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European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

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Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#201

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

agentultra wrote: post #134

It’d be a shame if MS was compelled by the current US administration to shutdown EU users of CoPilot/365/whatever. Whole agencies within governments lose all of their data and can barely function. A move to alternatives is an imperative! I hope it works for them and stimulates their tech sector.

As a Linux guy for many a year, I've often said that going all-in on Microsoft tech stacks is like painting yourself into a corner. It all looks like it's going fine until you decide that you want to leave the room.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#202

Post by palata »

u8080 wrote: post #169
palata wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail. I have been in companies getting money from government programs. It's not fraud from the government side, at least not for what I've seen. The problem is that companies see government programs as a way to make easy money. If the government pays a company for X, that's because that company has expertise in X. So it's easy for the company to bullshit…

>Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government. So, in well-known conditions of ineffective spending without competition government chose to waste money bypassing market? How that's not government's fault?

Not sure if you have a specific example in mind or speaking generally.

What I am saying is that generally, private companies abuse the government money when they can. Just like private companies enshittify their products to make more money. It's all about making money.

Why are governments getting bad software from companies? For the same reason users are getting bad software as well. The software industry produces money, not good software.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#204

Post by PartiallyTyped »

kwanbix wrote: post #186

As a South American, it’s striking to see how the current U.S. administration has forced other countries to confront the risks of not having their own digital infrastructure. And this isn’t just about software or the cloud. What happens if tomorrow the U.S. forbids Apple from selling iPhones outside its borders? Or starts requiring built-in backdoors or kill switchs? Scenarios like these raise a deeper question: coul…

China is on the path to doing just that, and I expect the heads of the government (or at least the people behind the scenes) in both EU and India consider this.

The US has, unfortunately, proven to be a very unreliable partner.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#205

Post by sam_lowry_ »

nandomrumber wrote: post #189
elric wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many projects made with government money are developed under the EUPL. Including some of the ones I've worked on. Oddly enough, they aren't available for download anywhere.

There is some EUPL software available here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/

Where exactly? I really see nothing that qualifies as open source there. Just text.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#206

Post by kaveh_h »

yuchtman wrote: post #172
rambambram wrote: post #86

The EU has Schleswig-Holstein (a German state) as an example; office software and email replaced by open source alternatives. Look overthere, I would say. But overthere is a politician who actually understands what he is talking about. I don't feel the need to provide governments/politicians with open source software who think like this: "open source – which is a public good to be freely used". Start understanding ho…

They also have a major german city (Munich) who moved to Open Source, gave up and moved back. The SH project is rather new.

A long time ago Amazon tried to acquire a good online business diapers.com and initially the owners refused. Amazon proceded to get investors or lenders to funds 200 million dollars to undercut sales of diapers.com. Fast forward they were close to bankruptcy and owners were forced to sell it off for a bargain to Amazon. Since then the price of diapers have risen to be very profitable.

The point being that any businesses that sell proprietary software will do the same to kill competition, but in the long run they will end up costing more.

The real issue is government spending is that procurement is very broken even if you would opt for buying support for open source Software. This is not a problem China nor North Korea have due to how corporations have no easy way to influence politics in those Authoritarian countries.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#207

Post by kwanbix »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #204
kwanbix wrote: post #186

As a South American, it’s striking to see how the current U.S. administration has forced other countries to confront the risks of not having their own digital infrastructure. And this isn’t just about software or the cloud. What happens if tomorrow the U.S. forbids Apple from selling iPhones outside its borders? Or starts requiring built-in backdoors or kill switchs? Scenarios like these raise a deeper question: coul…

China is on the path to doing just that, and I expect the heads of the government (or at least the people behind the scenes) in both EU and India consider this. The US has, unfortunately, proven to be a very unreliable partner.

The problem isn’t only the U.S. China is also unreliable, and Russia as well. Just look at what happened to the EU with its dependence on Russian gas: once the war in Ukraine started, that dependency immediately turned into a major vulnerability.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#208

Post by vladms »

embedding-shape wrote: post #46
Roark66 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So your argument here is that while the software can be open source, it matters less, if whatever the software does isn't actually an open standard? Wouldn't "being open source with own custom protocol" essentially be as open as "open source or not, but software implements open standards" anyways?

Many protocols (even open) are complex, and partially undocumented.

It would be nice to have both (open source and open protocol), but I kind of agree that if we should push for one, an open (decently explained) standard will probably be easier, simpler and with longer term impact, not to mention the interoperability benefits between countries.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#210

Post by davisr »

kwanbix wrote: post #186

As a South American, it’s striking to see how the current U.S. administration has forced other countries to confront the risks of not having their own digital infrastructure. And this isn’t just about software or the cloud. What happens if tomorrow the U.S. forbids Apple from selling iPhones outside its borders? Or starts requiring built-in backdoors or kill switchs? Scenarios like these raise a deeper question: coul…

CALEA has given the FBI backdoor access to all telecom traffic for the past 30 years.

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

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