Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 621 posts

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

#571

Post by sigmoid10 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #157
sigmoid10 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has gone from 100% Slack in startups to all-in Teams in big corpo, I disagree. Teams won't even display all office file formats without you having to open the dedicated app. And if it does it's usually a half-baked browser mess. And don't even get me started on the UX or meeting options or mobile support or the complete lack of a dedicated Linux client. I don't need one app to do everything half-assed,…

If you don’t want a half assed simulacra version, shouldn’t you prefer Teams open the native application?

Wdym?

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

#572

Post by RamblingCTO »

epolanski wrote: post #424
shevy-java wrote: post #192

Makes sense. This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything. The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government, and the current US government will remain hostile as long as it is in charge; but even afterwards it is quite logical to assume that any follow-up government will prioritize US…

France is the only country in Europe and likely the world that builds anything defense related in France. Pistols, machine guns, aircrafts, ships, helicopters, etc, it's all french.

Are you saying only French companies build defense stuff in France or it's the only country in Europe that builds defense stuff in general?

Germany has quite a lot of defense companies that supply half the world I think.

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

#573

Post by KellyCriterion »

dylan604 wrote: post #340
sequoia wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow it reminds me of Microsoft Access, a great piece of software in terms of rapidly building an application! Does grist have forms?

I'm not an MS dev type, but I've often seen these forms questions. What made their forms so easy, or more in general what is so complicated about forms that this was even a tool so many liked?

Access biggest advantage by far was that you could share the file on a network drive and having multiple people accessing it: You didnt need any type of complex backup procedure.

In case of failure, just copy-over the old file from yesterday - such simple solutions are pure gold for SME without any big IT department

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

#574

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #571
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t want a half assed simulacra version, shouldn’t you prefer Teams open the native application?

Wdym?

  Teams won't even display all office file formats without you having to open the dedicated app…
  … I don't need one app to do everything half-assed, I need one app that does exactly what it's meant for well.
Teams should be about communicating. Viewing other document formats is layering on complexity for which it can never do as good a job as the native application.

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

#575

Post by Aurornis »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #570
Aurornis wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government, Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases. Don’t think that this is a uniquely American property. If your data sits on servers within the control of any company that operates in a country, that country can and will apply legal pressure upon those companies to extract the data.

> Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases. I'm not sure of your point. This is an excellent argument as to why the French government should run their government videoconferencing and chat on infrastructure in France, as they plan to do, isn't it? Using software that they have vetted. Regardless of if this is a "uniquely American" thing or not.

Right. I’m not disagreeing with that. A country should run their official business on tools that aren’t trivially liable for extraction by foreign governments.

The point was in response to the above comment. All governments can and will compel companies to turn over data. It’s often framed on HN as a feature of only American companies but it’s actually universal.

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

#576

Post by muyuu »

cortesoft wrote: post #281
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code bases are on GitHub Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/

If the move away from American big tech is for practical reasons rather than political, there is no harm in using GitHub. The worry with using an American firm is that the US government could force the company to handover confidential information, or shut down access. For open source code, there is no risk of confidential information being given to the US government (since there is no confidential information), and m…

tbh I was always of the mind that Github offers nothing over some slight convenience in hosting and some exposure, in exchange for the loss of control

Github had enough mindshare that for a small dev operation it was a form of social networking on top of actual code revision control, and one could get the occasional PR worth looking at; this consideration has essentially gone away as the amount of unreviewed vibecoded slop has skyrocketed

I know I'm biased but I'd run my own git server

but you're right that security is of no object here if you're code is OSS in the first place

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

#577

Post by sofixa »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #572
epolanski wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is the only country in Europe and likely the world that builds anything defense related in France. Pistols, machine guns, aircrafts, ships, helicopters, etc, it's all french.

Are you saying only French companies build defense stuff in France or it's the only country in Europe that builds defense stuff in general? Germany has quite a lot of defense companies that supply half the world I think.

They are saying that France is the only country that builds its own defence stuff only in country (unlike Germany that would buy American jets, for instance).

And it's true for most things that matter. The only exception I can think of is manufactured by cooperative companies that are part owned by France and have facilities in France but that specific thing might be made somewhere else (e.g. Airbus A400Ms for which the final assembly is in Seville, but Airbus is jointly owned by France, Germany, Spain), and small arms (HK, German made). Small arms don't really matter in the grand scheme of things due to the low barrier of entry both for acquiring off the shelf and setting up domestic manufacturing. Good luck doing that with fighter jets or cruise missiles.

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

#578

Post by sofixa »

philipallstar wrote: post #324
shevy-java wrote: post #192

Makes sense. This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very, very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally anything. The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize whoever represents the current US government, and the current US government will remain hostile as long as it is in charge; but even afterwards it is quite logical to assume that any follow-up government will prioritize US…

France does everything right except produce much software. I'm sure it can copycat things pioneered by the US, and 20 years later, but that's not exactly difficult.

Obviously you've never seen French software, so why pretend like you have?

Counterpoints: Deezer, Doctolib, Back Market, Tidal, Adopte, Mistral, Dassault Systemes (the company behind the two main CAD softwares out there), Thales, Qonto, Kyutai, Mirakl, BeReal, Klaxoon, ABTasty, etc etc. We can do this all day.

Oh, and there are ton of official government open source projects.

And no, "but they're not as big as a FAAG" does not mean that the software isn't good or innovative.

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

#579

Post by aanet »

snowpid wrote: post #295
aanet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc). It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech…

Germany has https://www.opendesk.eu/de and https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund . both mentioned on HN

I had known about the OpenDesk, but the Sovereign Tech Fund is new to me. Glad to hear that it exists...

Does anyone know if the German govt has mandated the use of OPenDesk (and its like) across its internal use? I faintly recall there being a Linux distro (?) that was supported by German fed?

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

#580

Post by aanet »

Teever wrote: post #238
aanet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc). It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech…

I agree with this totally. But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this. To me a really significant signal that they’re serious will be when there’s an official Linux version of Solidworks. It’s remarkable to me that France has control over one of the premiere CAD suites but theyre entirely dependent on an American OS…

> But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this.

Yes, that is my own opinion too... that the EU states start with good intentions, but end up with bickering on all sides, with the end result of vastly neutering their own actions :-/

Would like to see how far this French initiative goes...

Post reply on HN