "as in beer"[0], but the way it gets said makes it sound like it zero cost software is an anti-goal, rather than pointing out that it's not the true goal. Then the "free as in speech" thing is kind of pointless because you can just say "free as in freedom".
Free software is about fundamental computer freedom -- freedom to own your computer, inspect and modify, etc. -- we already have this word.
[0] where who why free beer ever? 0% relatable, 0/10 would still like a free beer though
Newcomers keep tripping on Free Software vs Freeware, therefore "Free Software" doesn't describe well. We could call it Freedom Software. (There now exist 15 competing jargon files.)
https://xkcd.com/927/
The current socio-political climate is actually making this analogy less US-centric by the day :(
edit: I'm specifically referring to people losing their jobs and similar retaliations due to being on the left, or making public statements that the current administration and supporters don't like.
It didn't start when it was people losing their jobs on the right?
Brandon Eich's political donation comes to mind.
"People losing their jobs on the right" can, in every case I'm aware of, be reworded as "people losing their jobs because they oppose basic human rights for certain categories of people."
Over the past few decades, and especially since about 2008, "the right" has become the refuge for every kind of bigotry (especially, though not solely, in the USA). Trying to defend that bigotry by crying about political neutrality is...well, to be polite I'll just say it's pretty ugly and leave it at that.
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Not as wild of a claim as you might think, as opposition to gay marriage falls starkly along political lines in the US. If you are a republican and you support gay marriage, you are solidly in the minority (41%). 12% of democrats oppose it.
> In May 2025, a record-high 88% of Democrats supported same-sex marriage, support from independents stood at 76%, while Republican support dipped back down to 41%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_mar...
Next you're going to tell us that religious fundamentalism isn't mostly a right-wing feature either.
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Brandon Eich resigned.
Due to discrimination and bullying. There goes freedom of expression out of the door. Fortunately that crazy ship has long sailed and nowadays he'd have enough support to resist and publicly voice his opinions without personal attacks.
I think there is a very large difference between citizen activism (i.e. boycotts which can lead to resignations) and government authoritarianism. I have no problem with people exercising their right to free speech - including both Brandon Eich, and Firefox users.
No government official spoke up to have Brandon Eich fired, or bullied him or anything like that. His defenestration wasn't driven by government. Brandon Eich said some things, and the community around him judged those things and reacted to it. That's means that we're not talking about free speech any more. You have no right to speak and force other people to listen without social consequence, you do have a right to speak without the government retaliating. But other people are free to react to your speech as well, and to speak out in opposition to you.
A lawyer once described what you are calling Free Speech as merely "Protection of the First Speech." You believe that Brandon Eich should be able to speak (the first speech), but that the other people around him should not be able to say what they want in reaction to it (the second speech). Brandon Eich did say things without any government retaliation- and the people who worked at Mozilla didn't want to be associated with that, and so he chose to resign before the organization fell apart. Because those people around Mozilla have free speech rights as well, they are not forced to associate with Mozilla.
Similarly, a company choosing to fire an employee because of their speech is not really a free-speech issue. The company can fire you for pretty much any reason (at least in America- some countries have stronger worker protections), because they don't want to be associated with you any more. On the other hand, if a Government official suggests that you should be fired for something you said in your private life, then your free speech rights are being violated, even if the company does not fire you. It is only when the government gets involved that it becomes a Free Speech issue.
Obligatory XKCD to help you understand why you are wrong about what "Free Speech" means: https://xkcd.com/1357/
No need for "government official". There were plenty of non-government official branches such as media and social networks that were demonstrated to work as shadow tools for imposing heavy censorship around specific agendas. Up until the recent election so was the case for the large majority of mainstream social networks and legacy media.
The whole corona fabrication wasn't that long ago when governments directly mandated to silent dissident voices (even the scientific ones) and push a whole group of normal people into burning anyone who'd point out the obvious inconsistencies.
I invite you to google for news articles reporting on his donations prior to his removal from Mozilla.
this is my favorite (mainly because they also call out donations to Ron Paul.) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controver...
While no politician commented directly, acting like it was just his peers and not part of national political conversation is silly.
The First Amendment right exists in large part to enable and encourage non-governmental news reporting - to avoid a world in which government officials can dictate "reality" or "truth."
The Guardian is actually a British publication, which is a bit orthogonal from the original discussion of US free speech. It might be more accurate to say that this was part of an international political conversation. This is because Bradon Eich, the leader of an organization which provides products internationally, made public donations to political groups that seek to strip rights from others. He has a first amendment right to do so.
As OP states, the rest of the world has a right (in the US, legally; elsewhere, perhaps morally) to respond to Brandon Eich, and Mozilla. If they believe that his views may influence the organization negatively - either due to bad press or through his other behaviors within the organization - they are also granted free speech to call out this behavior.
What we are seeing now is actual government agencies and officials working hard to remove people from their jobs - both in the public and private sectors - in response to views that don't align with their own.
It's not clear to me what your argument is exactly.
My argument is that he contributed to a ballot initiative that passed (meaning the majority supported it), but he was still targeted and lost his job because media platforms targeted him.
To quote Andrew Sullivan > "McCarthyism applied by civil actors".
When people with large platforms target you, you're just as screwed regardless of their status as elected officials. To be outraged by one and excuse the other is laughable.
Its not just left. Right had to face this too. As a moderate, it's hilarious sometimes that one side would do something and when the other side does something similar, they are all up in arms about it.
We should be allowed to discuss openly without being worried of losing job and humiliated.
Right now, I cannot discuss openly. Majority are silent. And loud ones are a minority.
Kevin hart losing Oscar hosting for a comment 12 some years ago. People who tried to cancel Eminem for his old songs and Rowan Atkinson's speech comes to mind on the top of my head.
Getting offended is a YOU problem. Not a me problem.
Until it's possible for us from both sides can talk openly, these will continue. Just like opposition political parties when one side is in more power, they will try and punish the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc
Ah, this is the first time I understand the analogy because my mother tongue has two different words for "free", so I did not realize there was a need to differentiate
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Does the US have free beer?!
We have some beer you couldn't get me to drink for free. Does that count?
It'd be a lot better if we did :)
Well if let’s say local government like municipalities are paying for school software where you can check your child ren grades.
If there is API I should be able to make my own mobile app to access data or use other app.
Providers push ads and do shitty stuff to block any and all 3rd party access.
If it is that bad business just go away.
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Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides
I could make an argument that "Complimentary" would be analogous to gratis in this context.
> only Romance language
...But we're (mostly) not one?
I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech
(Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")
>That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.”
what the hell does that mean
Today, we take the term "open source" for granted, but this wasn't always the case. There wasn't a single, universally accepted term to describe software that was freely shareable. "Free software" was one of the terms used, but it wasn't clear to non-programmers how this was different from proprietary software that was downloadable without having to pay for it. If you're not a programmer anyway, how should one type of "free software" be different from another?
Proponents of what we now call "open source" wanted to distinguish between two senses of the word "free". One sense is not having to pay for something, as in "Come over to my party, the beer is free." Anther sense is "I can criticize the government, because the country I live in is free." People in the free software and open source movement began to phrase the dichotomy in these terms to illustrate how one sense of the word "free" is much more important than the other. The fact that you don't have to pay for some piece of software is nice, but what's more important is that you aren't beholden to the company that developed it.
> Proponents of what we now call "open source" wanted to distinguish between two senses of the word "free"
Some would argue its a little deeper than that
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
thanks this is very clear !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre
I too struggled to understand this when I first came across it.
Free to use vs free to do what ever you want with
Something that costs you nothing versus a freedom.
Tell me you’re young without telling me you’re young.
wow you caught me
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Many projects made with government money are developed under the EUPL. Including some of the ones I've worked on. Oddly enough, they aren't available for download anywhere.
There is some EUPL software available here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/
Where exactly? I really see nothing that qualifies as open source there. Just text.
There's also this GitLab instance: https://code.europa.eu/
Here is the actual catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue
Just to second what you are saying, over 2025 we saw some cases where small open source projects that underpin massive infrastructure are struggling for funding, and they don't even need that much! To me this is a place where the EU can spend a few dollars and have a massive influence on the sustainability and direction of open source projects.
European software industry is so interesting because my impression is that the (Western) OSS sector is largely supported by talented European developers. Just a vibe from interacting with hundreds of successful OSS projects.
Europe clearly has endemic talent, and I'm not even sure it's a funding problem rather than an organizational/leadership one. They could throw money at developers who already have decent if humble QoL, or they could bring them together to build large systems that can compete with American big tech.
FSFE campaign for that: https://publiccode.eu/
I wonder if this is useful feedback to give? It would probably need to be more actionable. I’m hopeful the European open source community will take this invitation seriously.
Very few people truely understand the concept of Liberty.
> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions
I think that might be the wrong approach, at least in this day and age. The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue. It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce.
Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
>The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue
Obviously, but most of university research - at least in Europe - is funded by public money. The idea is that research funded by public money should be public by default, unless there's a reason to do otherwise.
>Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
Yes, of course.
Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it.
And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?
American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.
So the argument is basically: because taxes, and only taxes, paid for something somewhere, it should be free for everybody everywhere?
Ah wait, you're somebody else. Why the somewhat unhinged attack on Europe? Because Europe is getting US tech for free?
30 years ago, one of the things we were all naively hoping for was that a globally connected network would help to reduce the tribalism, obsolete these "American money" and "European bits" and "Chinese protocols" ideas and stop all the cross-border fighting over what's mine and what's yours. When a piece of software has contributors from 50 countries, how could it "belong" to one country? Obviously we are in an even worse spot, global cooperation wise, now than we were in the 90s.
I've seen this work in certain situations, CERN and the LHC for example (I was on a data team for a detector). Everyone was driven by the science, where you came from didn't matter. With that said, and this part is going to be inflammatory potentially, people who are fear and tribal/in group driven are likely never going to be swayed (and building the mental model up via comments to properly contextualize this is beyond the scope of this thread). Tech doesn't fix people problems.
It might have been a bit naive, and very much reliant on a more open, more liberal, and less neo-liberal, international order than we have right now. Greed and power are not (<-edit: I had skipped that bit) conducive to such ideals.
Indeed, it appears they are upset that "the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value" from American open source spend in some way.
> It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce.
When it is funded publicly it certainly is. A key feature of the university research system is that it is where people are supported without the expectation that their work is going to be commercially useful in any near-term time frame. If something is going to be commercially valuable then people should develop it in the private sphere. Nothing stopping them. In fact, that is basically what the US does and it has been wildly successful and relegated the EU to being a technical backwater trying to figure out how to get out from under the US's commercial dominance.
> Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
Yes. Knowledge is for everyone. Even the Americans. Trying to hold back the progress of the entire species because the US knows how to pump out software is a remarkably myopic strategy.
> A key feature of the university research system is that it is where people are supported without the expectation that their work is going to be commercially useful in any near-term time frame
Idk where you got that idea from, but it's not an accurate picture since the mid 1980s. Yes, there is "fundamental" research, which is mostly a label for commercially not that interesting work (and cannot be expected to yield much open source anyway), but short-term project work and third-party funding are big. Also, much of the research is done with an eye towards profit, certainly in the medical and tech sector. And in the US, universities rely on a lot of private money.
> Knowledge
Knowledge isn't OSS. This (part of the) thread is specifically about (usable) software.
> the progress of the entire species
Them's big words.
That seems contradictory with the idea that software should be developed in the private sphere: closed source, proprietary APIs, patents and trade secrets are the antithesis of sharing knowledge.
The early mantras of OSS included "free as in speech" and "free as in beer".
Those were mantras of the Free Software movement. The open source movement (despite creating a lot of free software) was never about the moral stance of software freedom, but the practical benefits
So, as open source developers building a public good, where is our share of EU taxes?
Do you mean paying EU taxes for doing open-source? :)
> software that is funded by public means
What fraction of global software spending does the EU command?
I love the vision. I'm just sceptical of how seriously it's being pursued if it's another Brussels project without resource commitments.
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The EU definitely has no concept of "love". It was founded to make trade easier. All the fuzz about humane values and morals has been tacked on more or less recently, to keep up the support for it from the population. It is the literal wolf in sheep's clothing.
It was founded to make world war 3 impossible /through/ trade. By intertwining the economies of countries that considered each other hereditary enemies (Erbfeinde in German), it sought to make war too costly to consider. Humanitarian values are a core part of what became the EU.
That's one of the reasons the EU has had so many political problems with Hungary and Poland in the last decade: their drift to authoritarian forms of government (including weakening the judiciary in Poland) didn't impact trade at all. Nonetheless, it went against the humanitarian values.
I'm no EU fanboy (there's plenty to criticize), but regarding chat control and surveillance, it's important to see from which part of the EU institutions the push comes: the council. The council consists of the governments of the member states. It's not the big bad EU trying to force surveillance on the innocent countries; it's the governments trying to push domestically unpopular surveillance through the EU. The directly elected EU parliament has so far always prevented this push.
Given the current geopolitics, it doesn't look like the EU was very effective in eliminating the possibility of WWIII...
Yet because of it's existence, thousands of people have been able to love beyond their countries borders.
Wait, requiring a passport to cross a border did prevent people from forming relationships? I really don't follow. It is not like we were prisoners in our home countries before the EU was invented. And "love" has always been a huge driver of immigration, way before the EU. I even know people who sold marriage so that the buyer could immigrate. So why exactly was the EU a driver for international love?
What does "wolf in sheep's clothing" mean for you, concretely, outside of metaphors?
Well, the EU is pretty firmly in conservative hands. Ask a random EU citizen if they know that EPP is secretly leading the EU since its conception? They will likely not realize, because they fall for the piece&love propaganda. Just look at what VDL has done since she overtook the lead? Know where she comes from? Used to be defense minister in germany. Was called "Flintenuschi" back then. And now, magically, we are supposed to invest a shitload of money into military. Thats what I call a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Chat control and the never-ending drive to police our private communications.
What exactly makes you assume that the persons arguing for open source here are not the same people who has helped us defeat earlier attempts to make chat control happen?
The US was founded to not pay taxes... Come on, you know well that most things evolve and grow.
Subsidiarity has been a key building block of the EU and has failed the EU for unexpected reasons. Subsidiarity was pursued for accountability and to make the EU less centralized - decisions should be made at the lowest, most local level possible, with central authorities only stepping in when a task cannot be effectively handled locally. However, it means that here in Sweden govt bodies are all individually moving to Azure, because each one makes that local decision in their best interest. The same thing has happened all over the EU - and very few govt bodies would ever take the risk of investing in using EU cloud or data platforms. We need public procurement to help kickstart life into the Eurostack.
The EU has Schleswig-Holstein (a German state) as an example; office software and email replaced by open source alternatives. Look overthere, I would say. But overthere is a politician who actually understands what he is talking about.
I don't feel the need to provide governments/politicians with open source software who think like this: "open source – which is a public good to be freely used".
Start understanding how this works, because your American and Chinese counterparts do a better job at this.
By the way, don't come lazily asking for input. Go out proactively and find the answers yourself.
> By the way, don't come lazily asking for input. Go out proactively and find the answers yourself.
The EU very regularly asks for input on new policy initiatives, it's one of the better aspects of the legislative/policy-making process. They are asking citizens' opinions on a policy that will potentially affect them, if you tell them to f off and do it themselves then don't be surprised when you hate the policy that comes out of it.
I don't tell them to F off, I give them my citizen opinion on HN. I expect their policy to be in their best interest, and I stopped hating on that a long time ago.
> The EU very regularly asks for input on new policy initiatives, it's one of the better aspects of the legislative/policy-making process.
And then it basically ignores all the input and moves forward with policies like chat control that are widely unpopular anyway. So much for consulting the people and asking for feedback.
Yes but we gotta understand that sometimes some things the citizens suggest end up on the law. So we should just continuously fight to keep that happening.
Additionally, the EU and its administration, is a big group of people. There are probably different people or teams pushing for this idea, which all in all, is a very good one, maybe even fellow (ex) open source contributors, and the ChatControl thing, surely comes from other groups with entirely different interests.
Yes. Probably someone in power is getting kickbacks to ignore the public and specialists. Once that hurdle is settled, whatever the way it happens, saner people can re-use previous requests for opinion to guide them on better paths.
Waste some - but not too much - of your energy poking our EU orgs to the right way.
They also have a major german city (Munich) who moved to Open Source, gave up and moved back. The SH project is rather new.
A long time ago Amazon tried to acquire a good online business diapers.com and initially the owners refused. Amazon proceded to get investors or lenders to funds 200 million dollars to undercut sales of diapers.com. Fast forward they were close to bankruptcy and owners were forced to sell it off for a bargain to Amazon. Since then the price of diapers have risen to be very profitable.
The point being that any businesses that sell proprietary software will do the same to kill competition, but in the long run they will end up costing more.
The real issue is government spending is that procurement is very broken even if you would opt for buying support for open source Software. This is not a problem China nor North Korea have due to how corporations have no easy way to influence politics in those Authoritarian countries.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
I don't have anything polite to answer to this :-).
Please post your impolite answer. I don't mind :)
EU (software) industry is a dream for mediocre skilled people. Secure a job once, can't get fired, do bare minimum and never be proactive.
It is a hell for people who work hard and fast. The whole culture is geared towards dragging down anyone who is proactive and makes others look bad by being too good.
I agree with some reservations about this being completly generalised. There are still some successfull companies that rewards good players. But yes, there are very few and most of the rest are stuck coasting at a glacial pace, doing stuff that are not very competitive on so many levels it is impossible to describe succintly.
I would also argue that it is not just about the software industry. Many EU industries have become extremely uncompetitive on so many level. Even when you are ready to pay more for EU made products, it is not easy to find something that is decently competitive and not just a pale copy of better offerings.
It is clear that the EU has become too collectivist but they are still stuck blaming capitalism (just like the soviets I guess).
In France, even old big players that were once at the top and/or were (semi)public organisation have fallen very hard or have been scandalously sold piecemeal to foreign actors. The problem is not even that they are governement funded but it really is rooted in the collectivist organisation model that gives too much power to politics and very little lattitude to consumer/key actors choice.
Those systems become necessarily corrupted because they rely too much on human behaviors and most humans are fundamentally corrupt.
It is, at this point, an easily verifiable fact that software engineering jobs in Europe are en masse poorly paid relative to the equivalent positions in the US, and the majority of the EU companies that actually pay well are actually US based. This causes a lot of outflow of talent. That VC funding in Europe is atrocious is obvious to anyone who has had to go through it, and have fun letting a poor performer go from your 5 person startup.
Your polite wishful responses are frustrating to read to anyone who's had to go through this hell.
Are you saying that Europe can't compete with the US monopolies because all the good developers move to the US?
Yes that is what OP is saying and OP is correct. If you are young, talented and you have a crazy idea that might just work and if you are given the opportunity then you go to the US every-time.
Why? Because it makes sense. Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US or better yet, start your own company there and then expand in Europe after building it knowing that if you eventually sell it, you get to keep a lot of the sale price.
Talented people don't work for nothing. Motivated and ambitious people don't work for nothing.
If Europe wants to see it's own tech giants emerge, then it's needs to compensate founders and employees well. That's as simple as it is.
Unfortunately it's just not the case at the moment and until that changes, the most ambitious Europeans will continue leaving and building companies on the other side of the Atlantic.
> Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US
Have you ever talked to Europeans in your life?
Have you? I am a European business owner just FYI. I know very well how much taxes I am paying each month.
> I am a European business owner
Exactly. This sentence on its own is enough to explain your opinion, there is no need to explain anything else. Those who are against regulations are the ones who benefit from the lack of regulations.
And those who are in a dominant position generally think that they are there because they deserve it, because they are superior.
> And those who are in a dominant position generally think that they are there because they deserve it, because they are superior.
And this sentence explains your opinion. Business owner = superior = bad
You haven't responded to anything anyone has said despite the fact that a few of us seem to agree on these issues.
You basically brush aside anything that does not conform to your narrative and you also dismiss the entire report of Mario Draghi on European competitiveness: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-r... who agrees that there are many issues currently with the entire tech industry in Europe.
The facts are simple: - the EU tech scene is minuscule compared to the US tech scene - the average salary of a tech worker is higher in the US than in Europe - there are many incredible challenges in Europe that stop Europe from competing properly with the US companies - there is a clear lack of innovation and a very real risk aversion and less cash spent on R&D in Europe compared to the US - European competitiveness is lacking and decreasing as time goes on compared to the US
> Those who are against regulations are the ones who benefit from the lack of regulations.
But you are right let's keep adding more rules and regulations, I am sure the next one will do the trick and help us expand our tech sector.
That would be a great narrative except that even the European commission disagrees with you since they are now exploring the option of scaling back some part of GDPR and even delaying the new AI laws because they suddenly realized that it was a major impediment to a healthy tech sector in Europe: https://iapp.org/news/a/european-commission-proposes-signifi...
In conclusion, you are arguing in bad faith, you believe what you believe because it's easier than to face the facts that Europe dropped the ball 20 years ago and missed the boat on many new technologies and that it is now trying to play catch up and unfortunately catching up will take many decades if that ever happens.
> Business owner = superior = bad
Nope. I said that business owners are generally in a dominant position, and those who are in a dominant position generally think that they deserve it because they are superior. I didn't say "bad", I explained the bias. Everyone is biased.
> you also dismiss the entire report of Mario Draghi on European competitiveness
Maybe we can do that: I will look into Mario Draghi's report, and on your end you could have a look at what Cory Doctorow has to say about the US monopolies and antitrust policies?
So that at least we would get some amount of open-mindness out of this not-so-constructive discussion :-).
> In conclusion, you are arguing in bad faith
Yeah, I too think that you can go ** yourself :-). But I will read about Mario Draghi's opinion, maybe you can get some perspective from Doctorow. Bye!
It always amazes me that there is a subset of EU people here on HN who are so detached from reality that it makes me wonder if these same people are sitting in Brussels board making decisions. According to the sh*thole in which EU ended up, it is not completely implausible. Can't agree more with what you're saying. My experience is the same.
It always amazes me that there are people who genuinely believe that those who disagree with them are "so detached from reality".
You are a genius, everybody else is dumb. Way to go. Have you already received your Nobels?
Not yet and I'm not sure I'm gonna receive it ever but one of the most important things I learned for myself is to understand my limits. I advise you to do the same.
I hear you.
It's frustrating really to have these conversations with people who will deny the reality this much.
Instead of using this opportunity to ask the questions that everyone should be asking, which are amongst others "how can we fix this mess?" , you end up with people who think you are simply attacking the EU for spite when it couldn't be further from the truth.
It's sad but not surprising and until that changes then nothing will change.
Europeans need to start being humble again and need to get to work otherwise then we shouldn't be surprised if the US squeezes us from one side while China out-innovates us from the other side. In the meantime the EU is debating if/when it should amend it's cookie law, I am not sure if I should laugh or cry at this point.
> you end up with people who think you are simply attacking the EU
That's not what I think. But you obviously lack the level of empathy you would need to accept that I may think differently. I accept that you think the way you think: you benefit from it as a business owner.
> Instead of using this opportunity to ask the questions
Yeah, because you are so superior to everybody else that people should ask you question, and their opinions are not worth your time.
"I am the best, I am so frustrated that so many people don't recognise it".
> you benefit from it as a business owner.
When one has no response it's easier to blame the messenger. A nice cop out if I may say so.
> Yeah, because you are so superior to everybody else that people should ask you question, and their opinions are not worth your time
You are putting words in my mouth and arguing in bad faith but that's easier than making a compelling case with facts and figures.
> "I am the best, I am so frustrated that so many people don't recognise it".
If I was the only one highlighting these problems then maybe you would have point but as I have demonstrated in my other comments, the EU commission disagrees with you, the Draghi report disagrees with you and a few people here also disagree with you.
Unfortunately instead of engaging in a healthy debate and addressing the points that have been raised, you have brushed aside all the arguments and refuse to respond with anything that supports your point of view.
You decided that you were right so you are right but you don't seem to have a problem calling out other people by telling then that their opinions are not facts, while yourself ignoring all the facts presented to you. That is a clear case of double standards if I have ever seen one.
> Unfortunately instead of engaging in a healthy debate
Take it from my point of view: I said that I don't believe that Europe has no software industry at all. And I said that I don't believe that regulations are the reason Europe's software industry stuggles against the US monopolies.
What the US monopolies have been doing to maintain their position is very well documented, and has nothing to do with regulations.
You claim that it's possible to compete with a monopoly if you are not regulated, and you call it a fact. I disagree. I believe that we as a society should prevent monopolies, and the way to do that is regulations. And of course, if you prevent monopolies in Europe but play against monopolies who are allowed in other countries, it's hard.
because EU suffocates good developers, gives free roaming to mediocre ones. EU cant compete with anything US or China except making more cookie laws.
Did I use the word "all" anywhere in my comment? There are good developers in Europe. What I am saying is that there would have been even more of them had the incentives not been so lackluster. More talent seems to generally result in a greater competitive ability.
Fwiw, I have doubts that currently Europe can compete with the US at the startup level, let alone at the bigco one.
I am not trying to drag Europe down - it worries me that sophisticated complacency, overconfidence based on the achievements of previous generations, and addiction to comfort, will start eroding the very aspects that make it a great place to live at.
> 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.
The reason why there is no other Google in the US currently is because for the average person Google works fine so if you go to a VC fund and ask for USD 100M to build the next Google, you are going to have to sell them on your vision and explain how you are going to do things better and maybe just maybe someone will be crazy enough to invest.
As of this moment that has not happened but it certainly could.
However for Europe it is not the same calculations. Everyone keeps repeating that Europe is too dependent on US tech but what do we do about it? Not much.
It should be a top priority to start a competing search engine that is better than Google in Europe and it should be so good that people start using it without being forced to do so by bureaucrats in Brussels.
Instead, the risk aversion is such that no VC in Europe will ever consider that for one, it is doable and that two, it warrants such a massive investment (which it does). So the conclusion remains the same. There will be no European Google and there will be no European Apple.
> Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.
I am only repeating your words. You say big bad monopolies stop other from competing properly. I am not seeing the evidence for your claim. Anyone can start a competing OS in Europe. Is Microsoft somehow stopping everyone from doing so?
If not, why is there no European Windows or European MacOS? Is it because of these monopolies?
You put the blame of the big bad monopolies and I say that the reason these monopolies exist in the first place is because we haven't even tried to compete and therefore de facto we are giving the entire market to the US tech.
> whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.
The laws are not going to fix this issue when you have no other competing products to replace the US tech products. Is there a better search product out there than Google (despite all its flaws) for the average person? A better Windows?
Secondly, the fact that the US can "bully" Europe is simply a second order effect of the problem we are facing now. Since there are no good competitors in the critical tech sectors of Europe then the US knows there is nothing the EU can do.
That is why the "bullying" as you put it work here and it doesn't work in China which has developed it's own ecosystem of apps and tech companies and it doesn't have to bow to the US on that front.
> 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.
The average salary of tech worker in the US is higher than in Europe. Denying this fact is simply putting more blinders on.
If you want to make good products you need talent. If you want innovation you need talent and you need to have people who are motivated to start something new and usually for most people motivation takes the form of money.
Then to get talent you need to pay them properly and/or they need to understand that they will reap the rewards of their labor somehow.
That is why you see so many founders going to the US to found their company there instead of Europe. That is why some of the founders who start in Europe end up moving to the US when they get big enough because they know that there they can get the best talent and they stand to make some potentially life changing money if their company does well.
Then these founders exit their companies and what do they do next? They invest in other companies, the create their own VC fund, they foster the next unicorns and then these unicorns come knocking on Europe's doors with their product and once gain Europe has no response or a very weak response because there are no competitors or very small ones that are merely a blip on the US's radar. Then the cycle repeats again and again.
At the end of the day, if you take into account the potential risks, the legal hurdles, the lack access to capital, the potential monetary gains and the access to talent, then the conclusion is simple: The US wins every time.
Does that mean that everyone who creates a company in Europe eventually leaves or that no company get started at all? Certainly not. But since the incentives are not there, they are just less companies getting started, less unicorns being built, less access to capital, less access to talent and if you compound that year after year you end up in the situation we are in now.
And if you think that this is somehow misrepresenting the current state of Europe, it is not. Mario Draghi himself has tried to explain these things to the EU governments and made many recommendations in order to try to close the gap. 1 year later and basically nothing or almost nothing in his report has been implemented.
The EU likes to cry foul every-time a US tech giant comes in and steamrolls the competition in Europe and it thinks that just one more law, one more regulation will fix the problem.
If the EU/Europe was instead fixing the real problem which is the lack of good competitors in Europe, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because the monopolies you mention would not exists here.
I don't think I could disagree more :-).
Sorry for being ignorant but in what universe do you live? It can't be more true than it (sadly) is. Everything what has been said is factual.
Opinions are not facts.
You can disagree all you want, the facts don't lie but if you prefer to stick your head in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening, then by all means continue to do so.
This is a real problem with most Europeans honestly. Not being able to admit when things are not working. And then finally we wake up 5 years too late and the writing is on the wall.
> 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.
> 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.
The big system integrators are often pretty terrible at their jobs but it isn't the only cause.
Extremely expensive software projects in government have a common thread in every case I have first-hand experience with. The government has no consistent vision of what they want or who is the final arbiter of these decisions, and no person in the government is accountable for the outcomes. Both the requirements and responsibility are spread across so many people that for all practical purposes there are no clear requirements and no accountability.
The government software programs that run well in my experience have the organizational equivalent of a BDFL. A BDFL doesn't really exist in government; even when someone acts in that role they are often reassigned to other projects at random.
> IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.
I have been in companies getting money from government programs. It's not fraud from the government side, at least not for what I've seen.
The problem is that companies see government programs as a way to make easy money. If the government pays a company for X, that's because that company has expertise in X. So it's easy for the company to bullshit the government employees and sell them crap.
Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government. And on top of that we would want fewer regulations? If you want to be able to punish abuse from companies, you need regulations, and you need to apply them.
>Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government.
So, in well-known conditions of ineffective spending without competition government chose to waste money bypassing market? How that's not government's fault?
Not sure if you have a specific example in mind or speaking generally.
What I am saying is that generally, private companies abuse the government money when they can. Just like private companies enshittify their products to make more money. It's all about making money.
Why are governments getting bad software from companies? For the same reason users are getting bad software as well. The software industry produces money, not good software.
My point is that "private companies abuse the government money when they can" is well-known fact. Thus, government as a customer should make everything possible to buy software on competitive market basis. If govt chose easy way to blindly gave shitton of money to some company with vague acceptance criteria and got bad result in return - this is 100% govt fault.
My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots.
They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems.
If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse their dominant position by convincing (sometimes downright lying) to the government employees.
It is a very difficult position to be in. It's not about buying a car and being able to just test it. Many times the government funding goes for some kind of R&D. Which makes it easy for the experts to bullshit them and never produce anything useful.
Those who say that it's 100% the government fault should maybe try to go work there. They could truly help their country, if they could actually do better. But chances are that they can't.
I am sorry for good people genuinely trying. I understand that it is a hard problem to solve - but private companies chose their contractors and suppliers and as well facing similar issues. Somehow private companies are managing to evaluate results and found accountable persons while governments are known for being very undemanding customers.
"We have tried hard, but failed" is still failure despite any good will. Good will with courage and having skills with competence are very different things and often govt employees have neither because otherwise they will be more successful using this skillset in private companies.
> but private companies
Two things:
* The government is often in the situation where they want to fund some effort, like R&D. Say China is way ahead of the US in drone technology, and the US wants to catch up because that's a risk (we see how drones are used in the military now). So someone will have money to spend on US companies who will do everything they can to get as much money as possible. How can the government employee know which company is abusing? First they are all abusing, and second they are all failing already (otherwise the government wouldn't be in this situation where they need to fund them). This is a very hard problem.
* When it is about buying e.g. an IT solution for the company, I have seen private companies fail just as much as governments. McKinsey and their friends do the same bullshit to everybody, be it government or private companies. Don't think that private companies don't waste money. It's just that when it is the government, it is transparent and we like to complain about the government.
> 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).
That seems like a lot of words to basically just admit that Europe’s regulations are anti-competitive.
I especially enjoyed reading the logical fallacy of drone companies that are so small/non-existent that DJI cannot be banned quickly, but those same companies mysteriously have enough money to bribe politicians for a ban (and the much bigger DJI can’t outbid them).
Also: You wrote in a previous comment that nobody can compete with Apple due to lack of antitrust regulation:
> > 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.
But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?
Wow, that's a lot of bad faith. I'll try once, and once only:
There has been a ton of money thrown at US drone companies in the last 10 years. A TON. From the government and from VCs. It's not that those companies are so small or non-existent: it's just that consumers do not buy their products. Which is why most drone companies have conveniently pivoted to the military now. And with the military funding, they have money.
And they have been lobbying A LOT to ban DJI, and they are winning that fight. But that does not mean that the consumers want to buy their US drones. DJI drones are still vastly cheaper and better, and professional users (including US government entities) rely on DJI. So much that it is unreasonable to just ban all existing DJI hardware. It has to come progressively so that those consumers can get used to paying a lot more to get worse drones.
There is no question here: without regulations, NOBODY can REMOTELY compete against DJI, period. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the drone industry.
> But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?
Huawei and TikTok and DJI are Chinese companies. US people never forget to mention that they don't exactly play by the same rules (e.g. they can grow in their protected market until they reach a size where they can try in the rest of the world). US companies cannot do that (try to build a US smartphone manufacturer and compete with Apple in the US, just for fun).
But in those very rare situations where US companies get competition (and that will happen more and more from China), and those US companies suddenly find themselves in the weaker position, the VERY FIRST thing they want is more regulations.
"When I win, that's because I am the best. When I lose, that's because the rules are against me". You think Europe sucks because their tech companies lose against the US? Have fun comparing the US to China then :-).
What is a European made operating system I can purchase for my computer?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049
Do they have any paid consumer offerings, with consumer support?
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.
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.
> I don't care about that as a consumer.
Until this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075. Or, worse, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 or this 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://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-h...
and much more. Have you tried using search?
This all seems like enterprise solutions. As a consumer, I shouldn't have to look at a list of consultants, as if I was trying to find support for a heavy industrial machine.
FLOSS or non-FLOSS, there is no real European consumer offering for an operating system. That should be the starting point for people who want a thriving European IT industry.
It could very well be based on Linux or whatever. But consumers need support. They need a phone numbers they can call and an e-mail addresses they can write to.
Focusing on consumers instead of corporate or academia is how Apple became so successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuxedo_Computers
Very good example!
But this is US operating system, Linux trademark is registered to US citizen(Linus T.), it is being mainly developed by US companies and complies with US sanction laws.
> Linux trademark
doesn't matter. You can't close it or prohibit its usage or forking.
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.
It's hard to be really anti-competitive when you compete with trillion-dollar megacorps, https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
> 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.
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)
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.
> 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.
> 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!
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.
I'm confused with the disconnect here, so you simultaneously believe that:
- government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)
AND
- government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?
> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)
That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?
> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?
The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.
You're talking past my criticism and haven't addressed the core logic flaw in your argument.
If government is competent enough to build its own software solutions (and these creations would be valuable enough that open sourcing them would create opportunities for startups in the private sector as you've claimed!)...then they are also competent enough to buy the correct software product from a European private company.
If they cannot be trusted to buy the right software for themselves without the process being corrupted, they sure as hell can't be trusted to BUILD that software from the ground up (a much harder task!).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is another option, to develop pan-european software as it has been done in other areas such as aerospace.
As long as you define pan-europe as like 5 countries.
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://www.igalia.com/
- https://deuxfleurs.fr/
- https://www.chatons.org/
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).
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.
It’d be a shame if MS was compelled by the current US administration to shutdown EU users of CoPilot/365/whatever. Whole agencies within governments lose all of their data and can barely function.
A move to alternatives is an imperative! I hope it works for them and stimulates their tech sector.
As a Linux guy for many a year, I've often said that going all-in on Microsoft tech stacks is like painting yourself into a corner. It all looks like it's going fine until you decide that you want to leave the room.
It'd be a shame if an asteroid struck earth tomorrow as well.
But given limited resources, we tend not to devote a ton of resources to every possible tail risk since there's millions of them.
Europe should focus on building domestic tech capacity for other reasons (our own future prosperity being one), but being worried about Microsoft Word access over some silly news headlines is not one of them.
Every single productivity suite can open/modify word docs and powerpoints and excel formats. This is not a huge issue.
Didn’t the International Criminal Court went through a test run of this which shows it’s at least feasible [0].
While MS didn’t cut off the whole organization and try to soften the language around what they did, it seems they could be compelled to do so under more strict executive sanctions.
I don’t think an entire institution would suddenly come crashing to its knees but it would certainly be a pressing problem to be facing if the US or some other state actor was also mounting some other form of pressure or attack.
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/international_crimina...
The US doesnt recognize many of the bodies you would use as enforcement against aggressive action on EU bought US products. Or for some it does, it gives itself immunity from them like the ICJ.
Also considering the US's unilateral and often violent and aggressive and illegal way of doing things, especially with this administration, I think we're a bit past hypothetical meteor-like hypotheticals.
At this point any usage of destructive leverage the USA has over Europe should be seen as a real possibility, if not a likely one, when it comes to negotiation with or the expansionist desires of the USA.
Again, pulling Microsoft Office from the EU would be an extremely minor nuisance (libre office can open the same formats) at the expense of the US's national champion ever being used by any country outside the US ever again.
This is never going to happen (killing Microsoft would not be seen favorably by anyone in the current or future administration) and even if this magically did happen, it would barely cause a blip in the (lack of) productivity in the EU's performative planning meetings about future meetings where nothing happens.
On the list of things to worry about I would put this dead last.
This performative, melodramatic nonsense you're spewing here is doing us no good when ultimately our biggest threat is in the east, which you will happily continue ignoring as they eat our private sector and tax base.
"Orange man bad" is not a delusion I want to see spread any further in Europe. Turn off the news and start thinking rationally again please.
Considering he's openly discussing annexing Greenland, we're a bit past dishonest "orange man bad" claims.
The US Implemented sanctions on the ICJ and they have to emergency migrate out of their O365 tenant. The US also recently stationed the former EU commissioner who was the architect of the Digital Markets Act.
So while unlikely, it is not a huge jump for the Trump administration to try sanctioning EU institutions they don't like.
How many tech people deep into open source are also going to be able to build convincing cases for governments? More importantly, to be more convincing than the sales people of MS/Amazon/Google who also have financial incentives to give away?
I don't think you'll get a complete switch here, this is looking more like "let's cultivate a backup option in case they really do start turning stuff off"
In the same way Poetin accelerated the move from his own fossil fuels to renewable energy, Trump is accelerating the move to non-US based technology. At least in my surroundings, "non-US based company" is a big plus in the purchasing process.
Yes, I think anyone with common sense is thinking that way these days. He's going to inflict huge damage on the US economy.
They are accelerating from snail speed to turtle speed.
I don't think anybody understand how bad it really is. Forget about Greenland. Trump can say "give me Germany or I'll shutdown Azure ID" and we will have to give him Germany. At this point we are just praying that neither him or any of his hawks realize this.
I agree that many countries are indeed very vulnerable to this, but you somehow managed to overstate the case by some orders of magnitude.
Silicon Valley flipping the switch on a country would sure cause short-term chaos and longer-term significant inconvenience. But when push comes to shove, bureaucracy gets moved aside, creative workarounds pop up, and people make do, somehow. We've seen that happen during COVID-19 lockdowns.
And after some time, the boycotted regions will find themselves with a healthy independent software industry. Silicon Valley's global impact would be greatly reduced, because any mildly sensible country would want to reduce its exposure and some serious competition will finally get traction.
I think the hawks realize all this. Though it's of course impossible to predict what the Chaos Monkey in Chief will do.
Maybe not that bad, but it does definitely give the US a major advantage diplomatically
My view is that there is commodity software and niche/specialized software. You find commercial solutions for both. But OSS is great for commodity software.
Everything becomes a commodity eventually. There's a lot of niche software that then goes mainstream, gets imitated by others, and becomes important to a wide range of sectors. A lot of that software usually ends up with very decent OSS alternatives. If it's worth having in OSS software form, usually somebody ends up working on it.
A lot of OSS projects are already leaning heavily on contributions from individuals and companies inside the EU. That's a good thing for the EU and something to stimulate and build on.
What the EU should do is keep an eye out for commodity software where it relies on non eu commercial software. Identify key areas where that is risky, e.g. communication software, IOT, or finance. And then stimulate members to switch to OSS alternatives if they exist and invest in the creation/support of such alternatives if they are important. OSS software doesn't just create itself, it needs backing from companies which could use the support in the form of grants.
That could include support for non EU OSS projects. There's nothing wrong with OSS from abroad. As long as this software is properly governed and vital to the EU, the EU should ensure those projects are healthy and future proofed. It should ensure local software companies get the support they need to do the right things here. This should ensure projects that are important don't run out of funding. And the EU can stimulate OSS development into strategic new areas with incentives. And make sure that EU companies that back this are successful internationally. This turns the tables on other countries maybe depending more on EU sourced software. The EU doesn't have to follow; it can lead.
We'll see how it goes this time.
If they once again go for creating their own forks, instead of financing development of existing software then I'll know the initiative failed.
Also imho their 'questions' mentioned in the comment kinda feel like they have answer baked in - like it's foregone conclusion.
Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.
> Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.
I think at this point we're beyond that, we already have these programs and they seem to be expanding. EU-STF is one such example, then there are other organizations supported by the EU in various ways, that also helps fund OSS, like NLnet Foundation.
Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"? If we leave aside all of the bureaucratic bs, political connections and corruption when it comes to obtaining these funds (for the most cases), how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?
50K EUR is OK to start. There's no point in trying to outspend the top private firms.
Like many other people said there are already thousands of unpaid volunteers doing quality work.
If the EU wants "domestic" stuff they need to mandate/incentivize it. It's not like if shit hits the fan the local employees cannot run the local stuff of non-EU companies. (Therefore the important thing is to have full control locally, no outside-EU kill switches allowed - eg. what Uber had and used.)
50k EUR is a salary that only someone coming fresh out of the University will accept and only someone who has no other choice, e.g. someone not quite competitive on the market. If you want to make a difference then this is not the pool of people you're looking for.
> Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"?
Yes, they currently fund people working full-time on contributing to FOSOS. If that's no "beyond decency", I don't know what is. Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?
> how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?
Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid. Once you reach a certain level of income so you're financially safe, increasing that generally doesn't increase your happiness that much, so most of us focus on being fulfilled in other ways, mainly about caring about the work we do.
As someone who used to work full-time in FOSS, it is a great feeling to contribute to something not just because it pays, but because it actually improves something in real life. I can't speak for everyone, but this is still mostly why I do FOSS.
I think fundamentally there seems to be a difference between "European FOSS" and "American FOSS" where the latter focuses more on basically CV-driven FOSS projects, with the hope of the FOSS leading to you somehow getting paid more in some for-profit company. While European FOSS seems to mainly be concerned about making things sustainable, grow a healthy community, and remaining FOSS long-term.
> Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?
No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant since serious products of larger scale (impact) necessitates more than a single expert.
How do you build an alternative cloud or alternative database or alternative AI model with a 50k grant? Or how do you attract 10, 15 maybe 20 people to work on it? How much money do you consider would be enough for these people to be "financially safe".
> Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid.
Most? I believe not. Most experts in the field are working for a beyond average salary and not for the FOSS projects. You need a leverage to attract those people to leave their jobs to contribute to something bigger (in terms of society) and yet this leverage is, as you say, "experts care about what we work with, not how much we get paid". This is laughable and at the same time worrying because you're genuinely convinced that this is an attitude everyone should follow. Such an ignorant view, sorry.
> No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant
Who said you have to? Software is not a "winner takes all", you can solve a niche problem, get paid OK for it, and have a better standard of living than the average person in your country. This is widespread in Europe already, not sure why it's so foreign to so many.
I'm sorry, but that you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is, but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.
Lol, imagine relying on underpaid volunteers in mission-critical software infrastructure. How about actually giving good encouraged people pay they deserve?
> Lol, imagine relying on underpaid volunteers in mission-critical software infrastructure
Why would anyone imagine that, when no one has suggested that?? How about coming up with arguments against something, if you're against it, rather arguing against some imaginary point no one made.
Discussion around grants here is the critics of insufficiency of EU grants to fund proper alternative software supply chain.
"imagine" is just ironical note for what is happenning in reality(you are advocating for (subjectively) improper financing model which expects to provide over-the-market quality with under-the-market cost)
Did you miss the topic that is being discussed, as in:
> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.
> you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is
No, I have never done that and I couldn't have done it because of a very simple reason - there was no market at the time I was starting with my profession and what I am still doing today is a direct consequence of what I found appealing most at that time and during my Uni days - bleeding edge computer science and computer engineering coupled with the bleeding edge hardware.
> but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.
You live in a fantasy world. And the only issue I have with that is that you spread your claims as something that is (EU) universally true, which is not. Please leave your utopistic comments elsewhere and not on this topic where it's relevant to stay objective.
> Please leave your utopistic comments elsewhere and not on this topic where it's relevant to stay objective.
There is no objectiveness in cultural assessment. They didn't express their opinion as something that is universally true, or at least I wasn't able to read it that way.
They did because they imposed their opinion in such a way that my opinion on the subject is trying to be made as something marginal or not usual, and theirs, consequentially, as something more universal. Therefore, I disagree.
I get your pain point, but the stated objective is "Sovereignty" so having a fully localized OSS ecosystem that is anchored (can't be bought or moved) and operates independent of outsider (US, China, Russia, ...) upstream is in that case non negotiable.
Whether the EU will ever produce the necessary public investment to achieve this remains an open question.
> they once again go for creating their own forks, instead of financing development of existing software then I'll know the initiative failed.
Once again? When did they do that? They have been funding various open source projects (like VLC, Libre Office) for quite a while:
I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one. It failed horrendously.
> I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one
Yes, with all their configs, packages and certifications that were needed. Not really a problem.
> It failed horrendously
Because Microsoft came in, promised to relocate their HQ to Munich, and surprise, it was decided to come back to Windows. This was after reports found that although it took longer than expected, adoption was widespread (only a small minority of desktops remained on Windows for the few Windows specific apps they had), things were working well, user happyness was good, stability was good, and tons of taxpayer money had been saved.
Things like LiMux, I guess
Was that really a fork, or just a distribution with all the configs and packages that Munich wanted and needed?
I don't know details, but my guess is was more the latter.
The problem is that instead of having people assigned to working with Debian to make Debian useful in a government setting, they just did their own fork/distribution. Yes, the former involves a lot of Debian politics and isn't as fast because other Debian members might insist on proper/more generic solutions.
If the objective is "Sovereignty", as clearly stated in the context, then Open Source is potentially a good strategy, but in itself not sufficient. E.g. Switching from Windows Server to RHEL gives you an Open Source initiative, but leaves you (arguably less, but still) dependent on the US.
For Open Source to work "Sovereign" you need to establish an local independent EU maintenance, development and distribution ecosystem for the specific packages that can operate autonomously and independent of upstream.
something like a European GitHub you mean? (didn't read the article)
No, I mean an entire EU software ecosystem that can keep the lights on even under extreme sanctions from US (or Russia, or China, but we are in practice mostly dependent on US). You can have your local GitHub mirror, but if projects are forced to stop exporting to and collaborating with EU developers, who in the EU will maintain and further develop the now isolated EU codebases?
It's less than two hundred words long, I promise you it's not going to take very long to read
I feel like now, more than ever, the time is right for the EU's move to open-source to succeed.
Linux Desktop is now simply better than Windows, by far. Open office is good. There are many high-quality, commercially supported open-source products available now, developed by full-time, highly talented engineers.
There's every chance that this will work & breaking up oligopolies is great for everyone, not just Europe.
I wrote about this recently if you're interested: https://budibase.com/blog/updates/eu-digital-sovereignty-and...
Don't know if they will get valuable feedbacks but yes, what is needed as always is money. Ever by financing projects or buying solutions that would develop them.
As said by someone else, not do the usual wasteful:
- Create a big global project with a tender directed at bullshit consulting companies and big groups. - Giving millions/billions to recreate a crappy version of something instead of pushing existing solutions.
Also, I have the feeling that an important point is that "open source" software is Open Source, and the proper solution is to fund good OSS software or stacks wherever they come from and not be short sighted of taking to much care of the dev or project location. Even if obviously it would be better that money goes to European devs)
Yep. If the EU wants to direct money to this "problem" then they need to mandate that companies have a "domestic" fallback vendor.
I find it endlessly fascinating how governments always get lost in the symptoms of the problems at hand instead of addressing the underlying problem itself.
The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market, etc).
The lack of domestic EU software/hardware products sits entirely downstream of that issue. The open source community will not magically solve this problem for them.
What if we stopped wasting time on anything that is not solving the core issue. The symptoms will take care of themselves after you solve the disease.
How is this not solving the core issue? You need to do both. Ensure the software is made (pay devs), and if you're funding this, make sure it is licensed as a public good (free, oss).
The problem with putting on band-aids over core structural issues is the government projects are going to run into the same fragmentation issues that private sector ones have. Open source is not a magic wand you can wave to fix that.
You only need to the solve the core issue. Unless you believe humans born on the European continent are inherently less intelligent or motivated than those born on American soil, then quite literally the problem will solve itself.
All humans are the same species and respond to the same incentives. Just create similar incentives here and stop trying to top-down solve all the symptoms with bandaids after the fact. It just doesn't work.
Name me one example of EU government created software that people have ever chosen to use voluntarily. Or heck, even one that people are forced to use but isn't downright terrible compared to a private alternative.
You said -
> The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market…
Yes incentives matter. They are not the only factor when figuring out the outcome. Competitive structures, and the type of good being traded has a bearing as well.
Software is not like physical goods. Given the marginal costs of making additional units of software is effectively nil, and that network effects tend to lock users in, you will see the rise of behemoths that shrug off competition.
You see more competition when it comes to startups than a stalwart like Excel or word.
I can of course be wrong - but For major daily drivers type software (Gmail, word, etc.) , the incumbents aren’t going to be moved by simply increasing competition.
I think you are just decribing one factor that caused the problem. There is many a detailed analysis, the most respected being the one by Draghi.
Previously this also wasn't much of a problem. The US tech companies were international companies and less "US" companies. Now they aligned themselves with the US regime and are e.g. a supply chain vulnerability and properly taxing them causes issues in national defence (via Ukraine). I for one did not anticipate this own-goal w.r.t. Europe by the US.
They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape. It's impossible to start a tech business under the amount of bureaucracy they throw at you.
I'd love to give it a go, but to get even started I have to pay accountants, banks, lawyers, pre-taxes, etc before I even have made a single cent.
Draghi report made it abundantly clear that this is the big issue. Despite being outwardly unified, EU market is horribly fractured, with regulations building on top of EU standards in almost every state and every area of business.
Then there are high energy costs, high salary costs, limited mobility of the workforce (partly due to ongoing housing crisis), entrenched overseas competition that doesn't have to deal with same challenges.
Together, these add to a deadly mix. Paradoxically, software is less affected than other industries. But even here it's bad.
> They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape.
These are not the main obstacles. US monopolies are. See this article: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
Is it? If you're not interested in limited liability it's 85 euros to file for a company. If you do want limited liability, you have to visit a notary to found, but even that's only like 500 euros. Sure, you have to do your taxes every year and that's annoying, but it's not _that_ hard.
> you have to visit a notary to found
Why is that even necessary in the first place? Thats what people hate about bureaucracy. Why can't we just submit a form somewhere from home and someone looks over it from a queue. In the meantime you are allowed to start your business already. Bad process here. No process is 100% times better. An async one with forgiveness is getting you 80% there.
What kind of business would you like to run that it needs to be established today and cannot wait a few weeks? There are many repercussions, social security and tax wise. Do you expect a government to keep up with a free-for-all form that creates companies ?
What's stopping you from just running your business while waiting before the notary has time for you?
It's ultimately the same thing; if in your async queue system your application was denied you'd still be liable.
These are fair points but the weight of their impact is a misconception. Times and times again, lower capital and investment risk aversion are shown to be the limiting factors.
As a South American, it’s striking to see how the current U.S. administration has forced other countries to confront the risks of not having their own digital infrastructure.
And this isn’t just about software or the cloud. What happens if tomorrow the U.S. forbids Apple from selling iPhones outside its borders? Or starts requiring built-in backdoors or kill switchs?
Scenarios like these raise a deeper question: could this push the most powerful players, the US, EU, China, and India to eventually rebuild entire technology stacks from scratch in the name of self preservation?
Could this mean the end of a globalized world?
CALEA has given the FBI backdoor access to all telecom traffic for the past 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
China is on the path to doing just that, and I expect the heads of the government (or at least the people behind the scenes) in both EU and India consider this.
The US has, unfortunately, proven to be a very unreliable partner.
The problem isn’t only the U.S. China is also unreliable, and Russia as well. Just look at what happened to the EU with its dependence on Russian gas: once the war in Ukraine started, that dependency immediately turned into a major vulnerability.
I don't disagree.
From my point of view, we (europeans) should focus on our collective well-being and sovereignty.
Unfortunately it feels that at times, we find more to split with each other than the rest of the world.
> Could this mean the end of a globalized world?
That's the goal of the nationalists, which includes the current US administration and many in business and prominently in SV. Why do they want to sacrifice their own wealth, and freedom and peace worldwide? It's an important question.
Hopefully it just means a world with redundant important production chains, rather than an end of all globalization.
The first comment on the link is much more helpful than the article
https://lwn.net/Articles/1053131/
(yes it seems that comments are subarticles)
Did people here see the Cory Doctorow thing a few days back about DMCA and "Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive"? https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition Basically without open source, the rest of the world will have to keep paying a tithe to American companies, and hence tax in the USA.
One of the most useful steps would be to support codeforges like Github on European soil, and development of the ForgeFed project, so that those forges can talk to each other.
Codeberg and Forjeo have a foundation in Germany
And sourcehut in the Netherlands!
There was a grant in 2023 which was supported by the European Comission. So I think the topic itself isn't entirely unknown. https://nlnet.nl/project/Forgejo/
From https://nlnet.nl/fediversity
> We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro's — which should get you on your way.
Am I the only one to think this is completely ridiculous amount of money?
So, you want me to leave my very well paid job to innovate for the sake of EU competitiveness but you don't to invest more than 50k EUR (max grant). And as an individual you don't even stand a chance so this 50k EUR has to be distributed across several people. Did I get this right?
Ah, and I almost forgot about the double standards ... the same EU commission is on a spending spree when it comes to the development of a fkn EU website which you use to apply for these funds. Each Brussels-based developer doing that very innovative work is paid ~100k EUR. What a blasphemy.
No, they don't want to you leave your very well paid job for this grant, they want to chuck a few bounties at some FOSS projects and pay for some people to attend hackathons or conferences if they can fill in a form giving sufficiently compelling reasons. How dare they!
You're missing my point. "Chucking in a few bounties" is very different from what this topic is about. Let me spell it out for you once again:
> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.
The point you expressed was indignation at FOSS bounties paid by the Fediversity project out of a fraction of a single EUR 3m EU grant their consortium won being less than the full time salary of EU devs.
If you were trying to more widely insinuate that this third party dosing out small-to-modest incentives to individuals to do a bit of hacking on Fediverse stuff was the only thing the EU was doing to support Open Source or represented some sort of ceiling on the amounts EU-funded projects working on FOSS could pay their developers, it would be even more wrong.
Plenty of valid criticisms of the EU's cyber non-dependence strategy or the detail of grant and equity funding programmes for research and building stuff and how they weight FOSS (that's part of the reason for the consultation!) but you need to have the slightest idea what exists to get into those...
I took the Fediversity project as an example because it was mentioned above in the comment and not an example of something I wanted to specifically point it. Truth to be told 90% of other EU funds are similar if not the same in the context of grants, and no, I don't find it sufficient, and no, I don't think such strategy will yield anything worth the salt. You will keep the developers have fun with their projects but something worthwhile? Forget. It doesn't exist at such minuscule scale.
The only bigger denominator in terms of funds is Horizon which is completely political, and not worth mentioning at all, if that's what you wanted to suggest. It also operates under minuscule scale in terms of grants (up to 2.5M over 2 years) or funding (1-30M). No possibility for seed rounds which implies you already must be in the business and already have an almost viable product ready to deploy to the market tomorrow (EU bureaucracy calls it TRL6-8). This is all ridiculous and shows how detached from reality people making decisions there are. They even hire "experts" to weigh your application for which you know ... ta-da ... have to hire yet another "expert" to write that application for you. 100s of pages to prove your idea worthy. Once a year. World innovation runs at much much higher pace.
So, sure the R&D environment in EU is built on a very fertile ground and Brussels is doing their best to "call for an evidence" because open-source software is going to save the economy??? Right.
I'm currently a participant under a NLNet grant. I'm unemployed at the moment so getting a trickle of 1-2K of donation money per month working on my passion project is a pretty decent proposition.
You can also be a participant alongside your well paid job, because once the memorandum of understanding is signed you have a year to work through the proposal at your own pace, during weekends or moonlighting.
I don't doubt that at all and I'm glad for anyone who is managing to make some money from their open-source contributions, even more so in today's age where market is so volatile. I am being empathetic for that cause. But the point I am rather trying to convey is that this is not the strategy that will converge to something substantial that will make EU more competitive on global landscape.
I don't know how I could convince you, or anyone that's educated under the American capitalist system, that working for a commons is better in aggregate than relying on companies to pay for innovation and then keeping it a secret. "Competitive" is a slur in my opinion, I'd rather my work be "useful".
Dystopian. You're missing some fundamental understanding how economics work but to each his own. Respectfully.
Working on things that make you happy instead of pushing the agenda of your employers, which in majority is unethical, immoral, or plainly unhealthy, is dystopian? It sounds utopian to me. :)
So many strategies and initiatives, so little action.
From my experience, people against open source often have buyers remorse. They often paid egregious sums of money for proprietary software that, to be fair, works well and includes enterprise support. When the same someone encounters the same solution but free and open source, they start rationalizing. The difference is mainly marketing, where open source projects have little to no marketing budget and are largely denied by market makers. Proprietary solutions can afford the seminars, thousands of dollars a week on ads, and other perks which increase discovery.
The moral of the story is to be careful listening to people actively tarnishing open source as they are a crowd of bitter people. A tell-tale sign is that they don't talk about the benefits of proprietary technologies such as the level of customer support and technical expertise that comes with the bill and instead only bash on open source.
"Nobody" is against open source.
People are against bad products, high maintenance, high complexity... .. or against working for free without much reward.
It would be great if there was a way for humanity to have and develop free open source software but it's not obvious how to do it well.
Opensource is a bit more complex than being a "public good". They're focusing on the low cost as a jump starting point, which make me doubt their sincerity/understanding about managing that relationship healthily.
Has the EU commission still not understood that becoming a paid-by Washington lobby group, does not work for Europeans? So, why are they so slow in pushing into action here? Rather than money going into US corporations, have EU citizens work on specific open source projects, many of them, with clear goals. Simple example: libreoffice - improve interfacing with it. ALL governments, universities etc... would benefit from this. Not only in the EU but elsewhere too. I don't understand this insane slowness here, unless lobbyists run Brussels already.
This sounds more negative than I want it to, but it seems like this is missing the forest for the trees. There's absolutely a real problem here and I am fully supportive of projects seeking to address this.
Governments around the world throw public money at private enterprise to solve all of their IT problems. This sounds good, I guess, to the Americans in the room. Until recently the US actually had a great number of "open source" projects -- NASA, NOAA, come to mind (the weather satellites are still going). Open projects, owned by the people -- this is the obviously correct way to do things. You can engage the business sector when it makes sense to do so, but a country shouldn't be run by -- be dependent on -- a Microsoft, or a PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Then they delete the production database and write the people a post mortem about how they'll improve for next time. Then they profit from war crimes that your government even quietly admits are a bad thing occasionally. Then they <if you aren't aware of the UK post office scandal, you should be>.
"Open source" isn't a solution. Free software would be a better look. But the entire world is completely dependent on IT systems and goverments don't employ enough software developers. Not "developers" to "refresh" the UI again, not Autodesk certified Call of Duty Black Ops 9 Micopilot Copilot 666 developers -- normal boring software developers -- public servants.
Make it dull. It's your people you're fucking with. Flashy app bad, boring UI good -- it's a tax return.
The thing that should be happening is serious public sector software development. By the people, for the people. Keep it in-house. I shouldn't have to say to keep it open. It belongs to the people.
I feel bad saying this as open source software developer, but what EU needs is in-house produced x86 compatible cpu to run the software they want as long as they want.
I see some people donating money to open source. I'm currently discussing with my bookkeeper but she says it's all personal, so I pay income tax (in the Netherlands) and then I can donate. Is this really true? Why can't I just give some money to the devs that develop the software I use in my business, as a business? It makes it twice as expensive.
I think I'll use this opportunity to piggyback my opinion about [1] on my response to this call for evidence.
[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
I consider much bigger problem dependence on foreign ecosystems and data storages. This is of course useful but I would consider much more efficient some kind of incentives to build domestic alternative to ms office cloud solution which basically run all corps.
I read the call for evidence. I have a silly question: Where does one go to supply that evidence?
I found it!
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
You need an EU account though. I got one and I'm an American so it shouldn't be too tough.
I'm going to send them my wishlist to see what happens. I'm not optimistic about this, but I'm not pessimistic either and am very curious to see what happens.
Can we see your wishlist?
Maybe they should start by outlawing Google Play Integrity then. This will immediately make FOSS Android phones more useful in Europe.
The same commission that let every megaco bribe EU officials including the head of eu?
Sometimes I wonder where does the hypocrisy ends.
What open source leaders can help them? For example, does Linus Torvalds still feel connected to Europe?
If I was better versed in writing and happened to be someone relevant, at the very least I’d support the viewpoint that open source is good for preventing takeovers and software dependencies turning hostile (e.g. Valkey and OpenSearch at least existing) and preventing being held financially hostage in times of uncertainty (e.g. many Linux server side distros are free and FOSS relational DBs won’t bankrupt you).
Yet perhaps far too often people opt for Windows Server or SQL Server or Oracle DB, or other software like that - if you have a good reason to use them, sure, go ahead, but that shouldn’t be your default. I don’t want my tax money to be wasted so much when for at least a significant amount of projects out there, alternatives exist.
I’ve literally heard people say in person that “we need paid support” even when they don’t and while I’m not sure what lead to that behavior of trying to shift blame and cover your own asses, but cut it out. If you need support so bad, get an org for FOSS projects or contribute directly in exchange for it!
This also has implications on development that you normally don't think about - I have personally suffered due to having to use a shared Oracle DB for development (one dev breaking something breaks it for everyone) and not being able to easily setup containers especially because Oracle XE doesn't have feature parity and refuses to run the migrations. Just fucking use PostgreSQL, or even MariaDB.
Same goes for file formats, it made me quite angry when my university mandated that I use Microsoft Office for writing my bachelor's and master's papers, when LibreOffice is mostly good enough (only caveat was the references tracking being kind of jank, but in large part due to the university having very specific requirements in regards to how the references have to be formatted; personally I'd just prefer thesis.md/LaTeX/whatever but I guess we can't have everything). Same for Windows on pretty much all the computers. My country is already poor as shit, we might as well just acknowledge that and stop overpaying for literally everything to greedy orgs. They didn't even buy local and use something like OnlyOffice or paid someone that provides managed Nextcloud hosting or whatever.
Hopefully they can throw a couple of bucks at the foss things underpinning the internet.
They do, and have been for a while now.
https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/
https://nlnet.nl/project/ currently listing 1566 foss projects that have received financial support
Very weird to see written "EU open-source sector", because any medium or large open-source project is international and includes many EU contributors.
I don't think of GNU as an "US" open-source project, nor of Linux as a "Finnish" open-source project. That's just laughable.
Here is what I submitted:
I am a well known FOSS developer.
At one point code I had written protected half the passwords on the entire Internet, and today around a quarter of all HTTP(S) traffic on the internet goes through software I have written ("Varnish").
That, and the fata morgana of retirement shimmering on my horizon, makes it my considered opinion that FOSS is the gift EU does not deserve, and runs a great risk of destroying on first contact.
However, closed source as we know it, is not compatible with an open, free and fair society, so I am more than aboard with the EU's long overdue recognition of FOSS as the way forward and out of the grubby, greedy claws of "Big Tech" and their endless enshitification of our lives.
The kind of FOSS software relevant to this discussion is usually rock steady and dependable in ways much commercial closed software, precisely because of the secrecy, can never be or become.
But the human communities which produces the FOSS software are fragile, fractious, and as a general rule, composed of people who may be great programmers, but who have absolutely no experience, and no interest, in fostering and stewarding stable human communities.
This is literally why there are who knows how many, different "distributions" of the Linux operating system, "window managers", "web-site frameworks" and programming languages.
Therefore the absolutely most important thing for EU to understand about FOSS, is that it probably is as close to the "ideal market", in the sense of economic theories, as anything will ever come: It literally costs nothing to become a competitor.
But that also means that if the EU member countries were to pick, no matter how fair and competently, a set of FOSS software to standardize on, and pour money into the people behind it, to provide the necessary resources to support and sustain the need for IT systems, for all the administrations in the EU countries, that software would instantly stop being FOSS - no matter what words the license might contain, because it would no longer be part of the market.
In other words: EU cannot "switch to FOSS", it would no longer be FOSS if EU did.
At the most fundamental level, the EU has three options:
1. Pick and bless a set of winners, consisting of:
a) Operating system, portable to any reasonable computer architecture. b) Text-processing, suitable for tasks up to a book. c) Spreadsheet d) Email client. e) Web Browser f) Accounting software, suitable for small organizations.
and fund organizations to maintain, develop and support the software for the future as open source, turning that software into infrastructure like water, power and electricity, free for all, individuals, startups and established companies alike, to use and benefit from.
2. Continuously develop/pick, bless and meticulously enforce open standards of interoperability, and then "let the competition loose".
3. Both. By providing a free baseline and de-facto reference implementations for the open standards, "the market" will be free to innovate, improve and compete, but cannot (re)create walled gardens.
To everybody, me included, option two seems the ideologically "pure" choice, because we have all been brought to believe that "governments should not pick winners".
But governments have always picked winners. Today all of EU has 230VAC electrical grids, because EU picked that as a winner, thereby leveling the market to everybody's benefit.
Therefore I will argue, that the wise choice for EU is option three.
First, it will be incredibly cheap, as in just tens of millions of Euro per year, to provide all EU citizens with a free and trustworthy software platform to run on their computers.
Second, it can be done incredibly fast: From EU makes the decision, the first version can be release in a matter of months, if not weeks.
Third, it will guarantee interoperability of data.
Sincerely,
Poul-Henning Kamp
"It literally costs nothing to become a competitor"
but
"The new strategy will address the economic and political importance of open source, as a crucial contribution to a strategic framework for EU technological sovereignty, competitiveness and cybersecurity." (as per the call document)
This means OSS, but with an ecosystem that does NOT rely on anything non-EU for development, maintenance and distribution. This brings the price from "literally costs nothing" to hundreds of millions Euro.
Evidence of what? Of the existence of open source? Of "open source" what? Software? Hardware? Its usage? The the communities behind various open source projects?
All the European Commission is interested in is getting software cheaper or for free.
If they were truly interested in freeing themselves from non-EU software, thereby preventing potential interference from (mostly) the US, they wouldn’t have chosen the path of soften the GDPR - that move mainly made the big tech happier.
And don’t even get me started with Chat Control.
Not quite. Harshness of regulations like GDPR is perhaps the primary reason why European tech entrepreneurs overwhelmingly choose to emigrate to the US when given choice.
> Harshness of regulations like GDPR is perhaps the primary reason why European tech entrepreneurs choose to emigrate to the US when given choice.
What are those harshnesses?
70 propositions from the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, written in part by yours truly (in early 2025, i.e. before the "Trump effect" was in full force) and published by the Commission in July 2025:
https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/11798...
The document is also known as "The “Open Source Way to EU Digital Sovereignty & Competitiveness” thematic roadmap".
Earlier discussion (in French): https://linuxfr.org/news/la-commission-europeenne-publie-une...
---
Here is the complete list of proposals from the roadmap, translated into English and organised by pillar.
### Pillar 1: Technological Development
- Define technical specifications as open standards for European Open Source cloud, edge and IoT environments.
- Fund interoperability pilot projects that prioritise the use of European Open Source technologies.
- Require all EU-funded digital infrastructure projects to adhere to these interoperability standards.
- Promote and enforce the implementation of open standards throughout the EU.
- Create a ‘European Open Source Sovereignty Fund’ (EOSSF) dedicated to essential projects. [NB: this would now be called the EU-STF].
- Offer targeted grants for the security, maintenance and strengthening of the sovereignty of Open Source projects.
- Foster in-depth collaboration with European academic institutions and Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs).
- Develop a practical guide for public procurement managers to evaluate European Open Source solutions.
- Create sector-specific reference architectures based on European Open Source technologies.
- Launch large-scale demonstration projects to illustrate the practical benefits of European Open Source solutions.
- Produce and distribute comprehensive ‘playbooks’ for the deployment of European Open Source solutions.
- Implement policies to actively encourage the adoption of these reference implementations in public procurement.
### Pillar 2: Skills Development
- Organise industry-focused training workshops with a European emphasis on Open Source tools and platforms.
- Offer targeted training grants to SMEs and public sector organisations for European Open Source skills development.
- Launch certification programmes for mastery of European Open Source technologies and standards.
- Establish EU-funded retraining programmes to help professionals transition into European Open Source roles.
- Collaborate with industry partners to create hands-on learning and placement opportunities in Open Source.
- Offer financial incentives to companies that participate in retraining programmes and use European Open Source.
- Develop a European Open Source resource platform that brings together training materials, best practices, and case studies.
- Integrate European Open Source principles into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula from secondary school to university.
- Support the creation of European Open Source ‘centres of excellence’ in universities.
- Develop EU-wide coding competitions and hackathons focused on European Open Source solutions.
- Introduce training on European Open Source business models into vocational training.
- Create vocational training modules for European Open Source project management.
- Establish certification for mastery of European Open Source business skills.
### Pillar 3: Public Procurement Practices
- Launch a consultation with public sector bodies and Open Source providers to identify challenges related to public procurement.
- Make ‘Public Money, Public Code, Open Source First, European Preference’ policies mandatory in public procurement.
- Develop comprehensive guidelines for public procurement to evaluate and select European Open Source solutions.
- Fund demonstration projects showing the success of replacing proprietary systems with European Open Source.
- Establish clear criteria for defining what constitutes a ‘European’ Open Source solution.
- Provide a practical guide for public procurement managers to evaluate Open Source solutions.
- Collaborate with industry and standardisation bodies to develop accessible evaluation criteria for Open Source.
- Create a public directory of recommended European Open Source solutions.
- Encourage public sector organisations to adopt solutions developed under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative.
- Launch cross-border pre-commercial procurement (PCP) projects focused on European Open Source.
- Create knowledge-sharing platforms for feedback on PCP initiatives and Open Source best practices.
- Actively involve European Open Source providers in the co-design of solutions in the PCP process.
- Publish guidelines to help public sector organisations manage and support European Open Source.
- Promote the active participation of public sector representatives in European Open Source communities.
- Support training programmes for public sector staff on project management and Open Source compliance.
- Engage stakeholders to collaboratively refine and simplify procurement practices for Open Source.
### Pillar 4: Growth and Investment
- Create a European Open Source Investment Platform (EOSIP) to centralise information on funding.
- Organise information workshops for European SMEs and start-ups on how to obtain investment.
- Establish partnerships with private investors to form a network of venture capital funds focused on European Open Source.
- Expand the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative with a focus on Open Source cloud, edge and IoT.
- Regularly assess the impact of funding programmes on community growth and market adoption.
- Allocate dedicated funding to high-impact European Open Source projects that meet strategic needs.
- Develop co-investment models that combine public funds with European private sector investments.
- Launch accelerators and incubators specifically designed for European Open Source technologies.
- Develop an EU-wide branding strategy to highlight the quality and sovereignty of European Open Source.
- Showcase European Open Source successes on international platforms through marketing campaigns.
- Form strategic partnerships with European industry organisations to increase project visibility.
- Establish public-private R&D consortia on European Open Source for high-priority projects.
- Offer incentives for private sector contributions to critical European Open Source initiatives.
- Develop platforms for knowledge exchange and cross-sector collaboration within the European ecosystem.
### Pillar 5: Governance
- Conduct vulnerability assessments for critical European Open Source projects.
- Collaborate with European cybersecurity agencies to develop threat models for Open Source environments.
- Publish findings and best practices from security assessments to the European ecosystem.
- Offer tailored compliance advice to help European Open Source projects navigate EU regulations.
- Facilitate accessibility to Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) certification for European Open Source projects.
- Provide resources and support for the documentation and auditing of European projects.
- Ensure stable, long-term funding for core European Open Source infrastructure.
- Establish mentoring programmes focused on developing European talent for critical projects.
- Create a European Open Source Advisory Board to oversee project funding and direction.
- Require EU-supported European projects to adhere to transparent governance and accountability practices.
- Support European community involvement in Open Source project governance.
- Facilitate community input into European Open Source policy development.
- Publish guidelines on best practices for managing the lifecycle of European Open Source projects.
- Provide resources for responsible maintenance and end-of-life support for European projects.
- Encourage comprehensive documentation and knowledge sharing within the European ecosystem.
One more step in the right direction, good
[flagged]
It's some utopian dream to think the death of the EU would decentralize power. It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony. Without the EU, the world is controlled by the US and China.
> It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony.
How can I opt out of this "necessary evil"?
I don't want to be part of this feud between powers as I don't want the EU to be a world power since in all world powers 90% of the wealth just concentrates to the top 1% anyway, so becoming one would not benefit me. Will housing be more affordable once we become a "world power"? Or fix healthcare shortages?
Like for example, the public transport and healthcare where I live have been going to shit past 10 years plus housing become unaffordable. Those issues are not China's fault, Trump's fault and not Putin's fault no matter how much they try to gaslight us otherwise. Putin and Trump didn't come here and inflate our currency creating speculative bubbles that popped, our own politicians did.
So no, it's not a "necessary evil", it's a manufactured one via FUD and scaremongering, to deflect blame and responsibility for failures of local politicians and copot public option in the direction the 1% financieres desire since their kids won't be on the frontline of this new world war they're trying to stir up, we'll all be just casualties and I don't want to be one.
Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now. Look at Ukraine, look at Greenland.
Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.
As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.
>Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now.
It's not just "right now", it's how it has always been. International law was never a thing to begin with. It was just a sham created by the world powers after WW2 nuremberg trials, so they could add a veneer of legitimacy when they enforce their will over weaker countries in disputes, never the other way around. It was still just "history is written by the victor" business as usual. Otherwise they would have prosecuted leadership of France, Belgium and UK for their crimes in their colonies if there was any actual objective justice in international law.
As a smaller country you never had a say in your sovereignty if you didn't have nukes or the blessing of powerful allies to enforce laws for you via their more powerful militaries. "Might is right" is the undefeated fact that has been true for 10k years of human history, and will still be true 10k years in our future.
>Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.
Then demonstrate and prove it wrong.
>As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.
So you agree with me that CoL is fucked, just like I originally said. Just because it's fucked in other countries, doesn't invalidate my statement.
The EU is perhaps the most decentralized large power in the world and is held to an astronomically higher standard than any other such power.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551972
Do you understand which players want to take away power from the EU and “decentralize” power or better, create division?
To me this is the most amazing thing people that would turn themselves inside out against communism/socialism because of the lies they have been told. When it actually comes down to it are all for communism ie open source
Open source is not communism. Communism would entail that we collectively own Linux, which we don't. It's private property, and if we want to use the code, we need to abide by its licensing terms. Licensing terms that are built upon the existence of copyright, a concept that allows for private ownership of intellectual property.
The licensing terms exist as a patch on copyright. If copyright law were fixed, we wouldn't need those terms at all.
This is so reductive. Open source has nothing to do with communism.
As a socialist, I would disagree.
Communism is about a would-be utopia after the workers own the means of production.
For us tech workers, it could be argued that the means of production are source code. Thus, there is a socialist aspect to open source - but that's a good thing!
The means of production are computers, no?
Just because it's free? Let's talk again when all open source projects are funded and controlled by the state with zero competition between them and no consumer choice. Only one Linux distro, only one database, only one web framework, etc. And it's decided top-down from the state what to work on. I doubt though that these projects would have started in the first place in a communist setting.
There is no reason such a state would have to set things up this way.
As an example: you probably know that germany has socialized healthcare. It is, however, not implemented as a single-payer model. Instead there are tons of different insurances competing with each other, while having a highly regulated floor of what they MUST offer.
Is the model perfect? Hell no, it has tons of issues - though overall it's pretty solid. My point is just that social policies and "no internal competition ever" does absolutely not have to go hand in hand. There is a massive middle ground.
See: social democracy as a concept and in its current implementation.
And social democracy forked from the socialist tradition over half a century ago (GGP[1] said socialism/communism). So both you and GP are wrong.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551378
Problem here being that those terms aren't used as defined in regular discourse. Language changes and casual use differs from academic use.
When on an american-centric board anybody writes about "communism", I assume they refer to anything from marxism to stalinism to socialism to democratic socialism to social democracy up to anything non-hyper-capitalist. Not great, but sadly something to be taken into consideration.
Especially when looked at in context - parent was criticizing the EU initiative by essentially claiming something like that leads to a kind of monoculture like in a planned economy reminiscent of "communism", here probably meaning stalinism, from what I assume is a radical libertarian position. Which tells me the person is likely american, implying a rather ... minimal awareness of the nuance here.
Please, look at the actual comment chain and it should be rather trivial to make out what everybody is talking about. Does your comment really add value here?
The fundamental reason why terms are confused is because malicious actors (bad faith) intentionally set up to at best muddy the waters and at worst associate things they fight against with the worst adjectives. That doesn’t reflect on anyone present right here, just a process that took decades.
I don’t care if someone “doesn’t know” about the nuance when they breathlessly throw back with One Cereal For Everyone Decided By The State. Come on.
> Please, look at the actual comment chain and it should be rather trivial to make out what everybody is talking about. Does your comment really add value here?
I can understand that you think my reply is pedantic noise. That’s simply because we have different goals and things that we intend to communicate. I’m content with setting the record straight. You apparently want to calmly explain the difference between apparent Stalinism and Bernie Sanders-style Socialism.
I think I am able to make out what people are talking about. But you can’t seem to, right in this context, imagine that we all have different goals ourselves about what we wish to get out of commenting here.
"The" state, with no competition, like there's only one state?
Belgium isn't big enough to realistically have its own linux, but France and Germany are.
Of course it's big enough. Why would it not be big enough??
All the usual reasons for comparative advantage, plus have you seen the size of OS codebases these days?
North Korea has its own Linux. Google has its own Linux. There are Linux distributions maintained by a single person. Belgium will do fine.
Maintained, with heavy leaning on other people having actually written all the stuff, enabled by an open market.
The hypothetical specifically precludes that.
Yours and others knee jerk reaction proves my point you are conflating autocracy with communism/socialism.
This is as usual confused. People keep discussing communism as if they were (via analogy) talking about capitalism being about men in suites with fake smiles, green paper, bank vaults, and powerpoint presentations. Every time people have to respond with paragraphs upon paragraphs just unrolling all that nonsense.
Try to update your knowledge on the subject instead of talking like an alien in Trafalgar Square.
Open source = communism is the dumbest take I've read on HN lmao
I would argue open source is decentralization and proprietary is centralization.
In other words, open source is libertarianism and proprietary is communism.
And this move is to move from Big Tech/"Big State" to smaller alternatives.
> proprietary is communism.
Maybe we should not twist ourselves to logical pretzels to redefine terms like that.
Politics should never drive technical decisions unless the people involved actually understand the technology. When policy is made without that expertise, open source becomes a political slogan instead of a sustainable ecosystem.
What the European Commission is doing is the right thing, then.
It is a "call for evidence", not a directive. It can be summarized as: for our software needs, we depend too much on non-EU countries, we heard about this open source thing, will it solve our problem?
They studied the political aspect (dependence on non-EU countries), that's their job. They are now asking experts about the technical aspect.
> Politics should never drive technical decisions
This can never be true. Politics drives all decisions.
National politics may not. But assuming technical decisions are made on an aethereal plane above humanity is just assuming away complexity. It's the excuse of a technical team that developed something superb for no actual user.
I actually think it's a great idea to minimize government dependence on specific vendors at a policy level.
Perhaps these policies shouldn't be too detailed, but signing away future freedom ('nobody ever fired for choosing $entranched_bigcorp') should not be the path of least resistance for decision makers.
Fully agree!
At first your comment reads as negative, but you actually like this "call for evidence" then, as they're explicitly asking for feedback about it? Not sure why it reads so negative when you're actually seemingly agreeing with the submission.
This shows that the people in charge have no idea. If they understood the topic, there would be no need for evidence.
Can't you have some idea, yet want to validate this with the broader ecosystem? I frequently ask people for their opinion about stuff, even when I have my opinion. Should commissions/governments not do that? Seems like a fantasy to think your government could know everything without asking the population what they think.
This is exactly the kind of backwards thinking that pushes people against inquisition and consultation. They people in charge have a good idea of the playing field but it's always good to ask for input.
> the people in charge have no idea. If they understood the topic, there would be no need for evidence
A technically-superior solution nobody wants to use is useless.
I don't see how EU can develop a thriving software industry with its love for control and regulation.
I think this was disused a few days ago in a similar HN comment thread. Turns out, the US has way more data-tapping anti-privacy laws than the EU - only that the US more or less secretly adopted them and forbids any company from telling their end-users.
Whereas you hear more about "data regulation-attempts" in the EU because it actually still has very strong privacy-rules and when trying to alter them there is a real public debate and not a hush-hush secret commission that gives security agencies access to all user data without public notification.
Here is the related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46509019#46510983
It is pointless trying to explain to corporate company man who just repeat the narrative of their bosses.
But it's helpful to provide the counterpoint for anyone else reading this.
Europe already have a thriving software industry, and in fact is probably the leader when it comes to having the most influential and biggest FOSS projects, since so many of them originate in Europe :)
If I had to chose between "control and regulation and healthy community of FOSS" vs "no control or regulation, and healthy community only for for-profit companies", I know what side I'm choosing.
Maybe the EU can develop its own version of Linux OS, just like North Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS
-- edit
When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but
As someone who has watched on the sidelines how Opensource governance turns projects into hydra monsters (Redhat, Jakarta EE). I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
But who knows, maybe they will just become end users of a popular distro and other opensource software.
Finland (where Linux comes from) is in the EU. There are also a few European linux distributions you may have heard of: e.g. Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu (UK), Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia, Knoppix, etc.
How is Linux related to Finland? Just because some of early contributors was born in Finland?
You mean the actual founder of Linux is from Finland, not just a contributor.
Also you're forgetting all the "US" companies with headquarters in Luxembourg or Ireland.
It was literally created by Torvalds (a Finn) while at the university of Helsinki (in Finland).
I am not claiming "invention", my whole point here is that place of origin means nothing, especially for a FOSS project - despite Linus being important part of it.
If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions as US citizen.
Active kernel contributors are spread all around the world, with a pretty even distribution across USA, Western Europe and Asia.
Your suggestion that the US government would lean on the citizenship of Torvalds in order to exert control over the kernel should be laughable but I concede that anything is possible these days.
Yeah, Nah, 0 chance.
Linus Torvalds, imo, is the reason we have open source, through Linux & Git. He’s the open source philosopher king.
I think he’s put enough in to know where his allegiance lies, over a 2010 US citizenship - a very different world.
There is also 0 chance, US/MS government hasn’t put a lot of pressure on him over the last 34 years of creating and spreading, at least the OS form of socialism
It is not laughable, Linux directly complies with SDN list[1] and US sanction policy(i.e. removing of russian developers by Linus). Thus, US does have and execute control over Linux kernel currently.
[1] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/navigating-global-regul...
I think you have some confusion about the role of the Linux Foundation in relation to the kernel. They provide financial, organisational, and infrastructural support and neither own nor control its development.
Linus is the BDFL and lead maintainer and if he wanted to move the kernel development anywhere else he could do so, but Linus Torvalds has stated that he personally agrees with them.
That is not the US controlling him, it is his own decision. Moreover he has dual citizenship and could renounce his US citizenship if he chose. When Greg takes over maintainership things may be different.
Why should Linus renounce US citizenship, not finnish? He is living with family in Oregon for 20+ years.
This is my main point here - not much things connecting Linus and Linux to EU. In question of US and EU tensions I am not really sure US citizen BDFL will party with EU, also because companies who spend money and contribute to kernel are located in US mainly.
In the very post where he discussed the removal of Russian maintainers https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEg... he identifies as Finnish - not American or Finnish-American.
That you are trying to strip him of his own identity speaks volumes.
Anyway, clearly you have some misguided patriotic agenda here. You can thump your chest if it makes you feel better, but theres little point in continuing this discussion.
> Ubuntu (UK)
This is an EU initiative, Ubuntu probably isn't included.
What for? Plenty of maintainers for various distros are from Europe and/or the EU.
For example: https://map.debian.net/
What is this map? Almost every city in DK and Sweden shows "Kåre Olsen"
Is all the distributions where most core developers already live in Europe/EU not enough for you? Take a look at where most of the active contributors live for some distributions, and I think you'd be surprised :)
With my original flippant comment I was trying to highlight that despite the many Opensource projects and the many awesome people who contribute to them, they should stay at arms length from EU and its legislators.
When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but I am skeptical, so I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
Hence my comparison to North Korea's Linux distro
> despite the many Opensource projects and the many awesome people who contribute to them, they should stay at arms length from EU and its legislators.
But despite that, they exist today, successfully so, and continue being funded by the very people you claim they should stay away from.
I'm not sure if you looked into how this whole "funding FOSS" thing works like, but governments are not opening a fund, letting any FOSS developer expense stuff to it and calling it a day. Usually they contract a company to work on things, that then end up FOSS.
Even if the end result is FOSS or not, they have the same people they can blame if they want to, the people they paid for certain results. The license of the finished thing doesn't change who's responsible for doing the job they've been paid to do.
I think until you actually understanding how the funding works, it would be fair to avoid doing flippant comments who basically only try to add some fuel to some fire, with some completely out of place comparison to a NK Linux distribution.
The funding mechanism isn't really the point, its the product that comes after.
Sure, the EU contracts developers to build features they want, but when those requirements start coming from regulatory mandates rather than user needs, you're not just adding features to Ubuntu anymore.
You're forking it into something fundamentally different.
"EUbuntu"? :)
Look at how the EU handles tech regulations:
- GDPR a good thing on paper; with some terrible side effects - cookie banners, data bureacracy, walled gardens between US-EU websites.
- AI legislation; lets wait and see
- Digital sovereignty; fundamentally trying to gain access control for EU citizens data from Google and Apple.
Anyways, let's see what happens. Maybe I'm being too cynical and they'll just become savvy end-users of existing distros. But given the pattern, I'm not holding my breath.
> - GDPR a good thing on paper; with some terrible side effects - cookie banners, data bureacracy, walled gardens between US-EU websites.
I was gonna reply to your comment in good faith, but I realize right here that you don't actually understand what you're talking about. Cookie banners have nothing to do with GDPR, at all, and thinking they're somehow connected, grossly misunderstands regulation in the EU. How am I supposed to take anything else you say about these topics with a straight face?
So with that said, I hope you have a continued nice day :)
I don't get it - do you think the US government doesn't have homegrown linux distros?