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EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

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Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#121

Post by mort96 »

jeoqn wrote: post #118
mort96 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really correct. The European Commission might not be directly elected by EU citizens, but the members of the European Parliament are elected by EU citizens, and the Council of the European Union is made up of one minister from each EU member state. A law doesn't get passed without support from the democratically elected parliament members and the national representatives in the council. It's also worth not…

Those two layers of abstraction make all the difference. Directly elected officials are particularly bad, imagine that.

Let me say it again: EU citizens elect members of the European Parliament, there is no extra layer of abstraction. And it's precisely the European Parliament which can do something about it if the Commission is proposing a bad law.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#122

Post by pavlov »

hutzlibu wrote: post #84
pavlov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid all of this comment is essentially nonsense. For starters, the EU system (including the Commission, all the various agencies across the Union, all courts, etc.) employs around 60,000 people. The government of Sweden alone employs more people for a population of only 10M. The EU is in fact fairly lean given its scope and the number of languages. National governments are responsible for implementing almost e…

"National governments are responsible for implementing almost everything agreed by the Union members. " Well, so maybe the EU is not fairly lean, since they don't do any of the work the national governments are doing? At least it is not an argument, that they have less employes than sweden.

Well, ok. Let's consider the total number of employed people in the EU, around 190 million.

In the entire Union, about 16% of all employees work for the governments. That's 30.4 million people.

60,000 people work for the EU directly, which is 0.2% of the total. To put it another way, there are 500 national government employees for each one EU worker. Is this the tail wagging the dog? 0.2% is not even the dog's tail, it's a piece of hair on its back.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#123

Post by pelasaco »

pavlov wrote: post #93
pelasaco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU is in fact fairly lean given its scope and the number of languages. Any reference on that? I used to work for EU and I never had this impression while there or never read about how lean the EU is.. would be interesting to know more about it.

I'm not saying there isn't waste. It develops in every large organization, public or private. (I sometimes wonder about people — Americans mostly — who want the government to vanish, but also complain loudly about how their phone operator, insurance company, etc. are the worst. What do they expect to happen if the private sector took over everything?) The relative leanness of the EU is a result of its unique structur…

Ok, understand now your angle, thanks

> For example the US federal government employs almost 50 times more people than the entire EU system, yet EU population is 30% larger.

but is that comparison not like comparing apples to oranges? You should add EU system + Federal System from all countries together, to get a better picture, no?

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#124

Post by hutzlibu »

And ... it is gone from the front page.

HN is explicitely not the place for political activism of any kind, however justified the cause, just remember that, than you are not enraged by it.

And my general point on this is: I'd like to see them try.

It likely will get softened up quite a lot, but if they really go through with it, they will turn lots of technical (or just privacy concerned) people into criminals over night. Good luck with that. I live in the EU, but I certainly would not comply to any of this. And if Signal will automatically upload images from me, than I will use 100% open source and decentral solutions like Matrix based ones. Might turn out good for that.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#125

Post by worldofmatthew »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #92
worldofmatthew wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will mean every server will have to use Microsoft Windows..... Thus, handing over all control over the EU networks to 1 American company.

Nope, Windows Server would be illegal in Europe. Microsoft ships too much non-trivial FOSS software in Windows now. There is no major OS that they can run, nor can they develop for it (the act of installing GCC or LLVM would now be illegal, for example).

I'm pretty sure Microsoft could compile software in the US and export it without the compiler.

Other issues could be solved with a Microsoft Windows 11 EU Edition that only allows programs to be installed from the Microsoft store.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#126

Post by cykros »

shapefrog wrote: post #89
mort96 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really correct. The European Commission might not be directly elected by EU citizens, but the members of the European Parliament are elected by EU citizens, and the Council of the European Union is made up of one minister from each EU member state. A law doesn't get passed without support from the democratically elected parliament members and the national representatives in the council. It's also worth not…

> The European Commission isn't very democratic The commissioners are appointed by the democratically elected government of each country, to push the agenda of the democratically elected government of each country.

Each layer of abstraction takes away choice in this model, and is indeed why Republics have Constitutions, among other reasons. The scope elected officials have is frankly too grand, resulting in positions where one wants to restrict your freedoms and lower taxes, and another wants to restrict your freedoms and raise taxes, and in many cases, the freedoms they want to restrict are the same freedoms -- and then when those freedoms of course are restricted, it's the "people" who voted for it!

And then to have elected officials that are elected by people who got in this way in the first place adds a whole layer of not having the interests of the public in mind.

Is it democratic, the way we normally think of the meaning of that word these days? Sure. Is it something we should take comfort in because of that fact? Personally, I lean toward "no."

Illusion of choice does a lot to pacify a population against tyranny, and the authoritarians are well aware of that fact after the last century or so.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#127

Post by kkfx »

No law can censor a distributed system. ChatControl, so while surely large platforms would LIKE such law while little competitors would not, P2P/distributed networks of FREE software, not mere open source "commercial" services, would not be affected.

It's about time to understand two things:

- Open Source is a way to solve the insustainability of proprietary software AGAINST Free Software;

- Surveillance and censorship can be only defeated by the People rising and imposing their will.

The first is obvious to anybody who know a bit of actual state of things in IT land, the latter it's unlikely since most people are grown without knowing the meaning of freedom.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#128

Post by stephen_g »

henearkr wrote: post #68

Let's hope that it will be amended precisely in order to let open source projects (and their users) live. And if you are a EU citizen, please contact your MEP about it. It's not voted yet. It's still time.

The proposed law needs to be scrapped completely. The whole thing is bad, all it’s got going for it is the claim that they’re going to “protect the children”.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#130

Post by willyt »

aembleton wrote: post #108
Tade0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't have any supervision, no democratic vote MEPs are voted in by their compatriots.

Can MEPs remove a commissioner?

No the national governments choose the commissioner to send to the commission. A nation in the EU can recall its commissioner. The commissioner acts in the interests of the Government of the nation that sent them to the EU commission. The national governments of EU nations are all elected by their citizens so the commission is indirectly democratic. It is arranged like this because individual countries in the EU don't want to give up sovereignty to the EU parliament.
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