Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

social.numerique.gouv.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 232 posts

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#131

Post by sunshine-o »

robert_foss wrote: post #105
sunshine-o wrote: post #103

At this point Open Source doesn't mean anything anymore. It is like everybody putting a "fat free" logo on highly processed junk food a few decades ago. Yes but what is fat exactly? What really make me suspicious is there is now a very dense web of fake, captured foundations and non profits with a lot of money flowing through them. Most of them do not write any code of course and it is very hard to understand they pu…

I don't think I agree with any part of this take, other than postmarketOS having a bit more money would be nice.

Which part?

While in many way software freedom won the server and workstation battle, we lost all the new battlefront which opened in the last two decades:

- Phones (the thing in the hand of almost every human now. And sorry LineageOS and GrapheneOS are quickly being marginalized now by things like Google Play Integrity)

- Javascript (yes it is a big problem [0])

- the Cloud

- IoT

The FSF was actually pretty good at identifying those issue early on but was overwhelmed and probably marginalized because they were right.

Notice that none of those new "Open Source" advocates really care about those ubiquitous issues.

We won some battles but lost the war. The fact France endorses some UN Open Source principles really doesn't matter.

You might think caring about software freedom is almost fringe but look at:

- The US freaking out about all those Chinese devices and cyber attacks,

- The EU now freaking out about US big tech and the cloud.

I believe the best way to safeguard sovereignty and safety is for everyone be able to control as much as possible what is running on our "computers" and as close to you as possible. The FSF [1] has been consistent regarding those issue and doing something about it. But also some other folks like OpenBSD [2].

Very unclear to me what the goals of the UN and the OSI type foundations really is.

- [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

- [1] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/campaigns-summaries

- [2] https://www.openbsd.org/goals.html

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#132

Post by aucisson_masque »

bambax wrote: post #127
fdefitte wrote: post #19

France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with great tools such as France Connect that allows a single login method for any administrative tool.

Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted. The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection…

C'est vrai pour les particuliers mais vas voir le côté entreprise de impôts.gouv.fr et tu vas pleurer. C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ...

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#133

Post by femtozer »

bambax wrote: post #127
fdefitte wrote: post #19

France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with great tools such as France Connect that allows a single login method for any administrative tool.

Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted. The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection…

In the same vein, amendes.gouv.fr is incredibly easy to use for paying fines.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#134

Post by dadoum »

jeynec wrote: post #104
sylvinus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facts (and code) are following. We're building a fully open source workspace ( https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en ) among other ambitious initiatives ( https://beta.gouv.fr/ ). The turmoil caused by the two contracts you mention also prove that the new normal has already shifted towards open source. It's a slow process, but it's undeniable that we are making progress.

These initiatives are only for show. I work in one of the biggest French goverment entity and no one uses this. We still very much use Microsoft products for virtually everything, and everything "sovereign" (Resana, Pline...) just doesn't work or isn't as convenient

What problems did you encounter with Resana?

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#135

Post by pauletienney »

agumonkey wrote: post #129
pauletienney wrote: post #112

As an illustration of it: I have been working for two years on a new national project for the french state. Le Référentiel National des Bâtiments (for National Buildings Registry) which aim at creating and distributing a id key to every building in the country. The goal is to make databases about buildings much more interoperable. One key aspect is to have a precise list of all buildings includings recent constructio…

Very interesting news. Is there an official portal where we can follow this project or similar efforts ? Good luck (and thanks)

Thanks. Here is the website (in french): https://rnb.beta.gouv.fr and the documentation (also in french): https://rnb.beta.gouv.fr/doc

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#136

Post by agumonkey »

pauletienney wrote: post #135
agumonkey wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting news. Is there an official portal where we can follow this project or similar efforts ? Good luck (and thanks)

Thanks. Here is the website (in french): https://rnb.beta.gouv.fr and the documentation (also in french): https://rnb.beta.gouv.fr/doc

Oh nice, thanks a lot.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#137

Post by sunshine-o »

jart wrote: post #65

The government getting interested in open source should terrify us all. The UN formally defining principles for what it means is a soft form of regulation that's only going to get more authoritarian over time. Traveling down this road, we're going to find ourselves living in a world where you're only allowed to share software if (1) you're working for a corporation, or (2) you're working for the government. Because (…

Yep you are basically describing the EU Cybersecurity Act if anybody care to read it and try to understand how things work in reality.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#138

Post by tmtvl »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #132
bambax wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted. The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection…

C'est vrai pour les particuliers mais vas voir le côté entreprise de impôts.gouv.fr et tu vas pleurer. C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ...

> It's true for individuals, but go look at the enterprise side of impôts.gouv.fr and you'll cry. It's submenus within submenus, if you've got more than one page open at a time it disconnects you from the other,...

I know HN doesn't appreciate snark, but isn't that kind of what you can expect from government websites anyway?

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#139

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

idoubtit wrote: post #34

This is just for show, and facts won't follow. It's not the first time a French government vows to stick to Open Source. Yet most of the public money goes to proprietary software, and Open Source is the exception. Two months ago, the French government signed an "open bar" contract with Microsoft for the "Éducation Nationale" department. 152 M€, not for Open Source. Source (fr) https://www.april.org/nouvel-open-bar-mi…

Typical French reaction to anything positive.

Everytime someone actually does something nice in this country, there will be a dozen nay-sayers complaining uselessly that it is not perfect while doing nothing of value themselves.

It always saddens me to see a country with so much too succeed being so impaired by its own citizens.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#140

Post by diggan »

bambax wrote: post #121
Bayart wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely tired of this attitude among French people that amounts to systematically shoot down any attempt at improvement with cynicism.

It doesn't come from nowhere, though. It results in having had to tolerate the French bureaucracy, French lies, empty promises, and French way of (not) doing things for decades.

That's just governments being governments. I've spent 50% of my life in Sweden and 50% of my life in Spain, and everywhere it's the same. "had to tolerate the $NATION bureaucracy, $NATION lies, empty promises, and $NATION way of (not) doing things for decades" probably applies to most countries in the world, I know it applies for the countries I've lived in at least, and seemingly France too. Heard the same about every home country of my friends also.

Governments just move really slowly. Best we can do is cheer for the efforts we think will improve things, even if it'll take years, and protest about efforts we think are harmful.

Post reply on HN