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European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

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Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#301

Post by noo_u »

palata wrote: post #267
CrimsonRain wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US. eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion. It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.

I don't have anything polite to answer to this :-).

It is, at this point, an easily verifiable fact that software engineering jobs in Europe are en masse poorly paid relative to the equivalent positions in the US, and the majority of the EU companies that actually pay well are actually US based. This causes a lot of outflow of talent. That VC funding in Europe is atrocious is obvious to anyone who has had to go through it, and have fun letting a poor performer go from your 5 person startup.

Your polite wishful responses are frustrating to read to anyone who's had to go through this hell.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#302

Post by amavect »

qwery wrote: post #289
amavect wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Newcomers keep tripping on Free Software vs Freeware, therefore "Free Software" doesn't describe well. We could call it Freedom Software. (There now exist 15 competing jargon files.)

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#304

Post by pembrook »

agentultra wrote: post #134

It’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.

It'd be a shame if an asteroid struck earth tomorrow as well.

But given limited resources, we tend not to devote a ton of resources to every possible tail risk since there's millions of them.

Europe should focus on building domestic tech capacity for other reasons (our own future prosperity being one), but being worried about Microsoft Word access over some silly news headlines is not one of them.

Every single productivity suite can open/modify word docs and powerpoints and excel formats. This is not a huge issue.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#305

Post by carlosjobim »

fsflover wrote: post #251
carlosjobim wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all seems like enterprise solutions. As a consumer, I shouldn't have to look at a list of consultants, as if I was trying to find support for a heavy industrial machine. FLOSS or non-FLOSS, there is no real European consumer offering for an operating system. That should be the starting point for people who want a thriving European IT industry. It could very well be based on Linux or whatever. But consumers need…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuxedo_Computers

Very good example!

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#306

Post by u8080 »

supermatt wrote: post #296
u8080 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Linux related to Finland? Just because some of early contributors was born in Finland?

It was literally created by Torvalds (a Finn) while at the university of Helsinki (in Finland).

I am not claiming "invention", my whole point here is that place of origin means nothing, especially for a FOSS project - despite Linus being important part of it.

If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions as US citizen.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#307

Post by qwery »

This sounds more negative than I want it to, but it seems like this is missing the forest for the trees. There's absolutely a real problem here and I am fully supportive of projects seeking to address this.

Governments around the world throw public money at private enterprise to solve all of their IT problems. This sounds good, I guess, to the Americans in the room. Until recently the US actually had a great number of "open source" projects -- NASA, NOAA, come to mind (the weather satellites are still going). Open projects, owned by the people -- this is the obviously correct way to do things. You can engage the business sector when it makes sense to do so, but a country shouldn't be run by -- be dependent on -- a Microsoft, or a PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Then they delete the production database and write the people a post mortem about how they'll improve for next time. Then they profit from war crimes that your government even quietly admits are a bad thing occasionally. Then they .

"Open source" isn't a solution. Free software would be a better look. But the entire world is completely dependent on IT systems and goverments don't employ enough software developers. Not "developers" to "refresh" the UI again, not Autodesk certified Call of Duty Black Ops 9 Micopilot Copilot 666 developers -- normal boring software developers -- public servants.

Make it dull. It's your people you're fucking with. Flashy app bad, boring UI good -- it's a tax return.

The thing that should be happening is serious public sector software development. By the people, for the people. Keep it in-house. I shouldn't have to say to keep it open. It belongs to the people.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#308

Post by [deleted] »

u8080 wrote: post #306
supermatt wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was literally created by Torvalds (a Finn) while at the university of Helsinki (in Finland).

I am not claiming "invention", my whole point here is that place of origin means nothing, especially for a FOSS project - despite Linus being important part of it. If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions…

[deleted]

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#309

Post by supermatt »

u8080 wrote: post #306
supermatt wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was literally created by Torvalds (a Finn) while at the university of Helsinki (in Finland).

I am not claiming "invention", my whole point here is that place of origin means nothing, especially for a FOSS project - despite Linus being important part of it. If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions…

Active kernel contributors are spread all around the world, with a pretty even distribution across USA, Western Europe and Asia.

Your suggestion that the US government would lean on the citizenship of Torvalds in order to exert control over the kernel should be laughable but I concede that anything is possible these days.

Re: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

#310

Post by xorcist »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #111
Roark66 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable. For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels. All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for…

> Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script? The management, the government and the eventually the tax payers. If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code, if it's not an open source software, they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it in the first place. That's when the companies tend to jack up the prices to crazy num…

> If the government wants to add a small change to the tax code [...] they'd have to hire the same company that wrote it

This is a very strange statement and you probably have some specific situation in mind that isn't really representative.

Normally when you hire people to write your code they do a work for hire, unless your contract says otherwise, you own the rights. There are some minor exceptions, typically for countries that treat commercial and artistic copyright differently, but that's it. I've been hired to add changes to people's software thousands of times, and it's never been on the table that I get some kind of ownership of their source code.

The license said source code is under is completely irrelevant. Especially in this question of tax authorities. That source code is normally not under some public license at all because it's their internal processes anyway, they may change at any time and the employ a number of programmers to do so. Plus a handful of consultants.

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