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France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

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Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#261

Makes sense. This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything. The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government, and the current US government will remain hostile as long as it is in charge; but even afterwards it is quite logical to assume that any follow-up government will prioritize US…

> The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government

Where do you get your information from? This is just plainly false. Heck, it runs afoul of the Constitution, so even if the government were to try something, it'd be smacked down real fast.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#262
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd understand why there's no even half-decent clients for Teams if you ever tried to write a bot in Teams. That's just a pure lesson in pain. Webhooks work, but proper bots are borderline impossible; at least without giving you the feeling that you'd rather pull your own teeth out with pliers.

Sorry to hear. Pulling teeth with pliers on-premise has been out of support for a while. Please contact our sales team if you haven't tried our Pliers Copilot 365 For Teams and Dentists offering yet. It solves any problems you might currently experience.

Audibly laughed. Thank you for that.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#263
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Used each month by more than 500 000 staff, in 15 ministries and many administrations.

Right. Just like edge is used on 100% of windows

Okay fine, I'll take the bait. How do you define "working out" to conclude that there's 0% chance of it?

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#264
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just goes to show how many structural problems there are to starting tech companies in Europe.

Yes, the problem is capital. US has loads of it and Europe does not. So a lot of European startups have 3 options: remain niche, get bought out buy US investors, move the corporate seat/brain trust to the US. There are many small European startups who do not have infrastructure to take on large European multinationals as clients. A lot of EU labor laws have hard requirements at 50 and 100 employees so startups stay b…

I kind of wonder, capital wise. the GDP isn't too far off US and there's def companies/families w/ insane amount of capital esp in luxury goods etc. Unless they're just hoarding it like Smaug and not investing it back into the economy, in which case the problem isn't capital but business culture.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#265

This needs to go much, much further before it is even mildly effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the US) and no significant large technology companies. They are largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population. I love that there is a lot more enthusiasm about OSS adoption within EU software devs, but at a population or government level there doesn't appear to be any coherent strategy to grad…

OSS software is also mostly owned by the US. This entire thing of 'replacing' American software with American software under a different commercial model is so silly.

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Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#266

Such a shame that so many U.S. citizens do not see the ramifications of their political decisions. Each one of these actions is a stepping stone the world is taking as a direct consequence of U.S. political negligence. And however difficult it was to render this consequence, it will be tenfold, or hundredfold, as difficult to reverse course.

Failing to make xenophobic choices when it comes to...enterprise software, is the issue? The US has spent tens of trillions defending Europe indirectly subsidizing social policies despite this the US has persistently been unpopular with Europeans because, obviously, they are a political target for domestic politicians (btw, you see this almost everywhere...if country A gives country B subsidies, you will almost alway…

Stop with this nonsense. You know it is false.

USA is not defending Europe from anyone.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#267

Worth pointing out: France is not adopting existing open source software, they're building their own software and releasing it under the MIT licence. Most of it (or all of it?) is Django backend + React frontend (using a custom-built UI kit). Home page for the entire suite (in French) with some screenshots: https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ Code bases are on GitHub and they use English there: https://github.com/suit…

Hmmm not entirely true. The text chat of their suite is simply element.io (matrix) and they're paying them for development. Visio does seem built from scratch but I wonder if it's a temporary thing until element is feature complete with their move away from Jitsi. You can find more about la suite on their website and the opendesk one (German project using mostly the same software). Unfortunately I don't have the link…

Tchap (the chat part of the suite) is indeed a fork of Element. Unfortunately they haven't funded upstream development for many years (otherwise both Element and Tchap would be much much better!)

Visio (aka meet) began in parallel with Element's work on MatrixRTC and Element Call. Hopefully the two can converge, given they are both built on LiveKit.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#269
post #200

I couldn't tell from the article but any reason they wouldn't just adopt Matrix? I thought some European governments (especially in France) were already adopting Matrix.

France was one of the first to already adopt Matrix. However, when they began Visio, Element was embedding Jitsi for VoIP. Meanwhile Element built Element Call, which is somewhat similar to Visio (except E2EE and decentralised thanks to Matrix). Hopefully the two can converge :)

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame that so many EU citizens do not see the ramifications of theirs . EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies. They have elected leaders who were until very recently heavily dependent on Russian energy. As a result, EU dependence on US tech is near-total. I remember hearing a few months ago…

I am French. When I look at the EU I see great potentials but the effect is a huge bureaucratic mess that is advantageous for everyone involved. About 25% of EU parliament parties are against EU. Theyt are paid by the EU to tell how much they hate this institution. There are no two countries in the EU who are aligned. Some of them are not completely out of synch (mostly the Nordics), some are in schizophrenia mode (P…

> Theyt are paid by the EU to tell how much they hate this institution.

Correction: They're paid by the EU taxpayers. And as politicians, there's a chance their vociferation of hate towards the EU is just parroting the opinion their voters have towards the EU, which means they're doing their job as politicians, whether you like their opinions or not.

>some are in schizophrenia mode (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia mostly) [...] but hate it

Why is the EU treated like a sacred cow that people shouldn't be allowed to hate?

People's happiness with the EU is directly tied to their QoL and purchasing power and you don't need to be a scientist to see that the poorest people in the EU have been hit hardest by the energy price hikes caused by Germany's stupid anti-nuclear pro-Ruski gas decisions, the inflation caused by the ECB's excessive COVID money printing, the support of mass migration, and the EU's response to the war in Ukraine, leading to a massive decline in QoL and purchasing power, so of course they're not gonna be happy with the EU when their decisions negatively affected them.

The problem with the EU is that it pushes for blanket policies and solutions across the hugely diverse union, while different members get negatively impacted differently by each policy, some more some less, but the point is there cannot be a one size fits all solution that favors all EU members at the same time, leading to EU picking winners and losers with a widening inequality. So of course those drawing the short straw are gonna hate it.

Worth remembering that Hungary, Slovakia, et-al have loved the EU for many, many years after joining. It's not like they suddenly decided to hate the EU for absolutely no reason. So then let's examine and talk about those reasons, instead of calling them schizophrenic which doesn't solve anything and just breeds more animosity and extremism.

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