Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
[flagged]
Does the US have free beer?!
European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
281–290 of 380 posts
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#282Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#283It’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.
I don't think anybody understand how bad it really is. Forget about Greenland. Trump can say "give me Germany or I'll shutdown Azure ID" and we will have to give him Germany. At this point we are just praying that neither him or any of his hawks realize this.
I agree that many countries are indeed very vulnerable to this, but you somehow managed to overstate the case by some orders of magnitude.
Silicon Valley flipping the switch on a country would sure cause short-term chaos and longer-term significant inconvenience. But when push comes to shove, bureaucracy gets moved aside, creative workarounds pop up, and people make do, somehow. We've seen that happen during COVID-19 lockdowns.
And after some time, the boycotted regions will find themselves with a healthy independent software industry. Silicon Valley's global impact would be greatly reduced, because any mildly sensible country would want to reduce its exposure and some serious competition will finally get traction.
I think the hawks realize all this. Though it's of course impossible to predict what the Chaos Monkey in Chief will do.
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#284Earlier 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.” It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
Free Software should rename to Liberty Software. Instead, advocates loaned Spanish "libre" in the ugly FLOSS acronym (Free/Libre Open Source Software). If only we used "liberty" then we could stop quibbling over the multiple meanings of "free" and just talk about software liberty.
"Free as in bonus" vs "free as in liberty".
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
The current socio-political climate is actually making this analogy less US-centric by the day :( edit: I'm specifically referring to people losing their jobs and similar retaliations due to being on the left, or making public statements that the current administration and supporters don't like.
Its not just left. Right had to face this too. As a moderate, it's hilarious sometimes that one side would do something and when the other side does something similar, they are all up in arms about it.
We should be allowed to discuss openly without being worried of losing job and humiliated.
Right now, I cannot discuss openly. Majority are silent. And loud ones are a minority.
Kevin hart losing Oscar hosting for a comment 12 some years ago. People who tried to cancel Eminem for his old songs and Rowan Atkinson's speech comes to mind on the top of my head.
Getting offended is a YOU problem. Not a me problem.
Until it's possible for us from both sides can talk openly, these will continue. Just like opposition political parties when one side is in more power, they will try and punish the other.
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#286Maybe the EU can develop its own version of Linux OS, just like North Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS -- edit When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts. The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting…
Finland (where Linux comes from) is in the EU. There are also a few European linux distributions you may have heard of: e.g. Debian, SUSE, Ubuntu (UK), Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia, Knoppix, etc.
How is Linux related to Finland? Just because some of early contributors was born in Finland?
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides
> only Romance language ...But we're (mostly) not one?
I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech
(Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots. They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems. If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse th…
I am sorry for good people genuinely trying. I understand that it is a hard problem to solve - but private companies chose their contractors and suppliers and as well facing similar issues. Somehow private companies are managing to evaluate results and found accountable persons while governments are known for being very undemanding customers.
"We have tried hard, but failed" is still failure despite any good will. Good will with courage and having skills with competence are very different things and often govt employees have neither because otherwise they will be more successful using this skillset in private companies.
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
Free Software should rename to Liberty Software. Instead, advocates loaned Spanish "libre" in the ugly FLOSS acronym (Free/Libre Open Source Software). If only we used "liberty" then we could stop quibbling over the multiple meanings of "free" and just talk about software liberty. "Free as in bonus" vs "free as in liberty".
later, ... there are 14 competing jargon files.
"Free software" is a fine descriptor. It's needlessly confusing to repeat that "beer as in slurred speech" thing, though. Free software can be free "as in beer"[0], but the way it gets said makes it sound like it zero cost software is an anti-goal, rather than pointing out that it's not the true goal. Then the "free as in speech" thing is kind of pointless because you can just say "free as in freedom".
Free software is about fundamental computer freedom -- freedom to own your computer, inspect and modify, etc. -- we already have this word.
[0] where who why free beer ever? 0% relatable, 0/10 would still like a free beer though
Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source
#290Evidence of what? Of the existence of open source? Of "open source" what? Software? Hardware? Its usage? The the communities behind various open source projects?