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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

#121

Post by selfsigned »

traceroute66 wrote: post #107
Mainan_Tagonist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.

> Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public. Ironically most French people I know would be perfectly receptive and happy to receive corrections in grammar, English or otherwise. The French tend to be particularly pedantic about the teaching of their own grammar. Most native French speakers are quite used to being swiftly and firmly corrected on grammar from an…

I'm not sure how happy they actually are about it though. I think most people have a bit of Stockholm-syndrome relationship with it, the highest tier of argument refutation in France might honestly be grammar-based :P

(And it did motivate me to go abroad.)

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

#122

Post by Mainan_Tagonist »

traceroute66 wrote: post #107
Mainan_Tagonist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.

> Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public. Ironically most French people I know would be perfectly receptive and happy to receive corrections in grammar, English or otherwise. The French tend to be particularly pedantic about the teaching of their own grammar. Most native French speakers are quite used to being swiftly and firmly corrected on grammar from an…

there is a time and place for everything. "Les règles de bienséance" matter more to me than the safekeeping of the exactness of English grammar, which as others have been keen to point out is hardly as strict as you seem to imply.

And no, no French person likes to receive corrections in grammar. Giving lectures on proper english grammar/pronounciation is generally a mark of (classist) pedantry since speaking proper english is generally the preserve of those lucky few that have had the opportunity of spending time in the Anglosphere, a tiny minority of the french population in fact, who are always eager to put their one upmanship on display, in a very crude, almost vulgar fashion.

I have been travelling through Japan for the past week, the grammatical and orthographical error would likely give you a nosebleed. Meanwhile, I just smile and move on, I got the meaning, it is what matters. Same for the OP.

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

#123

Post by raincole »

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…

This is EU, what else do you expect? European officials saying they're ditching Windows has become a ritual:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-expe...:

> The German Foreign Office first moved over to Linux as a server platform in 2001... the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution.

https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...:

> By December 2013, the city concluded the migration, with over 14,800 desktops running on LiMux... In November 2017, nearly four years after the conclusion of the migration, the Munich city council adopted a decision overhauling the move. All equipment was to be refitted with Windows 10 counterparts by 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux:

> WIENUX[2] is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria... until 2008 when the download page was taken offline.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST...:

> Birmingham City Council piloted OSS on hundreds of desktops in its public libraries in 2005-6. It originally planned to install Linux ... but this was over-ambitious for the time frame of the project and compatibility problems meant that the open source OpenOffice (office suite) and Firefox (web browser) were eventually run on Windows XP

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

#124

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

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.

I wouldn't say that. I think it's a proportional response to US tarriffs/changes in foreign policy under the current administration, just like the cancellation of defence contracts/orders.

It's unrealistic for any nation to do everything themselves, but they can make some changes in response to the US starting trade wars, ditching foreign policy/climate objectives, etc...

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

#125

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

drstewart wrote: post #33
e2le wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious. It's perfectly possible for people to be passionate about the subject.

I've never met a real human that was passionate about what OS a government worker in some local French commune uses, but it's the hottest topic on HN behind AI

I don't believe we've met, but I've long been convinced that governments should not be reliant on commercial software and proprietary formats and protocols. It just seems obvious that relying on Microsoft this and that is a blinkered, short-term view.

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

#126

Post by matt_kantor »

japanoise wrote: post #74
Mindless2112 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demonym for France is "French," so it's not wrong (even if it doesn't sound right.)

It's not completely wrong, it will be understood, but it is ungrammatical and a clear marker that the speaker is not native, similar to getting adjectives in the 'wrong' order ('a big tasty sandwich' sounds more natural to a native speaker than 'a tasty big sandwich', even though the latter makes sense and will be understood). Demonyms for historical neighbours of England have irregular forms when speaking of a parti…

There are some suffixed with "-i" which sound natural to my (American) ears too: "an Israeli", "a Somali", "a Pakistani", "an Omani", etc.

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

#127

Post by znnajdla »

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.

The US or Trump can’t switch off your chips or your networking equipment on a whim - and if they ever designed hardware that could do that, no one would buy such hardware as soon as that capability became known. Using cloud software is a much bigger risk - your access can be turned off anytime and data access is part of the deal.

Sovereignty is not about building everything yourself. Division of labor advances civilization, but it doesn’t have to come at the cost of sovereignty. Sovereignty is about designing the work contract such that you don’t become entirely beholden to another party. You build hardware for me, but after that it’s mine, not yours. I trust you to build the hardware to fulfill that contract, and if you ever break that trust I’ll find someone else to build that hardware. That’s sovereignty. I don’t have to build everything myself.

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

#128

Post by Mashimo »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #110
Mashimo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is that you can have an effective tool to learn something new. I'm not quite sure I understand your question.

Okay, I don't think it would be all that effective and I don't see how it could be. I learn things by doing them, not by playing guessing games.

That's fine. We all learn different. But it's still effective for other people :) So it's useful for them.

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

#129

Post by woodruffw »

traceroute66 wrote: post #88
woodruffw wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demonyms don’t use the same rules as countable nouns. Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms, they’re just not particularly idiomatic in American English (which likes to overcorrect with “person” like you’ve noted). (There’s no particularly consistency with this, it’s just what sounds “good” to American ears. We’re perfectly fine with “as a German” or “as a Lithuanian.”)

> Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms No they are not. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example makes it quite clear re. 'French': "With plural agreement, and frequently with 'the' French people regarded collectively ..." I draw your attention to the first three words ... "with plural agreement". It is explicitly telling you that "French" is a collective plural noun and hence cannot be used as a sin…

I think we’re past OED being a normative arbiter of what does or doesn’t pass for acceptable English usage.

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

#130

Post by swiftcoder »

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.

Is there any evidence that GenAI is incapable of redteam'ing proprietary software? This seems like the sort of thing an agent with suitable tooling would be quite good at - I see someone already made an MCP for ghidra...
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