[HN Gopher] Head of Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency believes tha...
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Head of Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency believes that Europe must
invest in OSS
Author : doener
Score : 19 points
Date : 2025-12-02 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is so embarrassing. Why would you publish this if apparently
| Interviewer and interviewee lack basic understanding of the
| technology?
|
| >No one starts a project from scratch; instead, they turn to
| libraries like GitHub or GitLab to download packages of code
| already written, reviewed, and improved by the community.
|
| Completely false on so many levels.
|
| >Developers spend an average of two-thirds of their time adapting
| open-source software to their needs
|
| No, they don't. This is just made up. Developers _develop with_
| open source software. They do not spend 2 /3 of their time
| "adapting" it.
|
| >Our structure is quite unique: we're a limited liability company
| owned by the German government
|
| I know of one similar corporation. Deutsch Bahn.
|
| >which is maintained by people selflessly.
|
| This myth comes up again and again. It just is not true. A large
| part of open source software is created and maintained by
| corporations.
|
| >Most people have never heard of curl or pi [Python], or the
| other 60 technologies we work with. But if this software goes
| down, suddenly the payment systems stop working.
|
| This persons does not understand what python or curl are. They do
| not "go down". This is just someone not having a single clue what
| they are talking about.
|
| >You really need to understand how software developers work and
| how the open-source ecosystem works.
|
| Well. I guess you don't, to get 20 million in budget from the
| government.
|
| >We face a classic commons problem: everyone relies on open-
| source software as a foundation for building their own
| developments, but no one feels responsible for it. Why should I
| invest in open-source software if my competitor is also using it
| and not paying for it?
|
| Again. A total myth, this person has zero understanding of the
| open source landscape.
|
| >What does open source contribute to the debate on reducing the
| carbon footprint of technology?
|
| Truly an enlightening question. The answer is even worse.
| doener wrote:
| Confession: I did not read the interview before I posted it.
| You are totally right that the content reveals a lack of
| understanding on both sides -- or the interviewer got a lot of
| things wrong and published without clarifying first.
| jacooper wrote:
| Ncie writing ai
| tetha wrote:
| She's a fairly young seemingly career politician heading a
| fairly new government initiative. This feels like a very
| negative read with that context.
|
| Reading this like I'd read something from my CEO:
|
| > No, they don't. This is just made up. Developers develop with
| open source software. They do not spend 2/3 of their time
| "adapting" it.
|
| Many of our devs jam few-line functions into Spring Boot / JPA
| / Hibernate / Flask / FastAPI / Django /Some other framework,
| updating these frameworks, configuring these frameworks. We
| have a few admins poking configs at PostgreSQL or other OSS
| solutions. It's not that wrong to call it like that.
|
| > This persons does not understand what python or curl are.
| They do not "go down". This is just someone not having a single
| clue what they are talking about.
|
| If you don't build, fix and maintain the software on your own,
| US embargoes can take down any SaaS solution, and cut you off
| of binary distribution (I know a guy who couldn't install
| binaries on an IP that was flagged as russian), source
| distribution (people getting banned from GH), patches, ...
|
| It does not go down in the traditional sense, but if you have
| no devs of something in the EU, you can easily get cut off of
| security updates and get exploited with known problems from a
| hostile side. If you have your own devs in there it's at least
| less clear who cuts of whom and who keeps what security
| problems around in the libraries for whose benefit.
|
| All in all, this reads like a managers take on stuff, but then
| again, 20M is on the level of pennies at that scale and overall
| an orientation to OSS and open standards is a good thing imo.
| constantcrying wrote:
| If you want to, you can twist her words in ways that they
| make sense. I do not believe that she has a sufficient
| understanding of these technologies to adequately phrase
| herself. This is, as you say, manager speak.
|
| You can also find out her educational background, which
| includes no technical qualifications. "Adriana holds a
| master's degree in public policy and governance from
| Maastricht University and a bachelor's degree in sociology
| and political science from Goethe University Frankfurt."
|
| A person with these qualifications has absolutely zero
| business heading a government fund. At minimum I would want
| this person to either have a technical degree or some
| industry/FOSS experience. I don't think it is unlikely, that
| this women has not written a single line of code in her life.
|
| The reason is that only such a person can adequately
| understand why these projects need funding and what the
| consequences of not funding them are.
|
| I read their website and it is extremely embarrassing as
| well.
|
| >"Lineare Algebra ist fur viele Prozesse in der Mathematik,
| den Naturwissenschaften, der Informatik, der maschinellen
| Bilderkennung und dem maschinellen Lernen unerlasslich, da
| sie es Entwickler _innen und Forscher_ innen ermoglicht,
| Berechnungen extrem schnell durchzufuhren."
|
| To paraphrase: Researchers use linear algebra because it
| makes their calculations fast.
| trueismywork wrote:
| You can look at it this way, or you can look at it in a way
| that, shes the one who convicned politicians to create a
| fund for OSS. And may be woth time, they will get better.
|
| If you look at the projects they fund, they are good
| projects.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I believe that it is inherently dangerous to have
| managers, who do not understand what they are managing.
| You are correct that the sovereign tech fund has funded
| some good open source projects, although I disagree with
| some funding choices. I would have greatly preferred if
| someone with some technical background were leading this,
| who themselves has the ability to coherently talk about
| the subject.
| gloomyday wrote:
| I moved to Europe years ago, and I am still baffled by how IT
| in general is perceived, even by some professionals. When I
| compare a project like Bevy running with a yearly budget of
| ~$200k with someone like this getting a budget of EUR20M, I
| feel like going back to bed.
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(page generated 2025-12-02 23:01 UTC)