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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

#471

Post by mickael-kerjean »

larsnystrom wrote: post #38

There seems to be a huge business opportunity in Europe right now, to sell support and customization of open source software to government players. Has anyone heard about a European company that’s been successful in this area?

As a Frenchman involved in creating an open source Dropbox (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash) that can connect to any kind of storage and can expose itself as not only a web client but also SFTP, webdav and S3, with virtual filesystem capabilities and tons of other cool stuff, out of 60 customers, only 2 are French, the only people I see coming from France are only ever interested in open source because they don't want to pay anything (other countries in Europe are different though)

If anyone involved in this transition read this, please contact us, we already got open source technology to replace box / Dropbox / OneDrive and Gdrive

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

#472

Post by jesterson »

yunnpp wrote: post #447
paulfitz wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration. That b…

> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin

Would you elaborate how this "in fact" is "protecting their citizens' rights"? Very curious to know.

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

#473

Post by mickael-kerjean »

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…

> France is not adopting existing open source software

As a Frenchman, this stings. I have been working since 2017 in creating an open source alternative to Dropbox (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash), the reality is out of 60 customers, only 2 are French and most contacts I've had with French entities only shown interest onto open source because they were not willing to spend a dime on anything.

Customers are mostly US entities and other countries in Europe. The gist is our technology is already working accross every possible storage technology and every identity provider, has a clean modern UI, has gateway capabilities to expose your data with open protocols like SFTP, FTP, S3, MCP, with virtual filesystem capabilities that enables a decentralized approach through federation and tons of other advanced setup, is deployed in production in places like US military, MIT, European Commission and many other othher high profile places.

We just launched https://www.filestash.eu a few days ago hoping to talk to people in France who are interested in translating the talk of data sovereignty onto actual actions. If anybody who is reading this is truly interested onto a sovereign Dropbox and is willing to put talks onto a concrete reality, reach out to me, I'd love to talk to you

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

#474

Post by BrenBarn »

simplyluke wrote: post #329
palata wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but can you be honest and admit that you don't have any of this yet? Just to take a simple thing like messaging, Europeans mainly use WhatsApp Because it's very hard to compete against monopolies when there are network effects. What you can do is regulate them. The US government has been working very hard in the last decades to prevent that. Recommended: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalit…

"regulate them" has mostly translated to "tax the most successful players in the form of non-compliance fees from byzantine EU regulatory structures". I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software, or the cries that it's unfair that the US doesn't strangle their own tech market with equally burdensome regulation. The problem Eu…

Taxing the most "successful" players and burdening them with regulations is exactly what is needed (provided those most successful players are large enough in size and few enough in number). There is room for more nuance in regulations in the sense that they can scale up more gently as companies grow, but the regulations on megacorps like Facebook and Google should only become more brutal. The existence of those kinds of companies anywhere in the world is a threat to people everywhere.

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

#475

Post by ta20240528 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #203
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…

Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy. Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.

"Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French"

Where I live names that aren't so obviously American have an advantage.

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

#477

Post by speedgoose »

hunterpayne wrote: post #450
speedgoose wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, isn’t the point of extreme right to make the wrong calls for the majority of the population? Historically, the right side was pro-monarchy. Then, you go extreme.

Terms like left and right only have meaning in one place at one time. So just because European conservatives 100 years ago believed something doesn't mean American conservatives today believe in that thing. That's why political scientists have terms like socialist, fascists, libertarian, etc. That's how US right (libertarian) is basically nothing like the right in Europe (conservative). That's because the basic axis…

The French Revolution, when left and right started, was 237 years ago by the way.

I agree about the scale being different across countries. The american politics would be only right on a common European left/right scale.

If everyone doesn’t understand, have you considered that another thing in common is what you try to explain?

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

#478

Post by MichaelRo »

bulbar wrote: post #336
MichaelRo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I would definitely prefer to use globally popular established solutions like Zoom and Teams and the English language and America as a reliable democracy. Weather or not they get Greenland, Trump and his supporters in the US administration have changed the world. Guy should definitely get Nobel prize for pushing decentralization.

Completely confused about which parts are sarcasm. Pretty sure the last sentence is and by this the rest must be as well. But oh boy in what kind of world do we live where you seriously can't tell easily anymore.

First sentence is genuine and the last, with the Nobel prize, it's sarcasm, so you nailed it. But it confused a lot of Sheldons based on the number of downvotes I received.

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

#479

Post by estimator7292 »

jesterson wrote: post #472
yunnpp wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration. That b…

> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin Would you elaborate how this "in fact" is "protecting their citizens' rights"? Very curious to know.

Microsoft, Google, et al very famously spy on everything you do and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government, regardless of whether the person is a US citizen.

Take this idea one step further. Microsoft, Google, et al also snoop on what foreign governments do with their software and report back to USGov.

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

#480

Post by fvrther »

Teever wrote: post #314
cianmm wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Solidworks is produced by a company that is owned by the Dassault Group. There is always a connection between the military industrial complex of a nation and the state. If France feels that it is an existential threat they will not let the design and maintence of their weapons be dependent on an operating system produced by a company based out of a country that has threatened them. I'm not saying that this will happe…

Great remark, I will add that Solidworks is more intended for small CAD work, industrials usually use Catia for deeper CAD work, which is also owned by the Dassault Group. Both are developed for Windows.
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