I submitted my project EasyInvoicePDF (a free & open-source invoice generator) a couple of months ago to European Alternatives but never heard back unfortunately. The project has no backend and is purely browser-based, but I’m based in Europe and developing the project here, so I consider it a European project =) App: https://easyinvoicepdf.com/?template=stripe GitHub: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
Unless you do Peppol... it's not intresting at all.
European Alternatives
331–340 of 526 posts
Re: European Alternatives
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, to be clear, your reasons for looking for EU alternatives (i.e. that "same reason" you refer to) is that some countries are not allowed to contribute to US projects?
Yes, as it stands we should remove our independence on US, given current geopolitics, when technology can be weaponised.
Ok, but in that case the only FLOSS projects from US that can be considered "dangerous" would be those which are both tied to specific US companies and do not have much of a EU presence to be forked in case of such weaponization (with ease of forking being taken into account as well).
And TBH IMO such projects should be avoided in the first place regardless of what US is doing because they tend to use FLOSS as a marketing method than for practical development. Choosing projects which have multiple shareholders, so to speak, is much healthier in the long term.
Re: European Alternatives
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am unfamiliar with Wero. Can you explain why it is an engineering fiasco? Side note: Looking at their job listings I don't see any engineering positions (with the exception of a security engineer which is a grey area in a bank IMO), only managers and business roles.
I see one engineering job ad https://careers.epicompany.eu/jobs/6909459-senior-full-stack... if we can call EU Digital Wallet speculation "engineering". But you just answered your own question. Wero is a money extraction business that secured European Commission support. There is no engineering nor payment system to it.
what ever "money extraction business" means - wero is a real thing people (me included) are already using and developed jointly by many european banks.
Re: European Alternatives
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW Free Pascal and Lazarus communities and developers are largely European and there isn't a single company behind them. Though at the same time there are also several devs from outside EU so i do not think it can be called a "EU alternative" - which is the case for most FLOSS projects actually. Some projects, especially high profile ones, do have US companies behind them (e.g. Google, etc) so you could claim they…
> why you are looking for an EU alternative I think recently it has been made obvious by the US that relying on US technology is a risk, because it can be used to bully entire countries. So I think there is a movement right now of "non-US alternatives", but of course if you are in the EU and got burned by relying too much on the US, maybe it is wise to try to fix that by having some kind of digital sovereignty in the…
Yeah i understand why one would do that, i wrote that not to make the question itself, but to indicate that whoever thinks to look for EU alternatives should ask that question to themselves. This way they can figure out how to choose their next steps, like judging if a FLOSS project makes sense to use or avoid - e.g. if it is tied in a US company.
Re: European Alternatives
#335One obvious thing missing from any of those lists: Visa and Mastercard alternatives. This is the protection money that is never brought up by the US officials when they say that America was paying for our security.
The big European countries still have their National Systems that work very well.
If the US would nuke Visa/MC in Germany, payments inside Germany would still work very well via Girocard (except for some people that bank with cheapskate neobanks)
Wero is coming and it should work across Europe
Re: European Alternatives
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
While Master Card and a Visa there is a EU regulation limiting the fees, health insurance is mainly national level. So you could ask the question why is Ozempic cheap in Australia? But I can't answer your question.
This website appears to indicate that Visa/Mastercard fees are about 6x as high in the US vs EU: https://wallethub.com/edu/credit-card-interchange-fees-by-co... The EU had such a good deal with the US. But they couldn't resist making fun of us. They made fun of us for our military spending while we deterred Russia. They made fun of us for our health spending while we subsidized their drug development costs. They made…
You are paying more for everything because your country is extremely anti social, people alone have no leverage to negotiate prices with visa, pharmaceutics and so on.
Trump is only pushing that « free for all » policy even more, I wouldn’t expect to see things improve for you.
Instead of fixing your country and making the rich accountable, you’re being manipulated to look elsewhere.
Anyway, I believe that the eu cutting ties with the USA is the best thing that could happen to us and I’m glad you’re satisfied. We should have spent much more on military and put an end to the USA military supremacy across the world a long time ago.
Re: European Alternatives
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. But the systems are more and more breaking down. Its unsustainable. At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases. Not talking about the trains. Germany DB runs on time in only 50% of the cases. So thats a big problem
My partner has had three extensive cancer treatments in the Netherlands. She has had dietary and psychological specialists help her during and after each one. All of this was just on normal health insurance and with normal clinics and hospitals. Never did she have to wait more than perhaps 3 weeks tops for an appointment. The medical system here is world class. However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compa…
> However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compared to the Netherlands. I refuse to take trains through that country anymore.
In which country are the trains bad? Netherlands or Germany? Do you care elaborating why? is that punctuality? strikes? decaying infrastructure?
Re: European Alternatives
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wero is coming. Currently it is only available in a few countries.
No it's not. Wero is another name for iDEAL, it has been pushed by Dutch, but it is an engineering fiasco. There is no way Poland would adopt it. Blik is just on another level price- and feature-wise.
The big European countries adopt it, so if Poland will adopt it or not won't matter in the short term, in the long term merchants will accept it as they do it with Alipay and other more obscure stuff
Re: European Alternatives
#339One obvious thing missing from any of those lists: Visa and Mastercard alternatives. This is the protection money that is never brought up by the US officials when they say that America was paying for our security.
I wish GNU Taler would become more concrete. https://www.taler.net
It seems like Taler has been coming along great and the biggest things it’s missing are more interest and adoption. There has been some first ‘real-world’ use recently, but it’s still far from becoming widespread, which would be a dream come true.
Re: European Alternatives
#340One obvious thing missing from any of those lists: Visa and Mastercard alternatives. This is the protection money that is never brought up by the US officials when they say that America was paying for our security.
Eh, as an American I have to pay Visa/Mastercard fees too. Why do European drug firms charge so much more for their drugs in the US than in Europe? That is an actual difference between what it is like to be in a consumer in US vs Europe. Even Bernie Sanders thinks it is a problem: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/24/nx-s1-5123689/novo-nordisk-ce...
You know that nearly nobody in the US pays the sticker price of Drugs?
They have to put an absurd sticker price on the drugs so that the "Pharmacy Benefit Manager" (an useless middlemen that only exists in US Healthcare) can "negotiate" a "discount" on behalf of your insurance (aka the real price), for which he takes a cut based on how big the "discount" is