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Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

politico.eu

471–480 of 507 posts

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#471
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has been world-leading in verification, e.g. CompCert and Coq come from INRIA, model-checking was co-invented in France. This stuff is largely language independent. Yet the big sellers of this kind of stuff (e.g. EDA software from Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor) is in the US.

That doesn't invalidate my points. SAP is a market leader and comes from Germany. A lot of leading finetch also comes from Germany or UK. A lot of major antivirus vendors in the Czech Republic or Romania, etc. Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London are all big IT tech innovation and startup hubs in Europe. Yet the overall scene is not quite as dynamic as the one on the other side of the Atlantic. Startups never seem to be…

I agree with most of your points, and the huge unified, and rather homogeneous market is a core advantage of the US in certain product categories. Since you mention SAP: clearly, SAP is successful in a space where Europe's heterogeneity should be a problem -- different legal systems, different accounting rules etc ... and yet SAP succeeded. Maybe it was because SAP was founded in 1972, half a century ago, when European decline was not as pronounced as it is in today?

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#472

I wonder how much they will be paying their software developers. Right now, a senior developer that really understands cloud and distributed computing can make more than $500,000/yr at Amazon, Azure, or Microsoft. If they want to attract the talent to build this, they are going to have to pay a lot more than they are used to paying for software engineers.

USA Payroll tax: 15.3% combined, first $127,000 only (3.89% effective) France Payroll tax: 20% for salaries over €151,965. USA Income tax: 42%, including State (CA) and Federal, excluding deductions France Income Tax: 50%. So the labour cost will be a lot higher due to payroll taxes, and the employee will take home less due to income taxes. High VAT (20% in France, 8.5% in SF) means consumer purchases are also more e…

You ignored the contribution sociale in France. “Not a tax”-tax

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#473
post #198
post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

I agree that these efforts have been very hit or miss but on the other hand... What should they do instead? Just give up and accept that we're going to simply be technological vassals to America? Or should Macron and Merkel learn Javascript and take the matter into their own hands? We could've gone the Chinese way and just close the door to American companies, effectively forcing the local populace to use home-grown…

   Macron and Merkel learn 
   Javascript and ...
Why not? The prime minister of Singapore is an active C++ programmer, and has shared source code on his Facebook page, asking for bug reports [1]. Code is at [2].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/prime...

[2] https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B2G2LjIu7Wbdfjha...

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#474
post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

In terms of technology and innovation the German side is likely similar, though I wouldn't go as far as calling it corruption. Larger companies like Deutsche Telekom have been doing local cloud stuff for years now, leading to amusing overviews such as [1]. Having interacted with some of the folks at conferences I'm pretty sure there's a core of people in there somewhat committed to open source which was nice to see.…

OTC is just a rebranded openstack, with a super unreliable api -- we have to use it for certain reasons at a client of mine and they're very keen to get off it.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Don't look at just the number. Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive. > easy immigration to US for Europeans "Europeans" don't exist. UK has drastically different immigration rules than Poland for example. > good affordable education Some…

> Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive. You don't think that tech workers in the US get most of that? Software engineering in the US is a pretty cushy gig. A lot of the problems you hear about for regular middle class Americans don't really happen if you're working in tech. It's not…

The ones I worked with some time ago did not. So it seems really dependent on the job.

But even if you do currently, there's a lot of peace that comes with: it's not company's goodwill, it's a requirement and company's goodwill goes on top of that.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, the UK is ages ahead of Germany in terms of digitization.

The UK is ages ahead of Germany, but that's because Germany is very non-digital, not because the UK is so ahead. When I lived in the UK things like online banking, internet speeds (even in London) and 4G/5G coverage all felt a few years behind as well.

Having lived in both the England and the US, I'd say that England's cities feel a few years behind American cities in terms of tech, but their rural areas seem a few years ahead of America's rural areas. I can't speak to other parts of the UK, but the gap in America is absolutely huge.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#477
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's diversity is its biggest challenge.

And what about EU with its 27 nations and different languages. Not even talking about immigration. Diversity is a challenge for all of us.

not to mention how quickly this change has happened.

America might have an issue with diversity, but compared inthe 20th century, europe as a continent has been through massive suffering.

let's not forget 30 years ago, half of the continent was divided and 40 prior to that most of it was in ruins.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#478

This project is still born because they are missing a federated accounting and payment service at the heart of the platform. Why? Because it's damn near impossible to deliver such feature for dynamically orchestrated services from a federation of providers. Sovereignity, interoperability, compliance is a nice sales pitch. But it seems that when it comes to getting paid or paying you are on your own. Imagine trying to…

how is this a problem? SEPA has already solved this issue?

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? Because of us government funding which created silicon valley. Silicon Valley itself is pretty much a DoD project. The foundation of the internet and many of these companies were laid by government - direct spending, subsidies, tax breaks and in amazon's case, legal protection ( they didn't have to collect state taxes ) until fairly…

> Now compare that to intense pushback china gets for any and everything. Its much easier to trust democratic governments than autocratic ones. If China were a democracy I highly doubt this would be the case. Sure some would push back but many would back it too. The push back that China receives is also because of their economic colonialism and I guess rightfully so. German car companies for example dont receive as m…

> Its much easier to trust democratic governments than autocratic ones.

History shows otherwise. They are equally shady. After all, it was a democracy that broke every treaty with the natives and exterminated them. But I guess it all depends on your biases and agenda. Certainly, nobody can objectively say that US, Britain, France, etc as any less shadier than any autocratic countries.

> If China were a democracy I highly doubt this would be the case.

Really? Bolivia is a democracy. Venezuela is a democracy. Russia is a democracy. If china were a democracy, the chinese people would vote to fully annex hong kong and taiwan. And being a democracy, I suppose the chinese government would have to follow through, huh?

> The push back that China receives is also because of their economic colonialism and I guess rightfully so.

Now this is rather absurd. Especially considering it is us trying to force china to adopt our ways. But agenda tends to blind people.

> German car companies for example dont receive as much push back. Ericsson/Nokia doesn't receive as much pushback as their counterpart Huwawei.

But iranian, venezuelan, russian, etc companies do. And conveniently saudi arabian companies don't. They are not a democracy.

So there goes your theory about democracy. It has nothing to do with democracy. It's about geopolitics and power. The need to maintain dominance over the world as long as we can.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#480
post #181
post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

How far behind they are... Imagine having to talk to humans instead of interacting with scripts. I've always known that Germans are barbarians.

/s

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