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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

#281

Post by cortesoft »

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 :/

If the move away from American big tech is for practical reasons rather than political, there is no harm in using GitHub. The worry with using an American firm is that the US government could force the company to handover confidential information, or shut down access.

For open source code, there is no risk of confidential information being given to the US government (since there is no confidential information), and moving to another forge would be pretty simple if necessary.

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

#282

Post by rootusrootus »

GaryBluto wrote: post #177
tyre wrote: post #23

As an American, this is awesome to see. We should pay penalties for our abandonment of good faith global engagement. And economic damage really is the key to the heart of these United States of Three Corporations in a Trench Coat. We’ve seen companies and CEOs paying millions in bribes to be close to the president. Now this aligns their financial interests with shifting our foreign policy. Not how it ought to work, b…

It's so strange reading all these comments from Americans begging to be punished for collective misdeeds. It reads as unsettlingly masochistic.

The only people who hate Americans as much as (or more than) Europeans are Americans.

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

#283

Post by dyslexit »

shevy-java wrote: post #192

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…

> This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything.

More to this point, the article points out that one of the drivers of all this is when Microsoft killed one of the emails an ICC prosecutor's email because the US administration sanctioned them:

> A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.

> The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a “kill switch” that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.

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

#284

Post by iamacyborg »

mrits wrote: post #237
input_sh wrote: post #225

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

You think government staff just use whatever software they want?

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

paulfitz wrote: post #206
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…

I work at Grist, the "tableur collaboratif" (collaborative spreadsheet) listed on the La Suite homepage. We're in the interesting situation of being both a NYC-based company, and open source software the French gov has adopted and is helping to develop. Grist is mostly a node backend. So it is a complicated story. The key is having code the gov can review and trust and run it on sovereign infrastructure. Grist https:…

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by cianmm »

Teever wrote: post #238
aanet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc). It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech…

I agree with this totally. But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this. To me a really significant signal that they’re serious will be when there’s an official Linux version of Solidworks. It’s remarkable to me that France has control over one of the premiere CAD suites but theyre entirely dependent on an American OS…

Why would a private company deciding to release a Linux version of their product signal a government's follow-through? As far as I can tell, there is no current connection between Solidworks and the French government.

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

#287

Post by joe_mamba »

calgoo wrote: post #226
orochimaaru wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not why your big corp chooses teams and the msft suite. From a corp perspective they don’t care about your edge case. There’s only - is it good for 90% of my use cases across the enterprise? And - do I get a bundle discount? Last but not the least - do I need to expend developer resources on it vs anything else? Yeah, there is half assed stuff. But it’s not what most of the big corp uses anyway. So your little d…

Our CEO Decided to use his own phone, use zoom instead of the corporate Teams, and uses ChatGPT where the rest of us are stuck with MS copilot test licenses. I guess its good to be at the top!

Reminds me when at my previous company, management got themselves top macbooks for filing excel sheets and replying to emails, while rank and file engineers got the budget Lenovos with 8GB RAM

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

#288

Post by ergocoder »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #2

Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive concession.

> No more Teams? Sounds like a dream.

No more Words? Introducing a worse software than Words...

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

#289

Post by klaff »

maxloh wrote: post #71
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.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that people don't necessarily vote for the "best" candidate. Instead, they vote for the candidate who is "least bad" and do the minimum amount of damage to their interests. It is always a matter of compromise. As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to vote for a right-wing conservative who advocates against their own rights, even if that candidate makes the "ri…

>As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to vote for a right-wing conservative who advocates against their own rights, even if that candidate makes the "right call" on every other issue.

I can't think of a candidate that fits this description.

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

#290

Post by dkga »

bee_rider wrote: post #271
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Next year: LeGit !
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