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France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

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Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#181

Post by DrScientist »

this_user wrote: post #81
me551ah wrote: post #52

Replicating features from existing software has become extremely easy due to AI. I won’t be surprised if open source is able to easily catch up with the bigger products.

Replicating the software is easy, running the services at AWS-scale is hard.

Would you need to though?

If an organisation ran it's own instance, it would only need to scale for that organisation ( including any external attends over a bridge ).

That does of course assume companies have the expertise/appetite to run things themselves.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#182

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #128
softwaredoug wrote: post #113

Americans fail to appreciate a few things about our economy 1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed for hundreds of millions of Americans 2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market 3. there’s not an easy 3rd economy that replaces EUs wealth, population, and comfort with Englis…

India, but many companies aren't willing to price for the market nor respect corporate norms there.

No, thank you. I would rather run Chinese spyware.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#183

Post by toephu2 »

eloisant wrote: post #46
the_sleaze_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been incentivizing it for years. Talent passport, EU Blue card and the Tech Visa. As I have heard they'll pay you to move there. Expect 50% salary and taxes that will make your eyes water. French bureaucracy is kafkaesque even in 2026. Other than that I agree I'd love to move there.

Taxes are not really an issue because of the services you get out of it: free healthcare, free education for your kids, etc. But yes, salary before taxes is much lower than in the US. If your goal is to make as much money as possible, either stay in US or move to a different European country (Northern Europe or Switzerland).

"free"... as in paid for with high taxes

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#184

Post by jbm »

harikb wrote: post #94
cmiles8 wrote: post #70

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking.

Products don't necessarily win on merit. Microsoft Teams "won" entirely because it was given away free with Office. Even though it is acceptable these days, it was horrible when it started. There is no way it could have won without unlimited backing from a bigger force. You have to see EU trying these things in the same light.

I have made most of my karma off of trashing Teams, and while it is "better" than it was before (I rarely get infinite loops crashing my browser now), it is hard to call it acceptable.

Yesterday I was supposed to have a call. I have the app open and it never once let me know that there was a meeting. The entire purpose is supposed to be collaboration with other people; if they aren't going to notify me on the web app, what's the point?

I know a lot of it is because of their need to support an infinite number of potential configurations, but if it had been a protocol instead of an app, we would have had the perfect frontend by now. (But then, how would they be stealing all of my data?)

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#185

Post by rapnie »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #35
idontwantthis wrote: post #13

I wonder if the EU will begin trying to recruit American software engineers. I’d love to move to France.

They've been incentivizing it for years. Talent passport, EU Blue card and the Tech Visa. As I have heard they'll pay you to move there. Expect 50% salary and taxes that will make your eyes water. French bureaucracy is kafkaesque even in 2026. Other than that I agree I'd love to move there.

> They've been incentivizing it for years.

There is also NGI Sargasso which had EU grants being awarded to collaborations between parties in the EU and the US, working on internet innovation projects. Looks like that funding program has closed. Not sure if these open calls were slashed by the Trump government.

https://ngisargasso.eu/

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#186

Post by skeletal88 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #124
i_love_retros wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only recently that the united states has become an enemy of the EU though. I'd say there's much more motivation to move to other software and platforms now.

I don’t think that’s accurate. These issues were always there, but “the sky is falling” rhetoric is all the rage at the moment (in both directions).

The US is not trustworthy anymore. Your president is switching randomly from on insane idea to something equally insane. Canada doesnt want to the the 51st state. Greenland is part of Denmark, which is in the EU, which has been the biggest ally for the US and now your president was not ruling out using force to take over greenland.

Trump fans are saying "this is how he negotiates, don't mind", etc but anything coming from him os just random bullshit and nothing he says can be believed because the next day he can be 180* on the same topic.

There were no such issues between any of the US allies in the time I can remember.

We thought that whenwe help the US in Afganistan and Iraq then it will be remembered when we need help, but now Trump threw all that goodwill down the toilet when he said that the allies basically didnt do anything.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#188

Post by [deleted] »

McDyver wrote: post #125
jorvi wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way out of this hole is by the EU mandating a 5, 10 and 20 year plan for getting off US tech and pivoting to open source. Start with a target small municipality in each country. Switch to SUSE (with a desktop that supports Active Directory), Collabora and what not. Then switch the mail stack. Then the files stack. Etc. Next step is scaling it up to a small city, then a big city, then a province, and finally the w…

I see a "top-down" approach, actually. Government and public services change to (ideally) open source, and "impose"/"require" downstream compatibility. This would create the incentive and make change easier

[deleted]

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#190

Post by toephu2 »

ivolimmen wrote: post #114
idontwantthis wrote: post #13

I wonder if the EU will begin trying to recruit American software engineers. I’d love to move to France.

In the Netherlands we return 30% of your taxes in the first 10. So we welcome you as well. We may pay less compared to the USA but we have health care, better work life balance and we all talk English.

Isn't the primary tongue of locals in the Netherlands Dutch? Yes you know English, but don't the locals speak Dutch or German to each other?
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