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European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

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Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#101

Post by GuB-42 »

cumo wrote: post #51

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#102

Post by menaerus »

embedding-shape wrote: post #99
menaerus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> 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…

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#103

Post by menaerus »

notahacker wrote: post #87
menaerus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 5…

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#104

Post by lynx97 »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #27

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…

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#105

Post by KronisLV »

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#106

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

sofixa wrote: post #35
Xelbair wrote: post #17

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…

> 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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#107

Post by waldarbeiter »

lynx97 wrote: post #104
flowerthoughts wrote: post #27

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…

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.

What does "wolf in sheep's clothing" mean for you, concretely, outside of metaphors?

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#108

Post by keybored »

ngruhn wrote: post #5
xbmcuser wrote: post #3

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

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.

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.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#109

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

xbmcuser wrote: post #3

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 = communism is the dumbest take I've read on HN lmao

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#110

Post by odiroot »

waldarbeiter wrote: post #107
lynx97 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "wolf in sheep's clothing" mean for you, concretely, outside of metaphors?

Chat control and the never-ending drive to police our private communications.
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