121–130 of 380 posts
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Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
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…
> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.
It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
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:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides
...But we're (mostly) not one?
They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape. It's impossible to start a tech business under the amount of bureaucracy they throw at you. I'd love to give it a go, but to get even started I have to pay accountants, banks, lawyers, pre-taxes, etc before I even have made a single cent.
These are not the main obstacles. US monopolies are. See this article: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
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> it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US. > It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it…
> Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source. Yes. The government has more than enough leverage to demand this. Skill was never the problem. The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption. The problem with the regulations is that they were designed with the…
I keep hearing the "too many regulations" argument, and I totally disagree. Too few regulations (or rather no enforcement of them) resulted in the TooBigTech monopolies we have today. Of course, they got so successful because of the lack of regulations, but now it's simply impossible to compete with them. Removing regulations (assuming that there are regulations that impact them today, which I doubt) would help them, not the competition.
And we have precedents:
* Whenever the EU tries to do some antitrust, it impacts TooBigTech (which is almost exclusively US), and as a result the US bullies the EU to stop it. If regulations were weakening the EU, why would the US government fight them?
* Let's continue with the US as the example of fewer bureaucracy in this case (the complaint is that the EU cannot compete with the US because of the EU's bureaucracy): look at examples where a non-US company takes over a market (or threatens to take it over). Huawei smartphones (not the infrastructure like antennas, this is different), TikTok, DJI. What do US companies do to win against them? They lobby like crazy to add regulations that will stop the competition.
The US hasn't managed to compete with TikTok: they made it illegal instead.
When Huawei was becoming very big in smartphones in the US, they got banned.
The US hasn't managed to compete with DJI, and the biggest US drone companies are spending a ton of resources trying to get DJI banned. DJI is so superior that even banning them is tricky: it has to be done slowly because banning them right away would disrupt entire industries for lack of viable alternatives. That's how far US drones are from DJI drones.
"Too many regulations" is wrong. The successful players get protection from their government (be it the US or China), and it's high time the EU protected its own players, too. With regulations, just like the US and China does (when they don't abuse their dominant position to bully the EU).
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While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable. For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels. All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for…
> Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script? The management, the government and the eventually the tax payers. If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code, if it's not an open source software, they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it in the first place. That's when the companies tend to jack up the prices to crazy num…
Having a different company do contract work does not require the source to be open, it just requires that the government owns it (as they get to choose what to do with it then).
Also, if no company is on a payroll because they are stuck with better projects, what makes you think someone that is not familiar with the code base would accept a merge request from an unknown party? Or if it was accepted, what makes you think this wouldn't immediately be abused to create loopholes and vulnerabilities?
I find it endlessly fascinating how governments always get lost in the symptoms of the problems at hand instead of addressing the underlying problem itself. The EU has no viable software industry because there's no real single market to fundraise from and sell into (no single capital market, no single language market, no single regulatory market, etc). The lack of domestic EU software/hardware products sits entirely…
Previously this also wasn't much of a problem. The US tech companies were international companies and less "US" companies. Now they aligned themselves with the US regime and are e.g. a supply chain vulnerability and properly taxing them causes issues in national defence (via Ukraine). I for one did not anticipate this own-goal w.r.t. Europe by the US.
They should make it easier to run own businesses in Europe, lessen then amount of paperwork and red tape. It's impossible to start a tech business under the amount of bureaucracy they throw at you. I'd love to give it a go, but to get even started I have to pay accountants, banks, lawyers, pre-taxes, etc before I even have made a single cent.
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…
> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.