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France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

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Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#201

Post by pessimizer »

slibhb wrote: post #171
vrganj wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, I believe your post proves my point. Funny how perspective works, isn't it? It feels like the last tantrum of a dying empire from our vantage point. Sad, but ultimately irrelevant.

I see one person having a tantrum in this thread (and it's not me).

No, you were having a discussion, and now you're the one who just had a tantrum. If you're going to be personally offended when somebody says that the US looks like it is throwing a tantrum, nobody worthwhile is going to think it's worth talking to you.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#202

Post by overfeed »

bertil wrote: post #189
slibhb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performative anti-Americanism has become one of the major features of European culture (and especially French culture).

Some big moneyed interests are trying to split Europe and the US. The current US administration is definitely not helping, but every ad I see on the Reddit main feed is a blatant attack on the relation, from brand new subreddits, pointing at magazines I’ve never heard about before. I’ve been reporting them, but it keeps coming, from constantly different sources, different names, subreddits, but always the same vague…

> Some big moneyed interests are trying to split Europe and the US. The current US administration is definitely not helping

Did you listen/read Vance's recent speeches in Hungary? Or read the US policy document put out months back? It goes way beyond merely "not helping" - the US administration is in turns provoking, alienating and separating itself from center/center-left European governments in pursuit of exporting extremist partisan politics in the hopes of getting far-right governments elected across Europe.

European citizens and politicians everywhere can see the actions for what they are. What was that about Greenland and annexing Canada? There's no big-money conspiracy, just a bully administration with no sense of second-and third-order effects.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#203

Post by pessimizer »

ghighi7878 wrote: post #115
cmiles8 wrote: post #114

They’re still going the almost certainly end up running this on US designed chips, with US designed networking equipment and a bunch of other assets tied back to US companies. They should do what they want, but it’s “sovereignty theater” at best.

You always have to start somewhere. Whether this will succeed or not is not known, but you do have to start somewhere.

Start with not antagonizing China, and you'll have other vendors to chose from.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#204

Post by pessimizer »

jhawk28 wrote: post #119

AI finding vulnerabilities in open source software is going to make it super unpleasant for a time. I expect there to be a shift back to closed source until we get through that period.

A million eyes makes no difference when it comes to AI, they're all going to find the same vulnerabilities. Which means that one guy running AI against your closed source software is just about the same as 1000 guys running AI against your FOSS, but most of the people running against your FOSS are going to be doing it to help you, and the people who ran against your closed codebase are never going to tell you about it.

AI finding vulnerabilities and cleaning them up is going to be a budget problem for closed-source software, who have gotten used to ignoring vulnerabilities until somebody screams at them.

Closed source software isn't kept in a magical safe in a cavern deep beneath the earth, guarded by dragons. Half the people in your company touch it every day, and probably plenty of contractors.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#206

Post by overfeed »

YZF wrote: post #197
sveme wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on. The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, litt…

Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU. The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away. China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressiv…

> It's hard to predict long term...

It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#207

Post by YZF »

x3ro wrote: post #198
YZF wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said on the site of Y-Combinator. A US company ran by Americans that mostly funds startups in the US. Clearly the US, the home of Apple, nVidia, Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla etc. is sinking while the EU the home of (? ... well, there is ASML) is going to be running the world. Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from: http…

Yes exactly, just like the.. uhm.. the British Empire could not have possibly declined? Your point is that, because the U.S. has big companies and wealth, it can't be a sinking ship? Because to me this seems like a straw-man. What I'm saying is that the U.S. is currently in decline, and many will agree with me. Where this leads your (I'm assuming) country, nobody knows. But to me, it doesn't look great.

I'm not American. But I guess I feel part of the US led western world order.

The US has big companies and wealth because it has the right ecosystem to create those.

The US is in decline is a meme. Decline can't be measured over short intervals. Maybe it is maybe it isn't. We'll see in 5 decades.

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that this decline of the US that many seem to be excited for and wishing here, if or when it happens, is not going to end well for most of those people. Another way of saying this is that most of the people commenting here have benefited and still benefit from the dominance of the US and the technology and innovation coming out of it, including Y Combinator. What is the long term strategic thinking behind "let's attack the US and make it fail" -> the answer is none. It should be in the interest of most of us to see more US success. We whine as everything around us is an outcome of that success.

Warren Buffet's "Never bet against America" still very much holds in my opinion.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#208

Post by overfeed »

bigfudge wrote: post #167
slibhb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France deciding, in principle, to come up with a plan for not using Microsoft is performative. It stops being performative when they actually do it. At any rate, is there a good reason for France to stop using Microsoft? I'm doubtful. It's a bit like the DoD declaring Anthropic a "supply chain risk"; basically performative. To respond to the rest of your post: while the Trump administration's behavior has diminished…

> European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era. This is crazy. The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally. That suited everyone — Europe because we could focus spending on post war reconstruction, and the US because you made a shit tonne of money by being the world's arms dealer and policeman.…

> The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally.

Charles de Gaulle didn't fall for it! I used to think he was an arrogant crank, but Trump has proven he was right all along to be critical of the US.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#209

Post by mullingitover »

YZF wrote: post #197
sveme wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on. The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, litt…

Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU. The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away. China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressiv…

> and crazy people which was always true

The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however.

This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#210

Post by unit8200 »

idoubtit wrote: post #108

The chain of facts makes me sad: 1. The French government announces its digital agency is to write a plan, by the end of the year, so that France could reduce its extra-European dependencies. The communiqué is wrapped up with minor facts (e.g. the digital agency is to switch to Linux on dozens of computers) and big promises from Ministers. 2. Various news sites state that "France is ditching Windows", at least in the…

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