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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

#481

Post by tensor »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #204
gib444 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and no significant large technology companies I can only assume this is a comparison to the US The world doesn't care about the US yard stick so much. Even less now than before. We in Europe don't care our economy is smaller than the US, that our cars are smaller etc. Bigger is not always better

You say stuff like this, and then simultaneously complain when the US winds up owning the entire technology stack and being the predominate western superpower. So which is it? Does scale not matter, or are you unhappy with the outcome of ignoring it?

Allowing the US to gain such soft power is the issue, not the size of a company. In fact, it would be even better for consumers if there were more standards and companies that compete by building against those standards. The fact that there is only one Microsoft is as much problem for the US itself as it is for others.

In any case, it's absolutely essential that the western world remove dependency on US technology.

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

#482

Post by moi2388 »

chungy wrote: post #423
bigfudge wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you're joking, but if not you need to start paying attention to what has been happening in US courts recently.

Mind bringing up any concrete examples?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/micro...

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

#483

Post by badsectoracula »

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…

AFAIK - and what is mentioned at the bottom here[0] - La Suite is a joint effort by French and German (and others) governments.

I did try a local installation of Docs when i first saw the project a few months ago (i do not remember if it was posted here or on Reddit, though i think one of the developers posted in the comments wherever i saw it), it seems fine though it did feel a bit sparse for all the docker containers it expected from me to setup. I guess for an organization this might be ok, but it did feel a bit overengineered, especially since the actual functionality doesn't seem to be much (and the core editor isn't even written by them).

[0] https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs

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

#484

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

irishcoffee wrote: post #465
rootusrootus wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer than 50% voted for it, which means more than that voted against it.

Negative. I encourage you to go look at the election results.

  Kamala Harris/Tim Walz      75,019,230  48.34%
  Donald J. Trump/J.D. Vance   77,303,568 49.81%
  Various Others               2,878,359  1.85%
So, 50.19% voted against Trump, 49.81% voted for him.

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

#485

Post by tensor »

stopbulying wrote: post #37

Are those US software firms still obligated to comply with EU restrictions and legal demands if they are banned/barred/fascisticly_denied_the_option_to_compete by one or more EU territories?

You are being denied the ability to sell to the French government, not denied selling into the market. Just like no one has "rights" to sell to the US government, you don't have any "right" to sell to any foreign government if they choose not to deal with you. And frankly it should be a matter of national security for governments to control the source and deployment of the software they use.

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

#486

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

Arathorn wrote: post #407
sylvinus wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do support the foundation: https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/espace-presse/dinum-...

Yup, DINUM does support the Matrix Foundation, which is appreciated in terms of helping keeping Matrix itself alive and independent. However, this doesn't help support the folks improving & maintaining Element (either its clients or servers), which is the actual upstream product that Tchap is dependent on. Just like donating to the W3C doesn't help improve Firefox, if you were operationally dependent on a Firefox for…

I think it's a very convenient way of framing it and nicely occults how the stewardship at Matrix significantly changed since they chose it for Tchap.

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

#487

Post by bilekas »

nxm wrote: post #361
bilekas wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other commenter nailed it down. But I want to add that removing dependance on US companies is not some kind of spiteful act. It's purely down to both privacy and reliability. Having private companies in the US becoming more involved with politics is fine for the US apperantly, but the EU just don't want to be involved.

As if EU doesn’t involve itself with software, policy and censorship which has its own inherent risks

The EUs interests focus heavy on regulation, standardisation and privacy. They avoid letting private companies dictate the terms.

Isn't perfect, but it's getting better and it's a work in progress.

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

#488

Post by michelb »

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.

The Dutch are also working on this: https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau/

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

#489

Post by bean469 »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #181
wickedwiesel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Nextcloud GmbH seems to be one of the winners. It sells a customized version aimed at government agencies. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nextcloud

If what they sell is the open source Nextcloud, it is a horrendous product. Its architecture is weird, with a proxy inside you can harden only by editing data inside a container that is volatyile by design (and has to be). There are numerous issues opened on that topic, Nextcloud response is "live with it".

We use it at work and everybody I asked loves it. I also recently moved my personal data to Nextcloud from Google Drive and it's been extremely pleasant to use

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

#490

Post by Jean-Papoulos »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #93
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.

Shame that so many EU citizens do not see the ramifications of theirs . EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies. They have elected leaders who were until very recently heavily dependent on Russian energy. As a result, EU dependence on US tech is near-total. I remember hearing a few months ago…

>EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades -- leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud providers, software suites or tech companies.

France has been doing this since De Gaulle. That's why they're able to do this now, as well as produce almost everything they use that is defense-related.

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