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RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

reuters.com

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Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#261

Post by thesausageking »

antpls wrote: post #257

Switzerland isn't a magical neutral land on Earth. It's a neutral place from the point of view of Europe because its terrain is difficult to practice for troops. On a virtual level (software, intellectual, legal), Switzerland is not more neutral than any other small country on Earth. It could have been Iceland. Automatically centralizing to Switzerland everything considered 'neutral' (neutrality is a debatable concep…

I don't view this move as "centralizing" to Switzerland. They've left the US over concerns about the legal and regulatory environment there.

Switzerland is a reasonably neutral in the on-going trade and IP disputes, so it a good choice for now. If that changes, the RISC-V foundation could always move again and relocate to Iceland or Singapore or somewhere else.

As it becomes more and more common for teams and companies/foundations to be globally distributed, I think we'll see more of this movement, with talent flowing to the countries that have the most favorable environments.

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#262

Post by lliamander »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #260
lliamander wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be more true if domestic labor was on a more even playing field with global competitors. As it stands, domestic labor is expensive: not just because of wages and benefits, but also health and safety regulations, legal liabilities, etc. I'm not saying we necessarily need to roll back those protections, but it's worth mentioning out that as the cost of hiring domestic labor in developed countries go up, comp…

> as the cost of hiring domestic labor in developed countries go up, companies begin to off-shore labor as soon as they are able. Productivity of labor is also much higher in developed countries. What matters is comparative advantage . Even from a strictly economic point of view, it is often better for rich countries to off-shore a lot of low-level manufacturing. That decreases prices for manufactured goods in rich c…

Government imposed costs on labor don't necessarily scale proportionally with productivity. It's possible that those costs can price even highly productive labor out of the market.

Furthermore, at least some of the people affected by the displacement of manufacturing jobs in developed countries do not have higher productivity. The opioid crisis in the US is to some extent an example of this. I know of blue collar communities where the level of productive employment is lower now than it was a generation or two ago.

That doesn't mean these communities could not adapt to the changing economic landscape (as people did when there was the transition from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy). Patterns of specialization and trade are bound to change, but government imposed prices on labor can create a hindrance to a society's ability to adapt.

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#263

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

oefrha wrote: post #198
socialdemocrat wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signals from the current US administration is pretty clear. It is a government that puts American interest ahead of any other concern. Naturally universities in other western countries are going to have their doubts about cooperating on crucial technology if it is under control by a government which only cares about national interests. Same reason I favor exiting NATO and building a European alliance only. The US…

> It is a government that puts American interest ahead of any other concern. I always have a hard time swallowing the bullshit that is the American government ever held any other concern above American interest, whether the results were favorable notwithstanding.

There was a sensibility for enlightened self-interest that Trump does not understand. Entities like the UN or WTO subjected the US to certain rules, but also subjected everyone else to those same rules. For example, the US gave up the freedom to impose tariffs whenever it likes, but in doing so, ensured that its own companies would have unfettered access to foreign markets. Trump's strategy appears to be to tear down all multilateral institutions, and to bully each country one-by-one into accepting what he wants.

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#264

Post by Bendingo »

riversflow wrote: post #203
wayoutthere wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are such things as universal human rights, and China is absolute violation of them. You mean the ones that the US routinely violates for "terrorists" and "criminals"? China uses the exact same rhetoric for the people whose rights it violates. The situation with the Uyghurs mirrors a lot of the tactics used in the 70s by American police against black Americans under the guise of the "war on drugs" (hint: our p…

>What else could we have done? We could have engaged with the Japanese in the Pacific and let Europe duke it out and weaken themselves to nothing. Then rolled into Europe with tanks and taken over the whole world? Seriously. I'm not a historian, but I'm pretty sure we could have taken a very different route in WWII. If we really lacked morality, why didn't we just take over the World after WWII, or force the countrie…

> why didn't we just take over the World after WWII

Both the UK [1] and US [2] developed plans to do just that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable?

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-pentagon-estimated-20...

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#265

Post by FailEEStudent »

my123 wrote: post #107
porker wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at what ARM has gone through in the last months. What has it gone through? I haven't seen any news stories specifically about this.

https://news.yahoo.com/uk-chip-designer-arm-complying-u-rule... They resumed after the ban was kinda temporarily suspended... but there's a risk.

Well, not really. RISC-V is open-source so export controls don't apply so it seems to be more of a theoretical risk right now. https://www.ucop.edu/ethics-compliance-audit-services/compli...

As for ARM, they initially stopped shipments to Huawei (it was an internal email that got leaked) but since it used less than 25% US-origin technology, US export controls don't apply and ARM could ship it

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#266

Post by FailEEStudent »

microtherion wrote: post #221

I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pretty much in lockstep with the US, at least officially (cf. Iran sanctions). To me, this smacks of the kind of legalist thinking that software engineers are prone to: Assuming that if some legal construct is implemented according to some rules, governments and…

Eh, not really. Switzerland was never a member of CoCOM and only joined the Waessenar Agreement b/c there is no binding requirement for the Waessenar Agreement. Switzerland's export controls on dual-use (military and civilian) technology basically don't exist.

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#267

Post by FailEEStudent »

pavon wrote: post #238
microtherion wrote: post #221

I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pretty much in lockstep with the US, at least officially (cf. Iran sanctions). To me, this smacks of the kind of legalist thinking that software engineers are prone to: Assuming that if some legal construct is implemented according to some rules, governments and…

I curious about what the legal implications of this really are. As a layman, it seems to me that US Export Control laws still exist, so if any of the technical data being discussed in the standards meetings would be considered an export before, it still will now. The change is that the liability has shifted off of the Foundation and onto the American members. If the Foundation as a whole couldn't determine its legal…

Open-source information isn't export controlled but technical data is. You can imagine this causes alot of consternation with standards organizations b/c that line isn't exactly clear. I was just speaking to legal counsel at GSMA and their response was "no one knows what the law is unless the government says we violated it".

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#268

Post by FailEEStudent »

pjc50 wrote: post #160
edraferi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analysis is correct. Before jumping to the “US is a bully” narrative, one should consider: - they whole problem here is that Hauwei and other state-sponsored Chinese firms are flooding the market with below-cost, compromising devices in order to give the Chinese government broad access to sensitive information [0] - Hong Kong is dying under the Chinese boot [1] - China is running concentration camps [2]…

> Our community isn’t used to thinking about open source software - or technology in general- in the context of geopolitics I'm old enough to remember when open-source distributions had special "non-US" sections for cryptography that actually worked. All I ask is that if you have a "this software may not be used to run an internment camp" license, it gets even-handedly applied.

Open-source crypto has no export controls. Private crypto by Raytheon, Lockheed and others has export controls

Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

#269

Post by FailEEStudent »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #263
oefrha wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a government that puts American interest ahead of any other concern. I always have a hard time swallowing the bullshit that is the American government ever held any other concern above American interest, whether the results were favorable notwithstanding.

There was a sensibility for enlightened self-interest that Trump does not understand. Entities like the UN or WTO subjected the US to certain rules, but also subjected everyone else to those same rules. For example, the US gave up the freedom to impose tariffs whenever it likes, but in doing so, ensured that its own companies would have unfettered access to foreign markets. Trump's strategy appears to be to tear down…

And that's going swimmingly with global growth being the lowest since 2008 and low 2% US growth only being sustained due to insanely high fiscal deficits and monetary easing. Meanwhile business investment is in the toilet which bodes terribly for future long run growth since there is no capital deepening now.
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