is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
Virtue signaling
The EU Open Source Strategy
21–30 of 167 posts
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#22Always the same broken pattern of the EU: throwing shitload of money to the big actors of a field without really a coherent strategy or a real control of how the funds are used. Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something. Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are…
The pattern is not broken, it works as designed. This is mostly a money-pump from government(s) to private interests, mostly sitting in large IT houses.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#23[dead]
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#24All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
There is definitely a lot of this happening, e.g. this is a 'collaboration suite for civil servants' that's basically a collection of existing open source projects https://github.com/MinBZK/mijn-bureau-infra/ They show all the components they use here https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau-infra/docs/category/com... and have set up guides for departments to operate it all on Kubernetes I'm guessing from my own use of N…
I like the thing the French have been cooking up, La Suite Numerique: https://github.com/suitenumerique#%E2%84%B9%EF%B8%8F-about-l...
It looks much more polished than a lot of the existing open source tooling, they've been building a lot of stuff in-house and really been paying attention to UX (which imo is the biggest problem with a lot of existing FOSS solutions).
I have high hopes this'll become a viable solution going forward, maybe even for non-gov users.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#25All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And th…
I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements.
I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad.
I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of crazy workarounds to make their MacBook fleets workable).
So yeah overall no good options here. I would love to see the EU fund development of a better distro for this usecase, but doubt it's the highest ROI thing you can do in this space.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And th…
I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements. I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad. I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of…
Sounds like the Linux is still the least worst? There is at least possibility of having secure and quite independent machine. The question is not about distro, it's who does the support and how it's all put together. There are big vendors who sell linux to enterprises that for sure have to be highly secure.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#27All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And th…
> And there needs to be some kind of value in actually doing that for normal people, otherwise it will be just like netbooks, most people will return them and ask for a Windows PC, after being "tricked" into getting one of those Linux PCs.
This is the big thing.
Even as a massive nerd, I keep trying various distros and going "meh" and right back to MacOS.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#28Just a reminder that "Made in America" Truth Social is an EU funded Open Source project.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And th…
I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements. I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad. I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of…
> I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements.
Windows being a buggy spyware wouldn't
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#30Will EU mandated backdoors be open source too?
> When it describes how the groundwork might be laid for mandating encryption backdoors, the EU chooses to use euphemisms such as creating roadmaps for “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and seeking “technological solutions for accessing encrypted data.”
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
> European Commission pushes for encryption ‘backdoors’
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes...