31–40 of 67 posts
Switzerland is so brilliant. I wish they spoke english, id consider moving there.
This should not be a reason not to more there.
[0] for Swiss values of "big"
This is great, but I doubt this will ever actually be enforced. At least not without Switzerland dramatically increasing its investment in FOSS.
Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
>they also started switching to Linux for their infrastructure after the war, After the war? To which do you refer?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
> What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? That's almost the best side effect: in a place where open source is mandatory, they will have to fund the missing features and it will be available to everyone, once and for all. If everyone does that, we rapidly get great software, sharing the costs, very efficiently, and it's all open source. The alternat…
For example let’s take apiece if software everyone on HN hates, Sharepoint. I’ve yet to find any open source alternative that comes close. And while you may hate it, it provides tons of value to local governments I’ve worked with.
- let’s make our own distro.
- Let’s use OpenOffice (0 knowledge of FOSS at the start)
- let’s ban anything proprietary from day one
I hope someone wise is in charge (that Sturmer seems to be a good one, let’s just hope he is not too dogmatic/RMS about FOSS) and they set themselves up for success. Which, to me means: take it slow, ask for feedback, guide; don’t force.
… basically apply standard change management techniques.
Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? That's almost the best side effect: in a place where open source is mandatory, they will have to fund the missing features and it will be available to everyone, once and for all. If everyone does that, we rapidly get great software, sharing the costs, very efficiently, and it's all open source. The alternat…
In theory, maybe. I think in practise, in the case of somewhere like Germany, they realistically just won't implement the hypothetical feature and let productivity of employees drop even further. There is no motivation or reward in the public sector here for anyone to do anything better or more efficiently. I'm maybe overly cynical about the public sector's ability to get anything done here, I would like to be proven…
Switzerland is so brilliant. I wish they spoke english, id consider moving there.
You'd get by just fine. It's not uncommon to speak three languages fluently in CH (given it has 4 official languages), and usually English is in the mix. I lived there for a couple of years and while not speaking French or Italian, I got by quite easily in the respective regions.
You will regularly hit the language wall in places like shops, post office, neighbors etc. where answer in given language if they speak english is consistently "no". Integration outside big cities is a lot about you becoming like them, not vice versa, better keep the differences compared to locals behind doors of your home. Smaller cities, more rural places - forget english outside tourism, many young speak it but otherwise there isn't much will and often neither skill. French part is worse than German part in this (just like French from France are much, much worse when it comes to will to speak english than Germans from Germany are).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
Do you have an example of something FOSS can't do?
I’d love to see an open source football/basketball/sports engine. But it’s hard to do, even without dealing with the licensing aspects.
I think a big part of the reason is that Big Tech really helps push along FOSS, but the licensing aspects make the ROI poor for Big Tech to invest in FOSS here.