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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

#221

Post by CrimsonRain »

tgv wrote: post #194
integralid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue Obviously, but most of university research - at least in Europe - is funded by public money. The idea is that research funded by public money should be public by default, unless there's a reason to do otherwise. >Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian…

Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it. And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?

American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#222

Post by bathtub365 »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #205
nandomrumber wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here is the actual catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#223

Post by loudmax »

Jgoauh wrote: post #144
jagged-chisel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … 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.

>That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” what the hell does that mean

Today, we take the term "open source" for granted, but this wasn't always the case. There wasn't a single, universally accepted term to describe software that was freely shareable. "Free software" was one of the terms used, but it wasn't clear to non-programmers how this was different from proprietary software that was downloadable without having to pay for it. If you're not a programmer anyway, how should one type of "free software" be different from another?

Proponents of what we now call "open source" wanted to distinguish between two senses of the word "free". One sense is not having to pay for something, as in "Come over to my party, the beer is free." Anther sense is "I can criticize the government, because the country I live in is free." People in the free software and open source movement began to phrase the dichotomy in these terms to illustrate how one sense of the word "free" is much more important than the other. The fact that you don't have to pay for some piece of software is nice, but what's more important is that you aren't beholden to the company that developed it.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#224

Post by PurpleRamen »

pembrook wrote: post #212
PurpleRamen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case. > If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot. That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour pro…

I'm confused with the disconnect here, so you simultaneously believe that: - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most) AND - government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?

> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)

That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?

> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?

The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#225

Post by tgv »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #221
tgv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it. And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?

American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.

So the argument is basically: because taxes, and only taxes, paid for something somewhere, it should be free for everybody everywhere?

Ah wait, you're somebody else. Why the somewhat unhinged attack on Europe? Because Europe is getting US tech for free?

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#226

Post by carlosjobim »

fsflover wrote: post #197
carlosjobim wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could purchase the fully fledged OS X operating system as a consumer for $20, and get customer support for it. Now the OS is free with customer support. > There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS I don't care about that as a consumer. I want software / a computer which works and easy customer support if I need it. People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know. Because…

> I don't care about that as a consumer. Until this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075 . Or, worse, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 or this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 . Megacorps don't care about your requests for support. > People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https:/…

This all seems like enterprise solutions. As a consumer, I shouldn't have to look at a list of consultants, as if I was trying to find support for a heavy industrial machine.

FLOSS or non-FLOSS, there is no real European consumer offering for an operating system. That should be the starting point for people who want a thriving European IT industry.

It could very well be based on Linux or whatever. But consumers need support. They need a phone numbers they can call and an e-mail addresses they can write to.

Focusing on consumers instead of corporate or academia is how Apple became so successful.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#227

Post by u8080 »

palata wrote: post #202
u8080 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mo…

My point is that "private companies abuse the government money when they can" is well-known fact. Thus, government as a customer should make everything possible to buy software on competitive market basis. If govt chose easy way to blindly gave shitton of money to some company with vague acceptance criteria and got bad result in return - this is 100% govt fault.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#228

Post by pseudony »

joe_mamba wrote: post #64
snakeboy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some utopian dream to think the death of the EU would decentralize power. It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony. Without the EU, the world is controlled by the US and China.

> It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony. How can I opt out of this "necessary evil"? I don't want to be part of this feud between powers as I don't want the EU to be a world power since in all world powers 90% of the wealth just concentrates to the top 1% anyway, so becoming one would not benefit me. Will housing be more affordable once we become a…

Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now. Look at Ukraine, look at Greenland.

Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.

As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#229

Post by CrimsonRain »

palata wrote: post #200
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? Concretely no. What's stopping this is t…

> Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations. > It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly. Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad m…

Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US.

eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion.

It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#230

Post by joe_mamba »

pseudony wrote: post #228
joe_mamba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's currently a necessary evil to put pressure on the already centralized power of the US global hegemony. How can I opt out of this "necessary evil"? I don't want to be part of this feud between powers as I don't want the EU to be a world power since in all world powers 90% of the wealth just concentrates to the top 1% anyway, so becoming one would not benefit me. Will housing be more affordable once we become a…

Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now. Look at Ukraine, look at Greenland. Your view is demonstrably proven wrong. As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.

>Small countries lack agency and international law is being repurposed as toilet paper right now.

It's not just "right now", it's how it has always been. International law was never a thing to begin with. It was just a sham created by the world powers after WW2 nuremberg trials, so they could add a veneer of legitimacy when they enforce their will over weaker countries in disputes, never the other way around. It was still just "history is written by the victor" business as usual. Otherwise they would have prosecuted leadership of France, Belgium and UK for their crimes in their colonies if there was any actual objective justice in international law.

As a smaller country you never had a say in your sovereignty if you didn't have nukes or the blessing of powerful allies to enforce laws for you via their more powerful militaries. "Might is right" is the undefeated fact that has been true for 10k years of human history, and will still be true 10k years in our future.

>Your view is demonstrably proven wrong.

Then demonstrate and prove it wrong.

>As for cost of living, name a developed country, big or small, where things are going swimmingly on that front and I’ll name you ten others where it didn’t, big and small.

So you agree with me that CoL is fucked, just like I originally said. Just because it's fucked in other countries, doesn't invalidate my statement.

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