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France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

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Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#111

Post by quadrifoliate »

This needs to go much, much further before it is even mildly effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the US) and no significant large technology companies. They are largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population.

I love that there is a lot more enthusiasm about OSS adoption within EU software devs, but at a population or government level there doesn't appear to be any coherent strategy to gradually replace US tech other than these knee-jerk headliner moves that don't move the needle much.

As a software consumer I would love it if there were open-first software standards adopted within this large of a population that would force US Big Tech to actually compete rather than rest on their monopoly power. But I am pretty skeptical and pessimistic about this actually being able to happen, given the historical failures of the EU.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#112

Post by kkfx »

EU governments don't want to learn one thing: you don't replace one dictator with another. The specific case says little, France has been developing "La Suite" for YEARS, Italy had experimented with Jitsi Meet and Big Blue Button at GARR during the COVID era, but what the EU wants is to create EU GAFAMs, whereas what we need, and not just in the EU, is FLOSS, self-hosting, desktop computing. This, however, is not welcome, starting with eIDAS 2.0 which pushes for a "super-sovereign" app-wallet for the notoriously sovereign Android and iOS instead of smart cards and USB readers that we've had for years and that various countries have used for years to log into online banking and, more recently, to sign documents.

The substantial point is that they don't want freedom, they only want to steal like others steal, to do business like others do business, instead of doing something different.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#113

Post by emsign »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #91
emsign wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary! They were tricked to believe that they were part of society. They aren't. By voting for Trump they reassured themselves that it won't happen to them. Often times racism against the newest group of immigrants coming from the group of immigrants before them is seen by the latter as a rite of passage to be accepted into US society. The Irish used to be in a similar position like the people from South Am…

It's zero-sum thinking, "the pie isn't big enough and can't get bigger and I'm afraid, so I'm going to hurt other people so that I don't get hurt".

Yes. And they still remember where they are coming from and they fear that they might again lose their piece of the pie to the groups that are considered more "American", so they feel the need to prove their place in society by cheering the leader who is preaching that the pie is getting smaller and that someone has to leave the table. This fear is handed down over generations and for some families or communities it transforms into hatred. This mechanism is very often played by amoral populists because it works so well.

Many of the most disgusting and radical Democracy hating people in Trumps inner circle are Catholics by the way. Go figure.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#114

Post by GaelFG »

wateralien wrote: post #62

Almost all businesses need email, contacts, calendars, live chat, video calls, docs, sheets, and presentations. Ideally all linked. Where is the open source foundation for this package that everyone needs?

Nextcloud is great !

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#115

Post by nonethewiser »

larsnystrom wrote: post #38

There seems to be a huge business opportunity in Europe right now, to sell support and customization of open source software to government players. Has anyone heard about a European company that’s been successful in this area?

Just goes to show how many structural problems there are to starting tech companies in Europe.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#116

Post by dijit »

e12e wrote: post #110
pelagicAustral wrote: post #2

Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive concession.

Heh, now that our team has standardized on Teams rather than Zulip (so that we suffer/connect with the rest of the org whom are stuck in MS land) - and I've been given the chance to use Teams for a while - it really is worse than I initially thought. Which means it's time to look for alternative clients. I ws hoping for something like WeeSlack: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack But all I found was: https://githu…

You'd understand why there's no even half-decent clients for Teams if you ever tried to write a bot in Teams.

That's just a pure lesson in pain.

Webhooks work, but proper bots are borderline impossible; at least without giving you the feeling that you'd rather pull your own teeth out with pliers.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#117

Post by runarberg »

stronglikedan wrote: post #72

lol, "Europe" isn't seeking anything of the sort. France maybe, and a couple other countries, but very, very far from the whole of Europe. And even then, only a handful of people relative to the whole country. This won't even cause a blip on a balance sheet. What are they gonna switch to? I'll bet it ends up being a fork of Zoom or Teams. It's all just theater.

Zoom and Teams are both proprietary software, I doubt any available forks exist, or could exist, for use outside of corporation where they are developed.

I’m guessing they will probably use something built on top of Matrix which is an open protocol maintained by a Community Interest Corporation (CIC) in the UK.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/30/france_matrix/

I’m less sure what they will use for video conferencing, but they could do worse then something built on top of WebRTC, which is also an open protocol maintained by W3C, an international standards organization with location in 4 countries (including France and USA).

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#118

Post by anon291 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #111

This needs to go much, much further before it is even mildly effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the US) and no significant large technology companies. They are largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population. I love that there is a lot more enthusiasm about OSS adoption within EU software devs, but at a population or government level there doesn't appear to be any coherent strategy to grad…

OSS software is also mostly owned by the US. This entire thing of 'replacing' American software with American software under a different commercial model is so silly.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#119

Post by delecti »

kenjackson wrote: post #103
pelagicAustral wrote: post #2

Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive concession.

I have to admit, I have almost no problems with Teams. The one big issue I had was performance when screen sharing. But I got a new laptop and this problem went away. Seems so odd that so many people have major problems with it, while I feel like within my workgroup there are almost no problems to speak of.

How extensively do you use it? When my team was just using it for meetings and the attached chats, it did actually work completely fine. When broader orgs started pushing more communications through it (the "teams" in teams, and all the weird chat room/forums that entails) all of the rough edges became very apparent. All of that is just a shockingly disorganized mess.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#120

Post by antirez »

anon291 wrote: post #118
quadrifoliate wrote: post #111

This needs to go much, much further before it is even mildly effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the US) and no significant large technology companies. They are largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population. I love that there is a lot more enthusiasm about OSS adoption within EU software devs, but at a population or government level there doesn't appear to be any coherent strategy to grad…

OSS software is also mostly owned by the US. This entire thing of 'replacing' American software with American software under a different commercial model is so silly.

That's not true. For instance in the field of video pipelines ffmpeg is the standard, and was started by an European (French) person. Runs on Linux of course, that ..., and so forth. Do you really believe in Europe there is no the tech capability to recreate the tech stack? This is an extremely naive way to put it. US tech is much more developed because of money infusion even on companies that take 10/20 years to get productive. It was the right call, by the US, to put things in this way, but the European disadvantage is not for technical merits.
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