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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

#271

Post by bee_rider »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #247
input_sh wrote: post #167

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…

> Code bases are on GitHub Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/

Maybe they have local copies as well, and just figured they might as well take GitHub’s free bandwidth and social networking features.

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

#272

Post by Bengalilol »

anon291 wrote: post #118
quadrifoliate wrote: post #111

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.

Could you elaborate? https://nextcloud.com/blog/press_releases/digital-sovereignt...>

On a side and more general note: "Global Innovation Index 2025"

"Europe hosts 15 economies ranked among the global top 25, including six in the top 10. Switzerland (1st) retains the global lead, followed by Sweden (2nd), the United Kingdom (6th) and Finland (7th). Thirteen out of 39 European economies covered moved up the ranks, marking a notable increase from nine last year.

Notable movers include Ireland (18th), Belgium (21st) and Norway (20th), which breaks into the top 20.

Eastern European economies also show solid momentum. Lithuania (33rd) leads globally for unicorn valuation and digital innovation – with leading positions in app creation, ICT use and Knowledge-intensive employment.Europe is also home to dynamic innovation clusters, led by Germany with seven clusters and the United Kingdom with four, including Cambridge and Oxford. However, European innovation clusters trail the US in venture capital strength."

https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2025/article_0009...>

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

#273

Post by MrDresden »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #93
spicyusername wrote: post #3

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.

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 remember hearing a few months ago that companies in the EU still have to use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for routine government filings!

Could you name which European nation this was?

I would genuinely be interested in knowing.

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

#274

Post by rootusrootus »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #108
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting for a traitorous convicted felon is why I can't stand federal level Republican voters. What is the point in changing the messaging when racism and sexism are at the root of the problem? For the record, I abhor my non federal level Democrat leaders, and vote Republican on the state and local level (because they are less crazy than the Democrats at this level).

> What is the point in changing the messaging when racism and sexism are at the root of the problem? Because it is in fact the messaging which is the problem, not racism or sexism. Why on God's green earth would you expect people to vote for a political class that openly hates them, as indeed posters here are kindly demonstrating? I can tell you from personal experience that there are a great many Trump voters who ar…

> Because it is in fact the messaging which is the problem, not racism or sexism

Yes, of course, the reason Republican voters embrace the concept of deplorable is because the Dems are mean to them. That totally makes them noble and not in fact deplorable.

> It is the messaging of the Democrats that pushed so many people into Trump's arms

He got less than 50% of the vote, if the Dems are pushing so many people to Trump they are doing a crappy job of it.

Though I do agree that the Dems suck on messaging, it is not because they villainize Republican voters. It's because they don't focus their efforts on bread-and-button progressive priorities like labor and healthcare. They blew their wad on trans rights, which just isn't a great strategy to move a lot of voters to the polls.

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

#275

Post by econ »

input_sh wrote: post #218
quadrifoliate wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy. Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.

That website is specifically to explain it to French audiences. German version is here, but unlike France they're mostly boosting already-existing German open source software (like Nextcloud and Open Xchange): https://opencode.de/en/home I don't know how the Netherlands really fits into all of this, but I know they're one of the biggest funders of open source projects in general via NLnet. Seriously, their list of pr…

je maintiendrai!

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

#276

Post by Waterluvian »

I think this is one of the silver linings to this new era. By trying to renegotiate intolerable terms, the Americans are forcing the rest of the world to figure out how to make it all work without them. This will inevitably be a rough transition but it results in more worldwide resiliency and product/service options.

I think one question, which we might be seeing a bit here and there, is if the Americans decide that no, you can’t also do that. You must accept the intolerable terms or be punished.

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

#278

Post by latexr »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #203
input_sh wrote: post #167

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…

Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy. Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.

> Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy.

Why not? Plenty of French people speak English at a native level.

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

#279

Post by rootusrootus »

MiiMe19 wrote: post #97
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reminder that in the last presidential election, the winner was decided by one of the smallest margins ever, and the winner only won a plurality, not a majority. Almost as many people voted against the current US administration as voted for it, so although it is true that "so many US citizens do not see the ramifications", there almost as many who do (or some version of them).

Almost as many, but not more than :)

Fewer than 50% voted for it, which means more than that voted against it.

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

#280

Post by 9dev »

dijit wrote: post #188
tedggh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s so bad about Teams that makes it so hated? I used it lately and often to work with a customer and I don’t find anything terrible about it, other than some minor usability annoyances like phantom chat notifications once in a while. But overall it does what it’s supposed to do, get on a video call, share your screen and share files over channels. The transcript feature seems to work well too. I’m not amazed by i…

"I don't have an issue with it" tells me you've never used anything else. Have you tried Slack? Zulip? Mattermost? Fucking... IRC from 1988? Teams isn't just mediocre, it's aggressively hostile to basic usability. The camera bar sits at the top of the window, directly blocking where you're supposed to position your camera for eye contact. Chat organisation is broken: you get duplicate groups because the order people…

Out of all the things you listed (and I'd have a couple more), copy-paste is really what drives me insane, because it's completely cursed!

Sometimes, text copied from teams includes `[Sender Name, 2026-01-03, 21:51]` as a prefix—other times not. Sometimes you paste formatted text and it ends up pasted as formatted but inconsistent HTML, including (of course) text color of all things, rendering it black even with the dark theme, and thus unreadable. Other times you copy code, and there's two blank lines between each line when you paste elsewhere. It makes you cry, really.

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