[HN Gopher] France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital ...
___________________________________________________________________
France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from
the US
Author : AareyBaba
Score : 654 points
Date : 2026-02-03 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the
| crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the
| envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have
| more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive
| concession.
| Banditoz wrote:
| Every Teams team is backed by SharePoint, unfortunately.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| And every private channel as well. And if you rename the
| Team, the SharePoint will become out-of-sync and all URLs
| will still use the old Team name.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Oh, this is useful info... Another tool in the box of
| making other people realize how much it sucks.
| jl6 wrote:
| Teams, Sharepoint, Exchange, and OneDrive seem to be
| connected by a maze of dark twisty integration passages which
| no single human has mapped fully.
| procflora wrote:
| Somewhere, in the deepest bowels, Skype still lives. I'm
| sure of it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Lync is still there, lurking. With Communicator blocking
| every contact with the outside world. But eventually some
| message _will_ pass through!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It actually does or at least did, until at least a few
| years ago. When you opened the audio mixer (alsamixer or
| pulse audio control?) on XFCE, you could still see MS
| Teams labeled as Skype there. Not sure how it would be
| now, because I only ever use MS Teams isolated in a
| separate Ungoogled Chromium browser now, and have given
| up on the client for GNU/Linux.
| blitzar wrote:
| I knew I could smell a poo in the room, I didn't know what or
| who was responsible but it all makes sense now.
| macspoofing wrote:
| It's not that bad. It's well integrated into Sharepoint,
| Exchange, and Office, and does the job. I've used both Slack
| and Teams and if you're using MS365, then Teams is absolutely
| the better option.
| clhodapp wrote:
| For many of us, you are describing a black hole of integrated
| nightmare software
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| 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, I
| need one app that does exactly what it's meant for well.
| Preferably on every platform.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > I don't need one app to do everything half-assed
|
| That's primarily why it sucks, and that seems to be
| Microsoft's standard operating procedure. Everything they
| put out is in the category of "does everything, but half-
| assed with a web of fragile "integrations" that break if
| you look at it funny."
|
| Worse, it's all SharePoint all the way down. Every team
| (and private channel!) is a SharePoint site, every user's
| OneDrive in the same tenant is a personal SharePoint Site.
| Every M365 Group gets its own SharePoint site (and
| mailbox). Creating a Team also creates an M365 group, but
| not vice versa.
|
| Heaven forbid you rename something in the stack or you are
| in for a world of pain.
|
| It's also by design that way. SharePoint storage is
| expensive, and boy what a disaster it is to ever try and
| get your data out of it.
|
| Yet, for some reason, companies keep buying it and keep
| using it, letting Microsoft suck them in and hold them
| there for eternity.
|
| If you're starting a new company, never, ever, buy anything
| Microsoft. Just don't go down that road. It's not worth it.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| It's not why your big corp chooses teams and the msft
| suite. From a corp perspective they don't care about your
| edge case. There's only - is it good for 90% of my use
| cases across the enterprise? And - do I get a bundle
| discount? Last but not the least - do I need to expend
| developer resources on it vs anything else?
|
| Yeah, there is half assed stuff. But it's not what most of
| the big corp uses anyway. So your little dev specific use
| case isn't going to get much traction.
|
| Teams does one thing well. It can do group chats and team
| calls. That's most of what people use it for. And your corp
| gets a discount bundle.
| calgoo wrote:
| Our CEO Decided to use his own phone, use zoom instead of
| the corporate Teams, and uses ChatGPT where the rest of
| us are stuck with MS copilot test licenses. I guess its
| good to be at the top!
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Reminds me when at my previous company, management got
| themselves top macbooks for filing excel sheets and
| replying to emails, while rank and file engineers got the
| budget Lenovos with 8GB RAM
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Depends on company size and how much influence legal,
| security and asset protection have.
|
| Usually at big corp I haven't seen a ceo actually
| schedule their own calls or deal with day to day
| bullshit. They have a whole team of staff for that.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If you don't want a half assed simulacra version, shouldn't
| you prefer Teams open the native application?
| boringg wrote:
| It is 100% that bad.
| soco wrote:
| Okay and what exactly does this integration bring?
|
| - opening Sharepoint pages in Teams' half-baked browser;
|
| - opening Word or Excel in Teams' own half-baked editor;
|
| - Exchange integration is the calendar, period. Nothing else.
| The only thing actually usable.
|
| Am I missing anything?
| x0x0 wrote:
| The children who write Teams cannot reliably deliver
| notifications on my mac without me restarting Teams every
| morning.
|
| I've spent a full day attempting to send a webhook in. Teams
| used to work like slack (a channel admin can create an
| endpoint; you post to it.) Microsoft deprecated that because
| it worked. It's now a maze of permissions and it silently
| fails with no error messages at all.
|
| Scrollback regularly fails and also requires app restart.
|
| I cannot insert images into a channel w/ a customer via drag
| and drop, but I can paste them by opening them in preview,
| copying the image, and cmd+v into the channel. I wasted 4
| hours w/ support trying to figure out why I can't drag images
| into the shared channel before giving up. This is typical of
| the Teams experience.
|
| I could go on. Besides facebook's tools, it is the worst
| piece of software I've used and a demonstration of monopoly
| power to distribute total garbage. Slack has issues, but it
| does reliably do the core thing.
| creamyhorror wrote:
| > I cannot insert images into a channel w/ a customer via
| drag and drop
|
| Yup, we struggle with this. Seems to have to do with
| needing to pay for seats in order to have file-sharing
| allowed (but you can still paste Sharepoint/Onedrive
| links). Can't share files if there's even a single external
| person in the chat/channel. Forced us to buy another seat
| subscription. It's great!
| x0x0 wrote:
| That kinda makes sense (and thank you!), but I think the
| comprehensive incompetence is thus:
|
| 1 - fails 2 - w/ no useful feedback to user; 3 - I
| couldn't get support to tell me why (fine, small
| account), but the customer with 900 licensed seats
| couldn't either
|
| Fortunately, said customer has come to the realization of
| how very bad it is and is hopefully migrating to Slack.
| blitzar wrote:
| > Sharepoint, Exchange, and Office
|
| A holy trinity if ever I have seen one.
| Lio wrote:
| Teams not being able to do threaded conversations
| consistently or reliably is a massive pain for me. I hate it.
| Corporate IT is just hell for users.
| cbolton wrote:
| Sharepoint... the only webapp I have to use that feels worse
| than Teams. I swear when I open the intranet landing page,
| the loading, reloading, resizing, rereloading, re-whatever
| takes at least 10 seconds to settle. How can engineers build
| something be so inefficient?
| boringg wrote:
| I couldn't agree more with this. Teams somehow managed to
| supercede my other microphone preferences when I'm not even
| using teams (took me a while to figure out). It might be one of
| the apps I detest the most. There is very little satisfaction
| with it and much annoyance.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| By default, Teams never releases your audio input channel,
| even when you close it.
| boringg wrote:
| Why would they do that? So annoying.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| 2 theories:
|
| (1) They couldn't imagine anyone ever closing their
| gloriously developed MS Teams.
|
| (2) Since everyone knows MS Teams and sitting in meetings
| all day is the one most important thing to get stuff
| done, they went ahead and made MS Teams a "priority". F
| using anything else! Maybe if it doesn't release the
| audio input, it will be 50ms faster next call! That ought
| to be enough for you!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Somehow, Teams overrides the volume controls on my Android
| phone. It's physically user-hostile.
| tartoran wrote:
| Teams is the bane of my existence. Oh well, one of them at
| least and am forced to use it for the time being. Europeans may
| get lucky with some sane software or get something even worse
| than Teams. It remains to be seen how they do. If their
| software is starting to get better, perhaps US software will
| get better too because they can no longer justify the junk
| they're pumping out on us.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| > get something even worse than Teams
|
| I'm not sure that's actually possible, you know...
| tartoran wrote:
| I hope for the best for Europeans but until I see results
| I'm not sure what they're capable of.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I guess we could concoct something made out of PHP4/5 and
| jQuery and use Xampp stack, to get something worse. Or
| wait, I have it! We build it on top of MS Excel!
| dgxyz wrote:
| They just shot Slack and moved to Teams only here.
|
| The company is falling apart so quickly they are going to have
| to pay up again before the end of the month.
| andix wrote:
| Because slack startet to extort their customers. I guess many
| moved away, to be prepared if slack decides to push their
| prices even further.
| wrs wrote:
| Though, if your choice is between Salesforce licensing and
| Microsoft licensing, at least it's possible to _understand_
| Salesforce licensing.
| andix wrote:
| A lot of companies already have Teams included in their
| existing licenses.
|
| But yeah, Microsoft licensing is impossible to
| understand.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I have to admit, I have almost no problems with Teams. The one
| big issue I had was performance when screen sharing. But I got
| a new laptop and this problem went away. Seems so odd that so
| many people have major problems with it, while I feel like
| within my workgroup there are almost no problems to speak of.
| pjmlp wrote:
| One day they will discover threaded conversions.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| And then we will get rid of them again, because some suits
| are telling us that we don't actually want them, that they
| are "complicated", we must trust them and that recursive
| data types are too hard to get right. Let's all write SMS
| again. Or better yet, send fax.
|
| Some engineers will facepalm super hard but won't be
| listened to, as usual, and we will enter the next cosmic
| age of self-inflicted suffering.
| delecti wrote:
| How extensively do you use it? When my team was just using it
| for meetings and the attached chats, it did actually work
| completely fine. When broader orgs started pushing more
| communications through it (the "teams" in teams, and all the
| weird chat room/forums that entails) all of the rough edges
| became very apparent. All of that is just a shockingly
| disorganized mess.
| andix wrote:
| This was discussed before: if your Windows computer doesn't
| have a valid HEVC license installed, then Teams falls back to
| software encoding and performs horrible. Most manufacturers
| include the license, but not all. It's also only 99 cents on
| the Microsoft store (which might be unavailable on enterprise
| managed devices)
| dijit wrote:
| That: and microsoft routes all calls through their servers.
|
| Fine if you live near a datacenter.
|
| In Sweden though, you go through France.
|
| Not ideal.
| e12e wrote:
| Heh, now that our team has standardized on Teams rather than
| Zulip (so that we suffer/connect with the rest of the org whom
| are stuck in MS land) - and I've been given the chance to _use_
| Teams for a while - it really is worse than I initially
| thought.
|
| Which means it's time to look for alternative clients. I ws
| hoping for something like WeeSlack:
|
| https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
|
| But all I found was:
|
| https://github.com/btp/teams-cli
|
| https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams
|
| Are there really no good Teams clients? Doesn't have to plug in
| to WeeChat or be a TUI... But something?
| dijit wrote:
| You'd understand why there's no even half-decent clients for
| Teams if you ever tried to write a bot in Teams.
|
| That's just a pure lesson in pain.
|
| Webhooks work, but proper bots are borderline impossible; at
| least without giving you the feeling that you'd _rather_ pull
| your own teeth out with pliers.
| exceptione wrote:
| Sorry to hear. Pulling teeth with pliers on-premise has
| been out of support for a while. Please contact our sales
| team if you haven't tried our Pliers Copilot 365 For Teams
| and Dentists offering yet. It solves any problems you might
| currently experience.
| dijit wrote:
| Audibly laughed. Thank you for that.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Even _authenticating_ to Teams is a herculean task. Microsoft
| 's official APIs seem purpose-built to prevent people from
| writing proper Teams interfaces, and attempting to replicate
| their proprietary SSO flow is extremely painful. (In theory,
| you could hook into it by starting a fresh web browser at the
| appropriate login page, waiting for the appropriate
| redirects, and then harvesting the relevant cookies, but
| that's a really ugly solution, and it already represents a
| lot of invested work.)
| internet_points wrote:
| I'm in the same boat and I am _this_ close to just torching
| the mainsail
| canpan wrote:
| I actually had a look. Now you can get messages and stuff
| from MS Graph. The situation is better than a few years ago
| when only very useless Teams APIs were available.
|
| But the available APIs still suck. For example there is none
| to just get all recent notifications. I don't know if teams
| itself has access to more and better apis? If not that would
| explain a lot.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. The number of times
| I've heard the notification sound, gotten a toast while in
| the middle of something, and then been unable to find what
| the hell that notification was for, because some other
| device I'm logged in on has helpfully marked it read.
|
| Then begins the hunt through chats, meeting chats, group
| chats, channel chats and the notification pane (which
| doesn't show every type of notification!?) to find what it
| was.
|
| Absolutely maddening.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| https://european-alternatives.eu/alternative-to/microsoft-
| te...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The risk is of course that the new thing might be worse than
| Teams somehow.
| soperj wrote:
| The only possibility is if you get it from Oracle instead.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Well no, there's always the European Oracle: SAP.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's a good thing in this context that they are on the
| other side of the border.
| ziotom78 wrote:
| It will surely be worse, at least at the beginning. But there
| is a significant chance that with time they will improve it,
| and one can hope that one year after the first release the
| product will actually be better than Teams, given that the
| developers will improve it based on their own experience.
| andix wrote:
| I don't have a lot of complaints with the current version of
| teams. Messaging and video calls work without major issues.
| It's bloated, and all those plugins are usually bad, but the
| basics work well for me.
|
| The new Outlook app is horrible though.
| elzbardico wrote:
| You kids have it easy.
|
| Once I worked in a company with two brands after a fusion, and
| all of us had to use both Exchange and Lotus Notes. And I was
| almost forgetting SharePoint.
| tedggh wrote:
| What's so bad about Teams that makes it so hated? I used it
| lately and often to work with a customer and I don't find
| anything terrible about it, other than some minor usability
| annoyances like phantom chat notifications once in a while. But
| overall it does what it's supposed to do, get on a video call,
| share your screen and share files over channels. The transcript
| feature seems to work well too. I'm not amazed by it, but I
| don't see anything to hate either. I guess it is one of those
| tools I don't have a strong opinion about.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| It's a resource hog, crashes, it's constantly littering files
| all over SharePoint which becomes even more than a garbage
| bin than it already is.
|
| And the UI is terrible, huge balloons around everything. I
| want density but even at the densest setting it sucks.
|
| Oh and it also fails to update online status. Often I click
| on a colleague who seems green and only then it updates and
| it turns out they've been away for 3 hours. Grrr
| dijit wrote:
| "I don't have an issue with it" tells me you've never used
| anything else. Have you tried Slack? Zulip? Mattermost?
| Fucking... IRC from 1988?
|
| Teams isn't just mediocre, it's aggressively hostile to basic
| usability. The camera bar sits at the top of the window,
| directly blocking where you're supposed to position your
| camera for eye contact. Chat organisation is broken: you get
| duplicate groups because _the order people were added_
| matters somehow. Notifications phantom in and out. Reactions
| are buried in an activity feed. Search is useless. You can 't
| reliably paste text without major formatting issues. The
| mobile app logs you out randomly _and doesn't tell you unless
| you manually check it_. Desktop notifications don 't sync
| with read state. Files uploaded to chat don't appear in the
| Files tab. The "new Teams" broke half the features that
| worked in classic Teams. Presence status is a coin flip.
| Audio settings reset themselves between calls. Screen sharing
| has a 50/50 chance of sharing the wrong window. The
| difference between a chat and a channel is arbitrary and
| confusing. You can't edit messages older than a few hours.
| Threading is bolted on and barely works.
|
| Performance is inexcusable. Multiple gigabytes of RAM to
| display text messages and lag constantly on modern hardware.
| How do you make a chat application _lag_? It 's rendering
| text, not computing fluid dynamics. Opening the application
| takes 30 seconds on an SSD. Switching between chats stutters.
| Typing has input delay.
|
| The real problem isn't that Teams is terrible. It's that "it
| technically functions" has become an acceptable standard.
| When you've never experienced better, "it works" seems fine.
| But Teams is what happens when a monopoly position means you
| don't have to care about quality. Microsoft has unlimited
| resources and still ships this.
|
| Even Skype for Business was more stable, and in Skype for
| Business you couldn't reliably select text. That's how low
| the bar is.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > and lag constantly on modern hardware
|
| This. Opening a chat for the first time in the morning
| consistently takes 5-10 seconds. Opening subsequent ones
| takes 2-3 seconds. That is, if they contain plain text. If
| not, UI keps reflowing and jumping while thumbnails and
| silly gifs are loaded async, so you cannot even reliably
| click.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Typing has input delay.
|
| Everything in Windows has input delay, ever since at
| Windows XP, it makes it infuriating to use.
| 9dev wrote:
| Out of all the things you listed (and I'd have a couple
| more), copy-paste is really what drives me insane, because
| it's completely cursed!
|
| Sometimes, text copied from teams includes `[Sender Name,
| 2026-01-03, 21:51]` as a prefix--other times not. Sometimes
| you paste formatted text and it ends up pasted as formatted
| but inconsistent HTML, including (of course) _text color_
| of all things, rendering it black even with the dark theme,
| and thus unreadable. Other times you copy code, and there
| 's two blank lines between each line when you paste
| elsewhere. It makes you cry, really.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Let's not forget how stupid the client on GNU/Linux was
| regarding audio devices. Every other app I had installed,
| that has anything to do with microphone (OBS, Audacity,
| Discord, Discord in Browser, Signal, ...) recognized my
| mic, which was connected via jack. Not MS Te-eams!!! Tada!
| Had to buy another headset with USB plug for Teams to get
| it.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Wrote up a few of my gripes on here a few months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933952
| cmoski wrote:
| Notifying you about messages you've already seen. You have to
| change chats and to back for it to dismiss it. Kills me.
|
| Likes to open new windows if you click a notification.
|
| It is slow.
|
| The search is not good at showing multiple results from the
| one chat. Why does it search all the other chats anyway...
|
| Switching accounts constantly is a pain in the arse - I
| unfortunately have to use four accounts and one sub-account
| (member of some other org's team or something).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't love it, but I don't have many of the problems other
| people seem to have. And I've used everything from IRC in the
| 80s to Slack more recently. The only thing I can think of is
| that I don't run it on Windows, but rather a fairly new
| MacBook Pro M4. Maybe in this case it actually runs better on
| Mac, which is kind of ironic.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| It has a very large number of bugs.
|
| My favourite one ( still happens ) is having to mute then
| unmute at the beginning of the conversation otherwise nobody
| can hear me. It was so common, with people fiddling with
| their headset, calling again etc that I eventually asked
| everyone exhibiting audio issues to start with this
|
| Another interesting one is that if you're not connected
| properly , you send messages , but never get notified that
| they never left, and are never notified that you're not
| connected.
|
| It's also a resource hog and will eat your machine for
| breakfast.
|
| The list goes on and on, it's very surprising.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Teams feels as though it were vibe-coded, but dates back well
| before there was such a thing. It _works_ , basically, but
| isn't something I'd feel good about shipping myself.
| isk517 wrote:
| Another one for the pile. You can choose to open office
| documents in Teams directly, the browser, or in the native
| desktop app, but you can only set it to open by default in
| either Teams or browser. Why?
| randusername wrote:
| The Zen of Teams is that Teams is so clunky it cannot be Slack.
|
| Without threads, there is no breach of thread-etiquette.
|
| When "channels" are so awkward, nobody uses them. Then there is
| no constant deluge of middle-age folks creating a Facebook out
| of work, needing to be reminded that the photos channel is for
| business-photos, not pictures of their kids.
|
| When emoji support is limited, nobody has to police people
| pushing the boundaries of what emojis are appropriate.
|
| The software is baffling. But I like it that way.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| You can upload custom emoji to teams, most businesses just
| turn it off
| ergocoder wrote:
| > No more Teams? Sounds like a dream.
|
| No more Words? Introducing a worse software than Words...
| rurp wrote:
| I've had to start using Teams more lately and it is indeed as
| terrible as I'd heard. The other day I needed to copy a number
| of items from an ongoing chat. Seems like an extremely simple
| and normal thing, but every time I hover over a message a popup
| jumps up with emoji reactions that partially covers the text
| I'm trying to copy. Trying to move quickly, I kept accidentally
| "reacting" to messages instead of double clicking the text. To
| make matters worse there's no way to disable this "feature"!
| _Why?!_
|
| Teams is supposed to be a professional workplace tool from one
| of the biggest software companies in the world, but it feels
| like something a high schooler coded up for fun. Weirdly
| Discord, a platform explicitly meant for gamers, is a more
| useful chat tool. I don't like Discord at all, but it's better
| than Teams.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| As bad and evil as MS Teams may be, I recently got invited to a
| Zoom meeting, and you simply can't use it in the browser! They
| just force you to download their shitty app to join. Naturally,
| I did not install crapware and closed the tab, as fortunately
| it was no mandatory event for me. At least in MS Teams I can
| isolate it into its separate ungoogled Chromium installation
| and treat that as a shitty app, without having to install crap
| onto my system.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| It makes you download it but then a button appears saying
| join in browser. I have tons of zoom binary copies
| spicyusername wrote:
| 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.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Many of us see them and are fighting the fight if our lives
| against it
| wrqvrwvq wrote:
| The US has openly spied on nato allies via msft for decades,
| and this was widely reported long before Snowden. All us tech
| is a tool of government surveillance and has always been.
| msft has also been repeatedly sued and sanctioned for
| corruption and bribery and coercive practices across europe
| over the past two decades. The fact that europe views trump
| as the threat but not the system he represents is cynical but
| the move towards autonomy is long past due. aws and msft etc
| all get away with overcharging for often terrible services is
| largely due to a lack of viable competition. europe has had
| great open-source offering for many years, but has
| "strategically" starved all of them of funding and
| credibility. This is as much a result of eu scleroticism as
| it is msft's bullying and anti-competitive practices. If
| trump makes it easier for them to get their act together it
| is to his credit.
| mesk wrote:
| Being Great doesnt comes with Best to Live with, Best to Work
| with, Best to make Business with etc...
|
| US will be Great like all Giants are - terrifying and alone ;-)
| burningChrome wrote:
| >>> Such a shame that so many U.S. citizens do not see the
| ramifications of their political decisions.
|
| Most US Citizens are not voting on what you think they're
| voting on. Most are worried about things that affect their day-
| to-day life like cost of eggs, the cost of gas, taxes going up,
| my 401K going in the dumpster.
|
| I live and breathe tech everyday. I see the dangers of it all
| around me. Day in and day out. You try and talk to people about
| how dangerous some of this stuff is. Unless people feel it
| somehow like having their identity stolen and they spend three
| years trying to fix it all? Nothing will ever change.
|
| People are 100% immune to this stuff now. Its the old frog in
| boiler water analogy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Well, that's the problem, these people are wildly uneducated
| and unsophisticated. They are voting their feelings. Prices
| levels do not come down without a depression, even if
| inflation slows. Their only solution is wages going up. Do
| they have a mechanism to push wages up? Taxes must go up,
| they have been too low for too long and the debt has
| accumulated (~$38T in US treasuries alone) and will need to
| be paid back or defaulted on. Insurance costs continue to
| rise due to rapidly increasing costs of materials and labor,
| as well as climate change (the US is currently spending
| ~$1B/year on climate driven events). Growth is over because
| the US population is not growing (tangentially, total
| fertility rate is below replacement rate in more than half of
| countries in the world, and this trend will continue). 401ks
| predicated on the S&P500 are held up by AI investment (which
| is outpacing consumer spending, the primary driver of the US
| economy, over the last year to the tune of ~$400B) and the
| Mag 7. When this stalls, everyone is going to be sad and not
| feel as wealthy as they did previously ("wealth effect").
|
| Happiness is reality minus expectations, and the future is
| not going to be as good as the past, based on available data,
| evidence, and trends Everything is downstream of that. The
| vibes might be bad, but they ain't gonna get better.
|
| _Financial Times: The consumer sentiment puzzle deepens_ - h
| ttps://www.ft.com/content/f3edc83f-1fd0-4d65-b773-89bec9043..
| . | https://archive.today/nFlfY - February 3rd, 2026
|
| (some component of price increases has been predatory
| monopoly gouging covered extensively by Matt Stoller on his
| newsletter https://www.thebignewsletter.com/, but for our
| purposes, we can assume this admin isn't going to impair that
| component of price levels and inflation with regulation for
| the next 3 years)
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > Well, that's the problem, these people are wildly
| uneducated and unsophisticated. They are voting their
| feelings.
|
| This is what people who "vote their feelings" would assert.
| Most people think they are "sophisticated" and "educated"
| on these issues, both Democrats and Republicans. There is
| ample evidence that this is not the case for either.
|
| Politics is completely driven by uncritical "just so"
| narratives. The people pushing the discourse never check or
| justify their assumptions with actual data. This is the
| real issue.
| kjreact wrote:
| > This is what people who "vote their feelings" would
| assert. Most people think they are "sophisticated" and
| "educated" on these issues, both Democrats and
| Republicans. There is ample evidence that this is not the
| case for either.
|
| Which begs the question: does democracy still work when
| voters are so easily misled? I don't believe that the
| current generation is fundamentally more or less
| intelligent than the previous ones. Is technology to
| blame for disseminating misinformation too rapidly for us
| to cope?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| The early American system was never designed to function
| as a pure democracy. The founders were openly skeptical
| of direct rule by popular will, fearing volatility, mob
| psychology, and the tendency for short-term emotional
| reactions to override long-term stability. Instead, they
| constructed a layered federal republic intended to filter
| public opinion through successive levels of deliberation.
|
| In the original structure, the public directly elected
| members of the House of Representatives. This chamber was
| meant to serve as the immediate voice of the population
| -- responsive, numerous, and frequently subject to
| elections. It represented popular sentiment but was
| intentionally balanced by slower, more insulated
| institutions.
|
| The Senate originally functioned as that stabilizing
| counterweight. Senators were selected by state
| legislatures rather than direct vote. This meant they
| were accountable primarily to the governments of
| sovereign states rather than transient public passions.
| The Senate therefore protected state interests, ensured
| continuity of policy, and acted as a brake on sudden
| shifts in national mood. The 17th Amendment, which later
| established direct election of senators, fundamentally
| altered this federal balance by shifting the Senate
| toward popular representation rather than state
| representation.
|
| The presidency was also designed to be buffered from
| direct democratic selection. The Electoral College was
| not merely a ceremonial intermediary. Electors were
| expected to exercise independent judgment and represent
| state-level deliberation. The system assumed electors
| would be politically informed individuals capable of
| evaluating candidates beyond campaign popularity or mass
| persuasion. In theory, this created a safeguard against
| demagogues or candidates elevated purely through public
| excitement.
|
| The vice presidency was structured differently from
| modern expectations. Originally, the candidate receiving
| the second highest number of electoral votes became vice
| president. This design forced cooperation between rival
| factions and ensured that dissenting political voices
| remained inside executive governance rather than entirely
| excluded from power. Although this sometimes created
| tension, it reflected a belief that competing
| perspectives strengthened stability.
|
| Underlying these mechanisms was a broader philosophy:
| governance should incorporate public input while
| filtering it through layers of institutional judgment.
| The founders feared what they called "tyranny of the
| majority," where temporary popular consensus could
| override minority rights, long-term national interests,
| or constitutional boundaries.
|
| Advocates of restoring earlier structural features often
| argue that modern reforms unintentionally removed
| stabilizing mechanisms. They contend that direct election
| of senators nationalized political incentives,
| encouraging senators to prioritize national party
| platforms over state-specific interests. Similarly,
| modern expectations that presidential electors must
| follow popular vote outcomes arguably transformed the
| Electoral College from a deliberative body into a
| procedural formality.
|
| From this viewpoint, reintroducing intermediary decision
| makers could theoretically slow political volatility,
| encourage more qualified candidate evaluation, and
| strengthen federalism by returning power to state
| governments. However, proponents of such reforms often
| acknowledge that intermediary systems would require
| strong transparency, accountability standards, and anti-
| corruption safeguards. Without those protections, layered
| elector systems could risk elite capture or reduced
| public legitimacy.
|
| Critics of restoring these structures typically argue
| that expanded direct voting increased democratic
| legitimacy, voter participation, and political equality.
| They often contend that intermediary systems historically
| enabled exclusion and reduced accountability to the
| general population.
|
| The debate therefore centers on a classic governance
| tradeoff: stability and deliberation versus direct
| popular sovereignty. The original American constitutional
| framework leaned toward stability through representation
| filters, while modern reforms have leaned toward
| expanding direct electoral influence.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > This is what people who "vote their feelings" would
| assert. Most people think they are "sophisticated" and
| "educated" on these issues, both Democrats and
| Republicans. There is ample evidence that this is not the
| case for either.
|
| ~130M American adults have low literacy skills with 54%
| of people 16-74 below the equivalent of a sixth-grade
| level. And they vote in some amount. Many may not be
| functional enough to be self aware about their level of
| education and sophistication, based on the data.
|
| https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
|
| https://www.barbarabush.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/BBFou...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Most are worried about things that affect their day-to-day
| life like cost of eggs, the cost of gas, taxes going up, my
| 401K going in the dumpster.
|
| Are they? It seems to me like they're worried about things
| like women having access to too much healthcare, too many non
| white people, and too many women leaders. They voted for a
| guy that wants to make the most expensive purchase of most
| people's lives even more expensive:
|
| https://youtu.be/ToJxd3HBviE
|
| Not to mention the enormous tax increases by way of getting
| rid of the expanded ACA premium credits.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Talk to actual Trump voters and you'll see they support his
| tariffs and immigration crackdowns because they believe it
| will lead to economic prosperity and good jobs returning to
| their community. They believe the current system is
| fundamentally unfair to them. Even though that's totally
| backwards, and Trump is just making everything worse,
| that's what they believe.
|
| Framing immigration reform as "racists think there are too
| many non white people" is what costs Democrats elections.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I prefer to live by the adage of actions speak louder
| than words. I'm capable of lying to present a facade, and
| I have to assume others are too.
| emsign wrote:
| > because they believe it will lead to economic
| prosperity and good jobs returning to their community.
|
| Maybe they say that but it's justification for their
| racist believes, which they still don't want to talk
| openly about. It just sounds better when someone invents
| some "benefits" of it. Like wild claims in an ad is
| helping the buyer justify their impulse shopping.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| 70 million Americans voted for him. His biggest
| demographic win compared to the last election was non-
| white men.
|
| Immediately dismissing this as racism isn't going to help
| you understand it, or help the Democrats beat the
| Republicans.
| emsign wrote:
| To the contrary! They were tricked to believe that they
| were part of society. They aren't. By voting for Trump
| they reassured themselves that it won't happen to them.
| Often times racism against the newest group of immigrants
| coming from the group of immigrants before them is seen
| by the latter as a rite of passage to be accepted into US
| society.
|
| The Irish used to be in a similar position like the
| people from South America today. Now they are seen as
| white but before WWI they weren't seen as white by the
| WASPs. And it's totally normal for some of the second or
| third generation immigrants to become racist against new
| immigrants. Rite of passage.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| It's zero-sum thinking, "the pie isn't big enough and
| can't get bigger and I'm afraid, so I'm going to hurt
| other people so that I don't get hurt".
| emsign wrote:
| Yes. And they still remember where they are coming from
| and they fear that they might again lose their piece of
| the pie to the groups that are considered more
| "American", so they feel the need to prove their place in
| society by cheering the leader who is preaching that the
| pie is getting smaller and that someone has to leave the
| table. This fear is handed down over generations and for
| some families or communities it transforms into hatred.
| This mechanism is very often played by amoral populists
| because it works so well.
|
| Many of the most disgusting and radical Democracy hating
| people in Trumps inner circle are Catholics by the way.
| Go figure.
| overfeed wrote:
| > The Irish used to be in a similar position like the
| people from South America today
|
| To your earlier point: Boston racism is now legendary
| (see Celtics fans)
| starkparker wrote:
| Notable and recent:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clym85ev64lo
|
| > When one-time Democrat Sam Negron headed to the polls
| to cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2024, he did so with
| one thing on his mind above all - the economy.
|
| > "I didn't like paying $7 for eggs," said Negron, a
| Pennsylvania state constable in the majority-Latino city
| of Allentown. "But basically it was all his talking
| points... making the US a strong country again."
|
| ...
|
| > One poll, from Pew, suggested that 93% of Latinos who
| cast their votes for Trump rated the economy as their
| primary issue, with violent crime and immigration
| trailing far behind.
|
| > Data from the new CBS poll shows that a significant
| majority of Latinos - 61% - disapprove of Trump's
| handling of the economy, while 69% disapprove of his
| handling of inflation. The vast majority said they judge
| the performance of the US economy through prices.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| > When one-time Democrat Sam Negron headed to the polls
| to cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2024
|
| Did he just wake up from a coma?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| The dems are just as corrupt, just wiith a nicer smile.
| Eu citizen, here - all politicians are bent. Anecdata:
| Anyone who votes for a politician should stfu, stop
| complaining and live with it. Why should i suffer alone?
| Disenfranchised? Not me - idgaf. I just hope the eu gets
| its act together and actually does something, but it will
| be difficult; language alone, being one of them, and "my
| pie", another.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"They believe the current system is fundamentally unfair
| to them"
|
| Well it fucking is. But thinking that current king can
| fix it is a lunacy
| nxm wrote:
| What was the alternative? More of the previous
| administration?
| emsign wrote:
| People should have spoken up in town hall meetings and
| protest on the streets years ago. Now it's a bit too
| late, but better late than never. Americans rather sit on
| the couch, watch TV or be absorbed by their smartphone
| than to go out to their representatives and demand
| accountability. Instead they "shit" on every institution
| and person who seems to fight for justice and liberty.
| You get what you deserve guys. You can't vote with your
| wallet. You have to try to get to those people in power
| IN PERSON and pressure them. That's the only thing they
| understand.
|
| You know what the most effective instrument of power is?
| Distance. The rich and powerful distance themselves
| physically from the people, so the demands, worries,
| accusations, questions etc can't reach them.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| The reality in 2024 was that yes, the alternative was
| more of the previous administration.
|
| Maybe that was never a way to whatever ideal solution or
| policies might be possible in the future. But the only
| possible benefit of the current administration is that
| people's eyes get opened to the lunacy that's possible,
| resulting in a sort of mini-revolution that enacts
| changes that prevent the collusion and grift that are
| happening now.
|
| The Trump administration doesn't have any real government
| improvements in mind. They're only play is to destabilize
| the current status of whatever's in their sights, blame
| Democrats or whoever else is convenient for the mess, and
| profit from the confusion. Example: The Republican party
| has always had financial conservatism as a main goal.
| When was the last time the national debt or deficit
| improved under Republican leadership? Another,
| healthcare: For all of the complaining that Republicans
| have done about Obamacare, why haven't they replaced it
| with something better yet since they've had full control
| of the government? They've shown that they don't actually
| care about good government.
|
| What we got in the current administration wasn't any kind
| of secret before the 2024 election. People voted for it
| anyway because they're susceptible to the kinds of
| misinformation they were being fed. Trump's latest
| comments on his lack of commitment to peace, the cost of
| housing, and the well-being of the general population
| (just to name a few) make it clear that he doesn't
| consider them important; and Republican's fealty to him
| show the same of them.
| FpUser wrote:
| Well the one now is definitely worse. Not that I like the
| one before. Something better is needed
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean this is essentially the same situation anyone is in when
| they have vendor lock in, they know it's a problem, but it is
| always just not worth it to get out, only this vendor lock in
| is all vendors from a country lock in and now it is not just
| worth it but imperative, absolutely necessary.
|
| And of course once you have gotten out of vendor lock in, you
| never go back. If you do go back to that vendor that locked you
| in before, because of some sweetheart deal, you make sure to
| set up all sorts of escape hatches so if you need to bounce
| quickly you can.
|
| The vendor lock in of the EU to the US for so many things is
| being dismantled.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How someone voted has almost no bearing on the dangers of tech.
| The dangers were there before the last election and none of the
| candidates had strong positions regarding tech privacy.
| Microsoft would still be doing what it has been doing
| regardless of the election outcome. I wouldnt hold my breath
| that a European Teams/Zoom replacement will have robust
| encryption and privacy protection based on all the backdoor
| stuff I've heard being pushed in some European countries.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| 1) Most US citizens don't care for what's happening right now.
| That's why there's people protesting while armed in major
| cities.
|
| 2) Continental Europe has shown a willingness to continue
| dependency on other countries in the face of far, far worse
| national behavior. NordStream 2 planned after the invasion of
| Georgia and was still under construction after Putin had
| invaded and annexed Crimea. Not "threatened" to do so, he had
| actually done it. There was a body count involved. So it's not
| too far off-base to think that despite all of the foolishness
| from the Trump administration, the US could seek some slack for
| its technology sector. It's not like you need Teams to keep
| your factories running and to avoid freezing to death in the
| winter, but that was the sort of integration with the Russians
| that Europeans were seeking to maintain while Putin was
| redrawing the map, at least until the Ukraine invasion, and
| even then, it took clandestine activity to permanently take
| NordStream offline.
|
| People like Trump will almost certainly point at this and say
| that this shows Europeans to be allies of convenience, not true
| partners. People like him love to cry about double standards.
| 8note wrote:
| note: the europeans didnt particularly mind maduro's
| kidnapping, and crimea isnt a part of the EU nor NATO.
|
| putin still has not gone to war, nor threatened to invade the
| EU yet to the point of international incident. the US has
| both sent politicians and other operators to try and fail at
| formenting rebellion in greenland against denmark, and has
| readied troops to invade
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > putin still has not gone to war, nor threatened to invade
| the EU yet to the point of international incident.
|
| Russian agents are thought to have committed numerous acts,
| almost all of which could be considered acts of war, on
| EU/UK soil, or against EU/UK nationals
|
| * Poisoning of the Skripals with a chemical warfare agent,
| one dead, 2018, Salisbury, England, UK [0]
|
| * Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with a radioisotope,
| one dead, 2006, London, England, UK [1]
|
| * Vrbetice ammunition warehouse explosions, one dead, 2014,
| Zlin Region, Czechia [2]
|
| * Jamming of GPS signals used by EU President Ursula von
| der Leyen's jet, 2025, Bulgaria [3]
|
| * Arson of the Marywilska 44 shopping center, 2024, Warsaw,
| Poland [4]
|
| * Shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over the
| Donbas, 2014, 283 dead, most of them Netherlands citizens
| [5]
|
| * Sabotage of underwater telecommunications cables, railway
| lines, cyberattacks, probing airspace with armed aircraft,
| and on and on - just Google it, I don't have enough time to
| mention all of these.
|
| ... you were saying?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Y
| ulia_...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrbetice_ammunition_
| wareh...
|
| [3] https://apnews.com/article/russia-europe-jamming-
| spoofing-gp...
|
| [4] https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/05/12/poland-confirms-
| russi...
|
| [5] https://www.britannica.com/event/Malaysia-Airlines-
| flight-17
| maxloh wrote:
| One thing I've learned over the years is that people don't
| necessarily vote for the "best" candidate. Instead, they vote
| for the candidate who is "least bad" and do the minimum amount
| of damage to their interests. It is always a matter of
| compromise.
|
| As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to vote
| for a right-wing conservative who advocates against their own
| rights, even if that candidate makes the "right call" on every
| other issue.
| klaff wrote:
| >As a counter-example, you cannot expect an LGBT person to
| vote for a right-wing conservative who advocates against
| their own rights, even if that candidate makes the "right
| call" on every other issue.
|
| I can't think of a candidate that fits this description.
| speedgoose wrote:
| 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.
| adventured wrote:
| The French have created Mintel. May the world tremble.
|
| It's a shame the Americans don't see the ramifications of their
| political decisions.
| nradov wrote:
| Why did the French never follow up and improve Minitel?
| alamortsubite wrote:
| It's fun to think about what Minitel might have become if it
| had been born when today's Leopards Eating People's Faces
| Party had been in power, rather than the early 80's when
| Silicon Valley was dunking on everybody. It was way ahead of
| its time.
| palata wrote:
| Minitel, when it was created, was great technology. Sounds
| like you are proudly uninformed.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A reminder that in the last presidential election, the winner
| was decided by one of the smallest margins ever, and the winner
| only won a plurality, not a majority.
|
| Almost as many people voted _against_ the current US
| administration as voted for it, so although it is true that
| "so many US citizens do not see the ramifications", there
| almost as many who do (or some version of them).
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| Almost as many, but not more than :)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Fewer than 50% voted for it, which means more than that
| voted against it.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| 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 that companies in the EU still have to
| use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for routine government
| filings!
|
| Some minor headlines about civil servants stopping their usage
| of office sound impressive but isn't really making a dent in
| Microsoft's bottom line. If and when Microsoft's revenues from
| the EU start dropping by double digits or more, I am sure they
| will contribute large amounts of money to make the US
| government more civil and normal than it's being today.
|
| > And however difficult it was to render this consequence, it
| will be tenfold, or hundredfold, as difficult to reverse
| course.
|
| As a software consumer, _if_ this takes off, I don 't see any
| reason I would want the course to be reversed. More adoption
| and support of open software and standards is beneficial for
| consumers. It might even get Microsoft and the rest of US Big
| Tech to actively _compete_ for a change rather than relying on
| their near-total monopoly.
| anon291 wrote:
| Europe's main strategy these days seems to be blaming others
| instead of looking at themselves.
|
| For example, they blame _America_ for their own issue of
| lacking tech companies, despite Europe taking credit for
| having fewer work hours, more 'equitable' societies, etc.
|
| They blame _China_ for their own issue of lacking domestic
| manufacturing, despite their pride at having strong unions,
| supposedly good labor protections, and vacations.
|
| They blame _India_ for the bogey of 'buying Russian oil',
| instead of blaming themselves for being the LARGEST purchaser
| of refined oil products from India. As if India, one of the
| hottest countries on the planet, actually needs heating oil.
|
| At this point, which country / region does Europe not blame?
| It's always someone else's fault. No one even thinks to look
| inside themselves.
| bborud wrote:
| You are framing this as moral blame. It isn't about that.
| It is about strategic risk.
|
| Why would we blame the US for our own inability to build a
| viable software industry? Europe has been painfully aware
| for years that this is self-inflicted.
|
| The reason there is now serious talk about reducing
| dependence on the US is not resentment, it is risk.
| Dependence used to be a convenience. It is increasingly a
| liability. Trust in long-term stability, rule continuity,
| and alignment of interests is no longer something we can
| assume. That changes the calculus, regardless of who is "at
| fault".
|
| From the perspective of someone who works in software, I'm
| glad this conversation is finally happening. It's not about
| assigning blame. It is about taking responsibility for
| capabilities we should never have outsourced so completely
| in the first place.
|
| If this looks like blame from the outside, that's a
| misunderstanding of what self-correction looks like.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| There's plenty of chatter these days that Europe needs to
| be more independent from other powers, needs to be more
| competitive and so on.
|
| What's not clear is if Europeans are actually willing to
| federalize/centralize power enough to make that happen.
| E.g. in foreign policy, a Europe with twenty different
| strategies and twenty different militaries will never be
| able to swing its weight around the same as the US*, even
| if the collective level of power is the same on paper. But
| Europeans are still focused so much on " _my_ country wants
| to do X " that it seems like they'd rather be separate than
| strong.
|
| * A strong military is almost always an important component
| of foreign policy, even when it's not actually used to do
| anything...because of the implication.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > They blame India for the bogey of 'buying Russian oil',
| instead of blaming themselves for being the LARGEST
| purchaser of refined oil products from India. As if India,
| one of the hottest countries on the planet, actually needs
| heating oil
|
| India and the EU have managed to work as adults and find a
| way to sign an FTA [0] and Defense Pact [1] last week. The
| adults in the room found a way to compromise and turn a
| zero sum game into a stag hunt and anyone repeating tired
| tropes like above is either extremely uninformed or a bot.
|
| [0] - https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-
| relationships-cou...
|
| [1] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-
| eu-and-...
| bborud wrote:
| _leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud
| providers, software suites or tech companies_
|
| Remarkable how it is the politicans who should have been
| doing this when it doesn't get done, and how everyone is
| quick to complain if politicians meddle in what the private
| sector should have been doing. This is a recurring theme in a
| lot of debates. And I think it has to do with our need to
| blame someone but ourselves.
|
| Yes, one could solve this through procurement rules that
| favor domestic or regional products. And there are sometimes
| procurement rules that state that domestic vendors should be
| preferred. But I have seen that in practice and it doesn't
| actually work. One one project I worked on decades ago the
| military was sourcing a system for "local administration". A
| company that was effectively bankrupt, had the weirdest OS I
| have ever used, and the worst office support systems I've had
| the misfortune of trying to use, was the only domestic
| candidate. Yes, it did check the boxes in the procurement
| process, but everyone knew it was never going to happen.
|
| Interoperability, product maturity, familiarity, feature
| completeness, quality etc tends to win out.
|
| I think we have to realize that this has almost nothing to do
| with our political leaders and everything to do with our
| inability to create software businesses in Europe. We need to
| figure that bit out. And perhaps this is the kick in the
| behind we needed to get our act together.
| pembrook wrote:
| I don't think anybody expected EU politicians to create the
| software companies
|
| When we speak of the failure of EU politicians, it has been
| in _removing the barriers in their own market_ to even
| develop successful technology companies given all the
| highly educated local talent (they have a larger population
| than the US!).
|
| The lack of a single capital market, no single regulatory
| market, no single language market, hilariously wide
| variance in taxation/labor/corporate law, etc. is why the
| EU can never compete in each tech wave (from the transistor
| to mainframes to the PC to the internet to ecommerce to
| social media to smartphones to AI etc. etc.)
|
| Trillions in tax revenue is missing from the successful
| companies that were never built and the income tax from
| high-paid employees that don't exist. The last 60 years of
| growth in the digital realm could be funding the EU's
| various rotting social welfare systems and instead be
| providing countries across the region with a higher
| standard of living. Instead they are stuck living off the
| tax receipts thrown off by dying industrial-age giants.
| Which China will soon kill.
|
| This is _absolutely_ a policy failure, and regardless of
| the historical reasons why we ended up here, to paint it as
| anything other than a policy failure is to not live in
| reality.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I have nothing to add other than that you put my argument
| perfectly, much better than I could. Policy and
| regulation are the failures.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| agreed, but as long as Europe is divided, no politician
| will solve this.
| intrasight wrote:
| That is the fundamental flaw of the EU model - a lack of
| leadership and authority at the top level.
|
| They will have to change that. There were some small
| steps during Covid to create EU level funding mechanisms.
|
| I'm not saying they have to grow a monstrous bureaucracy
| at the EU level - in fact they could probably do it less.
| But they definitely need more regulation to promote self-
| grown technology.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yup. Culturally, the EU has favored more regulations over
| supporting more tech growth to an absurd degree.
|
| Not that I disagree in principle with most of the tech
| regulations; it does make sense to protect privacy and combat
| monopolistic abuses and so on.
|
| But you also need to support your own tech industry at the
| same time, and the efforts there have been like quarter-assed
| at most.
| palata wrote:
| If you prevent monopolies, and your neighbour doesn't, and
| your neighbour bullies you when you try to prevent their
| monopolies... it's not an easy situation.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| That's really not the issue. EU tech companies aren't
| getting big enough to the point where "potentially a
| monopoly" is even a problem, other than maybe Spotify.
| palata wrote:
| They are not, but EU tech companies have to compete
| against US monopolies. And there are laws that prevent
| them from doing that.
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-
| coalition
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| This blog post starts off with a long-winded, meandering
| rant. Do you have something more succinct and less rant-y
| to back up your assertion of
|
| > And there are laws that prevent them from doing that.
|
| ?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am French. When I look at the EU I see great potentials but
| the effect is a huge bureaucratic mess that is advantageous
| for everyone involved.
|
| About 25% of EU parliament parties are against EU. Theyt are
| paid by the EU to tell how much they hate this institution.
|
| There are no two countries in the EU who are aligned. Some of
| them are not completely out of synch (mostly the Nordics),
| some are in schizophrenia mode (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia
| mostly) where they eat most of the EU funds (relatively and
| in absolute terms) but hate it.
|
| With such an institution, there is no real hope of having a
| strong position backed by competent people. Just look at
| ENISA and the disgrace this organization is in the era of
| cybersecurity.
|
| We also had a EU-wide referendum about daylight saving. 5 M
| peopel responsed (a few percent of the population). It was
| the largest response in the history of the EU. And then it
| was trashed.
|
| The mountains of EUR we burn is insane.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Theyt are paid by the EU to tell how much they hate this
| institution._
|
| Correction: They're paid by the EU taxpayers. And as
| politicians, there's a chance their vociferation of hate
| towards the EU is just parroting the opinion their voters
| have towards the EU, which means they're doing their job as
| politicians, whether you like their opinions or not.
|
| _> some are in schizophrenia mode (Poland, Hungary,
| Slovakia mostly) [...] but hate it_
|
| Why is the EU treated like a sacred cow that people
| shouldn't be allowed to hate?
|
| People's happiness with the EU is directly tied to their
| QoL and purchasing power and you don't need to be a
| scientist to see that the poorest people in the EU have
| been hit hardest by the energy price hikes caused by
| Germany's stupid anti-nuclear pro-Ruski gas decisions, the
| inflation caused by the ECB's excessive COVID money
| printing, the support of mass migration, and the EU's
| response to the war in Ukraine, leading to a massive
| decline in QoL and purchasing power, so of course they're
| not gonna be happy with the EU when their decisions
| negatively affected them.
|
| The problem with the EU is that it pushes for blanket
| policies and solutions across the hugely diverse union,
| while different members get negatively impacted differently
| by each policy, some more some less, but the point is there
| cannot be a one size fits all solution that favors all EU
| members at the same time, leading to EU picking winners and
| losers with a widening inequality. So of course those
| drawing the short straw are gonna hate it.
|
| Worth remembering that Hungary, Slovakia, et-al have loved
| the EU for many, many years after joining. It's not like
| they suddenly decided to hate the EU for absolutely no
| reason. So then let's examine and talk about those reasons,
| instead of calling them schizophrenic which doesn't solve
| anything and just breeds more animosity and extremism.
| snowpid wrote:
| ehm,
|
| Poland has a steady grow and might leap the UK in the
| nearby future. UK does not have grow per Capita since
| Brexit. Hungary is poor because Orban is corrupt and
| corruption is bad for economy.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| > they're doing their job as politicians
|
| Yes I completely agree with you. The EU is enabling
| spending its citizens' money to criticize itself. If this
| is not a sick situation, I do not know what this is.
|
| To be clear, I am all for a union of European countries
| *that all participate in the effort. We need this to
| stand against the US or the BRICS block, without a union
| we are a set of insignificant countries that have fought
| for the last two millennia.
|
| If a country wants to participate, it means it will pay
| for everyone (with a net zero for everyone) and buy EU
| products. Otherwise thsi is sabotage.
|
| > Why is the EU treated like a sacred cow that people
| shouldn't be allowed to hate?
|
| It is not a sacred cow, it is currently almost useless
| when it comes to hard decisions. So it should change. But
| if a country is in, it is in - and not pump in monety and
| complains about the organization.
|
| We can have rich's problems when we are rich. In times of
| crisis we need to be a hard barrier. Which we are not.
|
| > you don't need to be a scientist to see that the
| poorest people in the EU
|
| You count Poland as a poor country? With its economic
| growth that will overtake UK?
|
| > So then let's examine and talk about those reasons,
| instead of calling them schizophrenic which doesn't solve
| anything and just breeds more animosity and extremism.
|
| Who is "we"? If you are from the EU you can vote for your
| country to be represented by the correct people (who care
| about the region as a whole). Or vote for those who want
| to dramatically change it so that it fits to its role not
| only when everything is fine, but also in hard times.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Worth remembering that Hungary, Slovakia, et-al have
| loved the EU for many, many years after joining. It's not
| like they suddenly decided to hate the EU for absolutely
| no reason. So then let's examine and talk about those
| reasons, instead of calling them schizophrenic which
| doesn't solve anything and just breeds more animosity and
| extremism.
|
| Please do so.
|
| All 3 countries benefit massively from being in the EU,
| particularly Poland, who is on track to become one of the
| largest EU economies.
|
| In fact, every country in the bloc benefits immensely
| from being in the bloc. The UK is a good reminder that
| leaving only brings stagnation.
|
| European countries are relatively small in the world
| stage. Think that Germany has the popularity of Chinese
| provinces. In trade negotiations the EU gets to play much
| tougher than any individual country would ever dream of,
| and free access to the whole bloc is a massive benefit.
|
| Is it perfect? Obviously not. But more often than not,
| the downsides and inefficiencies come from the fact that
| individual countries still hold too much power, and have
| too many redundant bureaucracies with the bloc itself.
| MrDresden wrote:
| > _I remember hearing a few months ago that companies in the
| EU still have to use Dun & Bradstreet (a US company) for
| routine government filings!_
|
| Could you name which European nation this was?
|
| I would genuinely be interested in knowing.
| bdbdbdb wrote:
| > EU citizens have elected ineffective leaders for decades --
| leaders that ignored the potential to set up homegrown cloud
| providers, software suites or tech companies.
|
| It's not like there are people out there on the campaign
| trail every election saying "if I'm elected, I'll ensure we
| build homegrown cloud alternatives". Nobody campaigns on
| issues like that. The reality is you have to choose between
| people who want to kick the immigrants out and people who
| don't, people who want to enact green policies and people who
| don't. People who want a European army and people who don't.
| These big issues are what people vote on, even if we care
| that there should be a homegrown cloud industry. I really do
| care, but it's not something I can do anything about at the
| ballot box
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Failing to make xenophobic choices when it comes
| to...enterprise software, is the issue?
|
| The US has spent tens of trillions defending Europe indirectly
| subsidizing social policies despite this the US has
| persistently been unpopular with Europeans because, obviously,
| they are a political target for domestic politicians (btw, you
| see this almost everywhere...if country A gives country B
| subsidies, you will almost always find that country A's people
| are virulently hated by a significant proportion of country B's
| population, the US was more unpopular than Russian before the
| Ukraine invasion in Germany...let me just repeat: a country
| which invaded Europe was more popular than a country which gave
| hundreds of billions a year in defence subsidies).
|
| Acting as if xenophobia towards the US hasn't always been part
| of the European political climate is not based in reality.
| Europe has been trying to protect its own market for decades,
| unsuccessfully. What is more, there is very limited trade
| WITHIN Europe in certain industries because of the hurdle of
| national xenophobia and protectionism. Europe has made an
| industry out of failure and greivance...and, for some reason,
| part of this narrative is that no country contributes as much
| as Europe.
|
| Reality? Iran...continued to break US sanctions for years so
| that failing European defence companies could sell their junk,
| investigations of Iranian politicians bribing EU
| parliamentarians. Russia...continued to break US sanctions
| after Ukraine invasion, had an extremely subservient
| relationship with Russia despite being repeatedly told by the
| US that NordStream 2 would lead to Ukraine invasion, former
| German president actually works for NordStream. On and on, the
| same mistakes being made all the time because there has never
| been any real strategy apart from extreme short-term political
| advantage to protect continued failure to generate social or
| economic gain in most of Europe (not all tbf, but the executive
| polling numbers that you see in some countries is incredible,
| you wouldn't think they have elections).
| lkjvkbn wrote:
| Stop with this nonsense. You know it is false.
|
| USA is not defending Europe from anyone.
| intrasight wrote:
| It's crazy that this nonsense is still promoted - both by
| Republicans and Democrats, and leaders in Europe. WTF is
| wrong with people. If Americans are stupid enough to buy
| into the military-industrial conspiracy that we have to
| spend 10% of our GDP on defense, then they get what they
| deserve. The EU is right to call BS on that whole paradigm.
| jabwd wrote:
| I think you are failing to realize the billions the US has
| made from "defending" europe. Regardless, once the US is no
| longer colonizing the entire planet and the dollar isn't the
| only currency anyone cares about your opinion will change
| realllll quick. You'll have forgotten this wall of nonsense
| you wrote though by then I'm sure.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I do not think many U.S. citizens were consulted on the
| decision to blow up Nordstream.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| I remember a conversation I had with my uncle before the 2024
| election during which I told him Donald Trump's leadership
| would result in a no-less-disastrous American version of
| Brexit, if he were somehow elected a second time. My uncle's an
| avid Fox News/Newsmax watcher, and had absolutely no idea what
| I was talking about.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Conversation a few days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767668
| clot27 wrote:
| so is there any open source alternative to these meeting apps?
| (selfhostable)
| arm32 wrote:
| I guess Jitsi?
| teekert wrote:
| https://meet.proton.me should also be ready for action soon.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Jitsi? https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| https://www.rocket.chat/
| Etheryte wrote:
| We used to run this back in the day which, granted, was quite
| a long time ago now. I don't think we ever went longer than a
| few months without a serious outage of sorts, and that
| certainly wasn't for a lack of resources or manpower.
| gilney wrote:
| The Jitsi site says rocket.chat uses it.
| saubeidl wrote:
| The French government built their own:
| https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet
| fpoling wrote:
| But they hosted the repo on Microsoft-run GitHub ...
| saubeidl wrote:
| The public-facing mirror :-)
| euio757 wrote:
| "built their own" wrapper yes (which is a very important
| piece of a end-to-end Zoom like product)
|
| But you can see:
|
| > Powered by [LiveKit](https://livekit.io/)
|
| Fine since this is an open source product, but not full EU
| sovereignty of the software stack.
|
| Livekit could at any time change their license and drop
| support for the free open-source version like so many
| products have done in the past.
|
| If a EU entity forks it and maintains it, then that'd be end-
| to-end sovereignty IMO.
| saubeidl wrote:
| That might be true philosophically, but tactically it makes
| no sense to fork _until a potential future license change_.
| Why lose the free maintenance from upstream?
| wongarsu wrote:
| For Teams-like chat I really like Zulip. Which also integrates
| with Jitsi for video conferencing
|
| If you are hosting webinars there's also bigbluebutton
| rectang wrote:
| It's not open source, but up until a few years ago I used
| whereby.com for videochats.
|
| Unlike the alternatives at the time from Google, Apple, etc.,
| it didn't require an account for participants -- I could just
| give them the meeting room URL. So although it wasn't open
| source, it at least didn't lock you into a network.
|
| (Unlike you, I wasn't up for self-hosting.)
| kofu wrote:
| This one is often overlook but very good, I prefer it over
| Jitsi https://galene.org/
| j_maffe wrote:
| Honest to god, everything that Trump is doing might actually end
| up being that the world becomes a better place. The US hegemony
| really ran its course.
| tyre wrote:
| The US hegemony has been a tremendous boon to the world. Yes,
| the US has done terrible things (lots in South America,
| Vietnam, genocide in East Timor, failed nation building and war
| crimes in the Middle East, support for genocide in Palestine,
| etc.) This isn't to minimize that.
|
| But the reality is that the US benefits immensely from free
| democracies with rules-based open markets and international
| order. Again, do we break that when it suits us? Absolutely.
| But America being selfish has been a positive outcome compared
| to, for example, more war in Europe.
|
| Polls consistently show that people recognize the benefits of
| US hegemony while acknowledging that the US does it purely from
| self-interest.
| melesian wrote:
| The absence of war in Europe is more down to the EU than the
| US. Polls do not consistently show anything of the sort.
| tyre wrote:
| Yes, they do:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international
| -...
|
| People globally have routinely acknowledged that:
|
| 1. The US is a hegemony that meddles in others' affairs
|
| 2. It does so selfishly, despite the high flying rhetoric
| about freedom, democracy, etc.
|
| 3. This is _good_
|
| The preconditions for absence of war in Europe came before
| the EU existed and has to do with the post-WWII balance of
| power, which was heavily driven by the United States.
| j_maffe wrote:
| The poll you reference didn't ask a single country in the
| middle east (except Israel, of course!) or most of South
| American countries (half of which puppet governments were
| placed). I wonder why. And you really argue with a
| straight face that this is representative of "People
| globally"? I'd be more insulted by your attempt of slight
| if PEW wasn't doing the same.
| j_maffe wrote:
| > But the reality is that the US benefits immensely from free
| democracies
|
| Would you like for me to start counting the number of times
| the US helped install a democracy vs the number of times it
| installed dictatorships?
| pcj-github wrote:
| Good for them! As a US citizen, I am trying to do the same.
| Closing my gmail account and moving to ProtonMail.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Note that this is only about European _governments_ choosing to
| not use US software.
| ezst wrote:
| Yeah, and once the precedent is settled, you can bet that the
| private sector will follow, and give birth to a bunch of local
| service companies to deploy and support those solutions in an
| healthier and fairer manner than the current GSuite/MSOffice
| duopoly.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Is this true though? There are tons of policies and
| procedures the US government has required for decades that
| never got adopted by the private sector.
| snowpid wrote:
| OS will be cheaper. No monopoly rendite + development
| across more shoulders.
| melesian wrote:
| You can be very sure that millions of Europeans and large
| numbers of businesses are finding alternatives.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Can we? Do you have any numbers to back this up?
| johanyc wrote:
| Not direct numbers. But you can see r/BuyFromEU has 795K
| Weekly visitors. That is A LOT. In comparison, r/OpenAI has
| 676K Weekly visitors and r/webdev has 691K Weekly visitors.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Yes, and it's clear European governments are just catching up
| to the sentiment of European people.
| lencastre wrote:
| it's gotta be too good to be true, but at least one major economy
| taking the lead, imagine
| tyre wrote:
| As an American, this is awesome to see.
|
| We should pay penalties for our abandonment of good faith global
| engagement. And economic damage really is the key to the heart of
| these United States of Three Corporations in a Trench Coat.
|
| We've seen companies and CEOs paying millions in bribes to be
| close to the president. Now this aligns their financial interests
| with shifting our foreign policy. Not how it ought to work, but
| it's the world we have.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yes. We are at our best when we compete and have grown too fat
| and lazy IMO.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >We should pay penalties for our abandonment of good faith
| global engagement.
|
| How can you abandon something that never existed. While US was
| among the better superpowers it never for a moment engaged in
| good faith. Trump just makes it naked and brutish.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| It's so strange reading all these comments from Americans
| begging to be punished for collective misdeeds. It reads as
| unsettlingly masochistic.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| From a less masochistic and more self-interested perspective,
| it's not a good long-term thing for American corporations to
| thrive purely due to corruption and throwing around political
| weight.
|
| We as consumers (and for that matter, aspiring
| businesspeople) all benefit when we have more entrants to the
| market that are challenging the existing monopolies. And to
| be honest I don't think the EU has the incentives to pull
| this off anyway, these are manufactured headlines around
| what's a minor blip in the vast coffers of American
| corporations. I'm sure zero alarm bells are going off in
| Redmond because some EU bureacrats wrote a headline around
| switching to a Django app built in a hackathon.
| tyre wrote:
| It's in the US's best interests to be a rule follower. It
| maintains our status as a global reserve currency. It gives
| our passports access to almost every country without visas.
| It attracts foreign investment.
|
| As a US citizen, it is incredibly in my selfish interest for
| the US to not be a shitty friend. Just as it is in our
| selfish interest to promote democracy, less corruption, and
| free markets.
|
| While I agree with those things, morally, they are _also_ in
| the pure self-interest of the United States.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The selection of Americans commenting generally aren't
| suffering, and won't be suffering under any circumstances.
| They're upset that the institutions that they worship and
| rely on for their own professional legitimacy are now all
| under a buffoon, game show host, and professional wrestling
| valet. It calls into question the "meritocracy" that they
| believe rewards them for all their hard work.
|
| They blame this on the people who lack merit, and didn't
| study hard enough to get their share of the highest profit
| margins in history. They want them to be punished. The people
| who actually do and make things, rather than shuffling things
| around, marketing things and sending emails.
|
| It's no wonder that they hope for some sort of punishment to
| force people to flock to them. US Liberals offer working
| people absolutely nothing but mockery. The only reason they
| have a chance at getting back into government is because
| Trump's corruption will keep the people who voted for him
| from voting at all. MAGA (with fellow-travelers who voted for
| him while holding their noses, repulsed by the alternative)
| is falling apart over foreign wars, Epstein, and H1Bs, not
| any of the middle class lib objections. Democrats also will
| give you war, Epstein and H1B.
|
| The midterms, and the next election, will be won by the side
| that has managed to disillusion slightly fewer voters to the
| entire democratic process. I'm sorry, but that still bodes
| well for the loudmouth strongman.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The only people who hate Americans as much as (or more than)
| Europeans are Americans.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| They are the ones that get to face almost all of the
| consequences from their government. And they know that if the
| people that voted on their current government don't get
| severally punished, things will only escalate.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| America is "Three Corporations in A Trench Coat"?
|
| Everything America is doing right now is because America is
| precisely NOT taking corporate decisions. America is doing
| things to the international order that are directly fucking up
| American corporations. Only a committed social democrat can
| look at the populist right-wing chaos right now, and claim
| that's "Corporate" action. If anything, Corporations were more
| liberal than the population at large in America, and that's
| part of the reason why Trump's racist populism is so popular
| ... he's exploiting a backlash. Turns out America has far more
| nativists than you ever imagined.
|
| But yeah, go ahead and call it "Corporations in a trenchcoat"
| because then you don't have to think about how Corporations
| have actually played the biggest role in promoting diversity in
| America. While government consistently goes sharply left and
| right based on whichever lunatic the American public elects
| next.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| I think it's also healthy overall for there to be multiple
| competitors in the market versus the tech monopolies we have
| now that have started abusing their customers.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Yep, and watching many of my peers in tech get red pilled and
| vote for this administration, or even be active participants in
| it, has been very hard to stomach. Financial penalties might be
| the only thing that gets them to realize the error of their
| ways
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I would not have predicted that my country's government going bad
| would have such a positive side-effect on the world of software
| and network services.
| rayiner wrote:
| In favor of what? I'm all for economic nationalism, but you have
| to have competitive home grown alternatives. Does Europe have
| them? Or are they going to shoot themselves in the foot
| productivity-wise by boycotting the best products?
| atherton94027 wrote:
| The best products like Microsoft Teams? Let's be honest, a lot
| of the software they've replaced has a checkered past
| belval wrote:
| Look I am all for Euro-skepticism, but "boycotting the best
| products" on an article about Microsoft Teams which is well
| known to be clawing its way into companies despite very
| negative feedback due to advantageous pricing when you are
| integrated with Office 365 (which is itself monopolistic
| behavior). Is not one.
|
| The reality is that chat apps nowadays have little moat,
| blocking the worst offenders for sovereignty's sake it
| perfectly logical.
| marssaxman wrote:
| This is a great reason to invest in open-source software.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| In no world are Teams and Zoom anywhere close to the "best
| products". They're awful, and only persist because of network
| effects or because of "the people who buy it don't feel the
| pain".
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Good. Open source solutions exist and need investment.
|
| Hopefully the EU as a whole can rally behind this.
| firefoxd wrote:
| After an acquisition, we are transitioning from google meet and
| slack, to Teams. I used to hate slack so much with their random
| features popping left and right and menus moving around. Oh I
| didn't know how good we had it.
|
| Slack is a delight compared to Teams. And I'm not even alone in
| this, everyone is still using slack until it gets pried off our
| hands. So help me God anyone mentions Copilot one more time...
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Due to the way Microsoft does sales to enterprises, there's no
| incentive for its software to be any good or even compete
| directly with anyone else... as long as it ticks the right
| boxes, the people making purchasing decisions are fine with it
| (it's bundled in with something critical like Excel anyway).
|
| If the gov really took an expansive view of antitrust, it would
| break up software bundling and require ala carte pricing per
| app, defined as a single primary use case.
|
| This will become all the more important as OpenAI/Anthropic
| start bundling all of their products together and putting
| existing SaaS out of business for no reason other than to get
| some crucial model or capability, companies have to buy the
| whole bundle.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If only they'd taken the same approach with Russian natural gas
| in 2008.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| But that'd be difficult, and the EU is all about easy PR wins
| stopbulying wrote:
| 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?
| stopbulying wrote:
| Isn't it reasonable to block access to countries that deny you
| the option to compete and copy your business?
|
| Then you'll need to pay for a VPN.
| stopbulying wrote:
| Should US businesses block all connections from countries
| which deny them the option to compete?
|
| Does it matter whether a competitor in such a country is
| copying their business while they are denied the option to
| compete?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Just like Europeans, you need to understand international law.
| It's not law like law within a country. It's a _warning._ US
| software firms were never obligated to comply with anything. If
| you don 't comply, you create an enemy. You comply based on
| your judgement of that enemies' ability, determination and
| level of creativity that they will use to punish you for
| noncompliance.
|
| Do you want to do any business at all there? Do you have any
| vendors there? Do your owners own anything else that does
| business there? Do you have any investors that live there? Do
| your kids go to college there? Do you have to fly over or
| through it, ever?
|
| It's leverage against leverage.
| larsnystrom wrote:
| 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?
| pstuart wrote:
| Yeah, this is a win/win opportunity and could drive more
| sponsorship of those projects as there'd be more interests
| invested in seeing them thrive.
| pkulak wrote:
| Matrix has done a bunch of work with the French government in
| the past. Hopefully they can capitalize on this sentiment.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| More information here:
|
| https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366633894/European-
| gover...
|
| (0ct 2025)
|
| Interestingly, there is also a NATO-Matrix app:
|
| https://element.io/en/case-studies/nato
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| > to sell support and customization of open source software to
| government players
|
| Time to start a Drupal consulting firm again.
| wickedwiesel wrote:
| 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
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| 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".
| Zigurd wrote:
| I had an occasion to speak to some of the wire.com people a
| couple years ago. They seemed to be really dedicated to
| security and privacy.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Just goes to show how many structural problems there are to
| starting tech companies in Europe.
| yardie wrote:
| Yes, the problem is capital. US has loads of it and Europe
| does not. So a lot of European startups have 3 options:
| remain niche, get bought out buy US investors, move the
| corporate seat/brain trust to the US.
|
| There are many small European startups who do not have
| infrastructure to take on large European multinationals as
| clients. A lot of EU labor laws have hard requirements at 50
| and 100 employees so startups stay below those lines and
| remain tech lifestyle companies.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well the other large advantage is that the US is one single
| market with one common language (English) and while there
| are variations by state, pretty much one set of rules. So
| by starting a company in the United States you of course
| have access to incredibly deep capital markets, but you
| also have access to 350 million people mostly operating
| under one set of rules with one common language and largely
| one common culture. It's the same market advantage that
| China has, by and large.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| It's one of the big ironies of the EU - every time it
| gets larger (good! increases market size) it also gets
| more fragmented in terms of languages, retained local
| rules etc. (bad, obviously).
|
| Now up to 24 official languages and still potentially
| growing in the future (although this is a bit of an
| overcount because some of them are mutually intelligible
| to various degrees, it's still a lot).
|
| It's interesting to think that at the time of original
| ECSC treaty there were only four languages (French,
| German, Dutch and Italian). That's just about manageable,
| now it is a bit of an issue
| caycep wrote:
| I kind of wonder, capital wise. the GDP isn't too far off
| US and there's def companies/families w/ insane amount of
| capital esp in luxury goods etc. Unless they're just
| hoarding it like Smaug and not investing it back into the
| economy, in which case the problem isn't capital but
| business culture.
| scottyah wrote:
| Also culture. I had a friend try with several German
| companies, but she said the leadership would default to
| "no", and every decision would need too much review. She
| even worked with some that opened offices in SF hoping to
| learn to move fast, but even those were way too cautious to
| succeed. Lots of premature optimization, and trying to
| establish structures and systems before any proof of
| concepts could be made. Obviously, this is just anecdotal
| but she had a real desire to have European growth in SF
| communities.
| dbl000 wrote:
| That seems to be the intention of https://mosa.cloud/
| PassingClouds wrote:
| It could be similar to when China kicked out a lot of non-
| domestic players. They even had a nickname for it. From the
| link below.
|
| Fengkou feng kou Feng Kou
|
| n. wind tunnel; an area or sector where, for a period of time,
| all investors want to invest in. Everyone stands a chance to
| fly when there is favorable wind blowing from behind.
|
| https://www.newconceptmandarin.com/learn-chinese-blog/chines...
| mrits wrote:
| If so it will be acquired by a US company
| jt2190 wrote:
| > The French government... announced last week that 2.5 million
| civil servants would stop using video conference tools from U.S.
| providers -- including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and GoTo
| Meeting -- by 2027 and switch to Visio, a homegrown service.
| jl6 wrote:
| Ahhh, collaboration via Visio. Those were the days!
| jgbuddy wrote:
| It's all fun and games until there's an outage, nothing screams
| efficient like a state-owned tech company
| guywithahat wrote:
| Oh wow how did I not know it was state owned! The article keeps
| referring to "sovereign tech" which I assumed meant sovereign
| tech companies. I'm all for hating on teams (and sharepoint)
| but a state owned tech company sounds like an apocalyptically
| bad idea, and since it's state owned it can't really migrate to
| other industries/countries, and they likely won't update as
| quickly as they should as new technologies come around. I get
| the sharepoint/teams hate but I'm surprised a startup form
| isn't making more fun of France for this
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| The first sentence of the article:
|
| > In France, civil servants will ditch Zoom and Teams for a
| homegrown video conference system.
|
| I don't see an issue with government workers using government
| software. They are not licencing it to businesses or
| consumers, although with it being open source, I'm sure some
| will use it.
| guywithahat wrote:
| To me "homegrown video conference system" would mean like
| made in France by a French company, not made by the French
| government. I could be wrong but chat systems seem dynamic
| and important enough I wouldn't want it to be run and
| managed by the government. It will be interesting to see
| how it pans out though, and it's always nice to have more
| open source code
| runarberg wrote:
| Most of Europe did just fine with state owned telecommunication
| companies which lasted well into the 1990s or even the 2000s.
| To this day some of the largest telecommunications companies in
| Europe are still state owned, partially, and in some cases in
| full.
|
| Growing up in Iceland where we had a state monopoly on
| telecommunications until the late 90s, I don't remember a
| single telecommunication outage. In fact, after moving to
| America where I have a private internet provider, I have
| experience quite a few internet blackouts actually.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >Most of Europe did just fine with state owned
| telecommunication companies which lasted well into the 1990s
| or even the 2000s.
|
| Early 2000s were the times when 50Mbit in Eastern Europe when
| it was the wild west cost 10eur/month through lan cable and
| in Western Europe ADSL and ISDN cost multitude of the cost
| for fraction of the speed.
| runarberg wrote:
| Early 2000s is exactly the time period when
| telecommunications companies in Europe were well on their
| way to privatization, if not already fully privatized.
|
| You are proving my point.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Yes. And the result was shitty speeds on state telecoms
| and extremely fast in the deregulated market.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| As an American, I will echo Trump's speech at Davos. We want
| strong allies, not vassals. Be capable of building your own EVs,
| your own rockets, your own fighter jets, your own subway systems,
| your own zoom alternatives, your own search engines, your own
| operating systems, etc etc.
|
| Make Europe great again. Bring back creativity. Bring back jobs.
| Build a talented workforce that stays local instead of migrating
| to the US. Be independent. Stand tall. Do all of these things and
| preferrably do them now.
|
| America and China's rise shouldnt be zero sum. It should lift the
| world. Europe forged the path we all follow. Come back to it.
| melesian wrote:
| Patronizing rubbish. The EU builds plenty of EVs, rockets and
| fighter jets and has far more subway systems and public
| transport than the US.
|
| Europe is already great. It's why hundreds of thousands of
| Americans moved here in 2025.
|
| As for being a vassal: Trump was warned of the consequences of
| invading Greenland and he backed down immediately. Some vassal.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| Latest leaks indicate the US will be given sovereignty over
| its existing and future bases in Denmark, along with oil
| drilling rights, at $0 to US tax payers. Some vassal indeed.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Re: fighter jets, the US and China are each producing about
| 4x as many jets as all of Europe combined. Europe's
| deliveries (41) barely exceed Russia's (33-39) despite Europe
| having 3x the population, supposedly superior industrial
| tech, not being the most sanctioned economy on Earth, etc...
|
| https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/2025-fighter-jet-
| delive...
|
| Re: rockets.....well we don't want to judge by tonnage
| lifted, where SpaceX dwarfs the entire planet's efforts.
| Still it appears Europe struggles to put even a handful of
| new rockets up, so I'm not sure why you are characterizing
| that as "plenty" either:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/20/1113582/europe-i.
| ..
|
| > Europe is already great. It's why hundreds of thousands of
| Americans moved here in 2025.
|
| HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS? Citation needed please. A migration of
| that scale would have journalists writing about it. Accurate
| data seems hard to come by but one expert puts _TOTAL_ US
| expat numbers in Europe around 1.1 million.
|
| https://aaro.org/living-abroad/how-many-americans-live-
| abroa...
|
| > As for being a vassal: Trump was warned of the consequences
| of invading Greenland and he backed down immediately. Some
| vassal.
|
| Yes sometimes vassals oppose their suzerain's most egregious
| overreaches of power successfully. King John of England's
| barons pressured him to create the Magna Carta.
| Afterwards...they were still his vassals, as they were before
| it.
|
| Just ask Mark Rutte: https://www.euronews.com/my-
| europe/2026/01/29/rutte-is-right...
|
| A relevant opinion piece from a European:
| https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/nothing-more-
| than...
| the_monocle wrote:
| Suprisingly the number does in fact seem to be roughly 80k
| per year, though a similar amount moved from Europe to the
| US.
|
| https://schengenvisainfo.com/news/over-75000-americans-
| moved...
|
| real source here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser
| /view/migr_resfirst...
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| > It's why hundreds of thousands of Americans moved here in
| 2025.
|
| They should all give me their passports. I want in.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion from a week ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767668
| FpUser wrote:
| Long time overdue. It is so stupid to rely on a single country in
| so many areas
| wateralien wrote:
| Almost all businesses need email, contacts, calendars, live chat,
| video calls, docs, sheets, and presentations. Ideally all linked.
| Where is the open source foundation for this package that
| everyone needs?
| drdec wrote:
| Where are the businesses setting up and donating to an
| organization/foundation to pay for development of such a
| package?
| mhitza wrote:
| Aside from email I think nextcloud (+ jitsi integration) covers
| most, if not all, of those requirements.
| GaelFG wrote:
| Nextcloud is great !
| stronglikedan wrote:
| lol, "Europe" isn't seeking anything of the sort. France maybe,
| and a couple other countries, but very, very far from the whole
| of Europe. And even then, only a handful of people relative to
| the whole country. This won't even cause a blip on a balance
| sheet.
|
| What are they gonna switch to? I'll bet it ends up being a fork
| of Zoom or Teams. It's all just theater.
| runarberg wrote:
| Zoom and Teams are both proprietary software, I doubt any
| available forks exist, or could exist, for use outside of
| corporation where they are developed.
|
| I'm guessing they will probably use something built on top of
| Matrix which is an open protocol maintained by a Community
| Interest Corporation (CIC) in the UK.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/30/france_matrix/
|
| I'm less sure what they will use for video conferencing, but
| they could do worse then something built on top of WebRTC,
| which is also an open protocol maintained by W3C, an
| international standards organization with location in 4
| countries (including France and USA).
| Arathorn wrote:
| The French video conferencing tool is called Visio, and is
| here: https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet. It uses LiveKit
| for video, but doesn't yet use Matrix - the hope is to make
| it speak MatrixRTC so it can interop nicely with Tchap (the
| French fork of Element).
| mgbmtl wrote:
| We have EU clients that now force us to use BBB (big blue
| button) for security reasons. It's not perfect, but good
| enough, and Zoom/Hangouts/Teams all have their quirks. We
| decided to adopt it where I work, and cut a few paid Zoom
| accounts.
|
| Some clients use Jitsi, but I find it more complicated to run
| Jitsi in-house. BBB was really easy to setup.
| bborud wrote:
| Actually, video conferencing systems aren't that hard to build
| anymore. But it is hard to grow them as companies.
|
| Just among my circle of friends there were two startups that
| made video conferencing systems. One generic, and one for uses
| that required a higher degree of security. If we move one
| stratum out, there are about half a dozen startups where
| friends of friends take part in developing smart cameras for
| video conferencing as well as industrial uses.
|
| And then there was the Tandberg video conferencing platform
| which was acquired by Cisco in 2010. (That entire stack was
| designed and engineered in Norway. From low level DSPs to
| software).
|
| There are dozens of companies that could make a video
| conferencing system in Europe today that would be no worse than
| what you find in Zoom, Teams etc. But since it is a crowded
| field, they haven't had the muscle to compete.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >I'll bet it ends up being a fork of Zoom or Teams.
|
| Aynthing that doesn't terminate in USA where it will be used
| for industrial espionage by Trump, and cut off as soon as USA's
| regime finds it useful to do so -- like to prevent reporting of
| the invasion of Greenland, say. European governments are using
| Microsoft, that's just not safe with MS paying fealty (and
| literally paying in $dollars) to a fascist regime.
|
| It is unconscionable to maintain the status quo of using USA-
| based service companies.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Imo this was inevitable even without Trump. He just massively
| accelerated it.
|
| The end of globalism also marks the end of the global internet
| and the transition to regional internets.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| This needs to go much, _much_ further before it is even mildly
| effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the
| US) and no significant large technology companies. They are
| largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population.
|
| I love that there is a lot more _enthusiasm_ about OSS adoption
| within EU software devs, but at a population or government level
| there doesn 't appear to be any coherent strategy to gradually
| replace US tech other than these knee-jerk headliner moves that
| don't move the needle much.
|
| As a software consumer I would love it if there were open-first
| software standards adopted within this large of a population that
| would force US Big Tech to actually compete rather than rest on
| their monopoly power. But I am pretty skeptical and pessimistic
| about this actually being able to happen, given the historical
| failures of the EU.
| anon291 wrote:
| OSS software is also mostly owned by the US. This entire thing
| of 'replacing' American software with American software under a
| different commercial model is so silly.
| antirez wrote:
| That's not true. For instance in the field of video pipelines
| ffmpeg is the standard, and was started by an European
| (French) person. Runs on Linux of course, that ..., and so
| forth. Do you really believe in Europe there is no the tech
| capability to recreate the tech stack? This is an extremely
| naive way to put it. US tech is much more developed because
| of money infusion even on companies that take 10/20 years to
| get productive. It was the right call, by the US, to put
| things in this way, but the European disadvantage is not for
| technical merits.
| anon291 wrote:
| And who is the largest contributor to ffmpeg? These sorts
| of things are so silly. By and large, open source software
| is worked on by companies who are paying contributors
| because the project provides them some value. Most of these
| are American companies, which means they exert control,
| whether you like it or not.
|
| In the case of ffmpeg, about a decade ago, I worked at a
| company who made substantial contributions to it, and
| employed many significant contributors. You guys live in
| fantasy land.
|
| Linux is also an American thing. The benevolent-dictator-
| for-life of Linux lives in Portland, OR. Intel (also in
| Portland mostly) is one of the largest contributors, along
| with AMD. We can go on and on. this is obviously going to
| be the case when the main CPU vendors are American.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > which means they exert control, whether you like it or
| not.
|
| I don't think you and I use the same definition of open
| source software. Controlling the upstream is absolutely
| not equivalent to controlling the software, nor is being
| a majority contributor. These things are very obvious to
| anyone that regularly works with FOSS in a professional
| capacity.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > This is an extremely naive way to put it. US tech is much
| more developed because of money infusion even on companies
| that take 10/20 years to get productive.
|
| Not sure if this is aimed at the immediate parent comment
| or mine, but I agree completely. US tech is developed due
| to the unique VC ecosystem, but in my opinion EU
| governments have lagged behind on setting up their own
| ecosystem (VC or otherwise) that would create equivalently
| sized and capable companies.
|
| I also don't understand what the parent means by OSS being
| "owned" by the US. That ownership is not meaningful due to
| many/all of the licenses; and there are many meaningful EU
| OSS contributions.
| meinersbur wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether OSS is American (in whatever sense)
| -- anything that is America-specific (e.g. server addresses)
| can be patched for a localized European version. The
| different commercial model does matter: American law does not
| apply (Cloud Act, National Security Letters, ...)
| maelito wrote:
| The problem is not ownership. It's dev force. We're not bad
| here in europe, not bad at all.
| Bengalilol wrote:
| Could you elaborate?
| <https://nextcloud.com/blog/press_releases/digital-
| sovereignt...>
|
| On a side and more general note: "Global Innovation Index
| 2025"
|
| "Europe hosts 15 economies ranked among the global top 25,
| including six in the top 10. Switzerland (1st) retains the
| global lead, followed by Sweden (2nd), the United Kingdom
| (6th) and Finland (7th). Thirteen out of 39 European
| economies covered moved up the ranks, marking a notable
| increase from nine last year.
|
| Notable movers include Ireland (18th), Belgium (21st) and
| Norway (20th), which breaks into the top 20.
|
| Eastern European economies also show solid momentum.
| Lithuania (33rd) leads globally for unicorn valuation and
| digital innovation - with leading positions in app creation,
| ICT use and Knowledge-intensive employment.Europe is also
| home to dynamic innovation clusters, led by Germany with
| seven clusters and the United Kingdom with four, including
| Cambridge and Oxford. However, European innovation clusters
| trail the US in venture capital strength."
|
| <https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2025/article_0009
| ...>
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >and no significant large technology companies
|
| I have to do my patriotic duty to remind you that SAP is the
| 6th/7th largest software company in the world by market cap. I
| know not as exiting as notepad with AI but they do exist.
|
| That said US software giants are a disease for democratic
| societies. If Europe wants software sovereignty we don't need
| "significant large software companies" we need a hundred medium
| sized ones that reflect the diversity of the dozens of nations
| on the continent. We don't need gilded age robber barrons
| owning the largest communications network shaping politics. We
| need a democratic genuinely market respecting solution, we
| don't need to emulate the techno-feudalism of the US or China.
|
| Europe needs in fact to be _more_ ambitious than to build its
| own Microsoft. We need a genuinely open ecosystem which is not
| going to have as its goal to extract value out of its users.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > If Europe wants software sovereignty we don't need
| "significant large software companies" we need a hundred
| medium sized ones that reflect the diversity of the dozens of
| nations on the continent...Europe needs in fact to be more
| ambitious than to build its own Microsoft. We need a
| genuinely open ecosystem which is not going to have as its
| goal to extract value out of its users.
|
| 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 (US), FB Messenger (US), and
| Telegram (Russian) to communicate.
|
| > SAP is the 6th/7th largest software company in the world by
| market cap
|
| Okay I will give you that one. Market cap doesn't always
| equal ubiquity though; ask your non technical (or even most
| of your technical) friends what SAP does and you will get
| blank stares. Ask them what Microsoft does and you will
| usually get a reasonable answer that's not "Notepad with AI".
| sirwitti wrote:
| You're missing Signal which has gained a lot of traction in
| the last years.
|
| Apart from that it's hard to take statements from such an
| ignorant US centristic point of view about what europe
| is/has/has not seriously.
|
| Let's see how things will play out for europe and how our
| souvereignty efforts will impact the US economy.
| palata wrote:
| > 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-coalition
| simplyluke wrote:
| "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 Europe's tech
| industry has faced is that the EU killed it in the crib
| with regulations, and now there's more fear of "what if
| there are bad side effects in being successful" than
| there is fear of never being successful.
|
| Yes, it'd be great if there was a thriving market of mid-
| sized EU tech companies working in a well-regulated and
| consumer friendly market. There just isn't, though. I'm
| generally a fan of Doctorow, but the idea that the EU is
| just a few hackers reverse-engineering a new client for
| teams/youtube/whatsapp away from that world is hard for
| me to see.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Sure, but can you be honest and admit that you don't have
| any of this yet?
|
| Yes of course I can be honest. We don't have any of that.
| But if I'd sketch out a genuine European future in software
| to me it would look something like this. You have
| technologies like Tim Berner Lee's Solid[1] and social
| protocols like Mastodon/Bluesky/etc owned as public
| infrastructure and operated by its people. You could
| imagine each region of Europe having its own sovereign
| digital space federated with individuals owning their data,
| a genuine network mirroring the region as it is.
|
| The big problem with this isn't just technical, it's
| mental. The user of today anywhere is a consumer. It's like
| turning a serf into a citizen. I don't think this is a five
| year vision, it's more like a 50 year program. I think it's
| going to be a long time until we've convinced people that
| taking ownership of and participating in their digital
| life, being tinkerers, owners, netizens is vital.
|
| [1]https://solidproject.org
| gib444 wrote:
| > 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
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| 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?
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Sure, but at least you have homegrown car companies. They
| make cutting edge cars that are mainstream, and even popular
| abroad.
|
| You have no equivalents for software. That's why all of your
| consumer and most of your official stuff runs on US software
| and cloud platforms, and why headlines like these
| are...headlines rather than just being normal.
|
| Don't get me wrong -- as a US consumer, I would _love_ for
| this to change and have EuroCloud or whatever. Hetzner isn 't
| too bad. But it doesn't have the scale and service breadth
| that Microsoft, Amazon or Google bring.
| palata wrote:
| The US government has been working really hard on making sure
| that nobody can compete with the US Big Tech. See what Cory
| Doctorow has to say about this, for instance.
| kkfx wrote:
| EU governments don't want to learn one thing: you don't replace
| one dictator with another. The specific case says little, France
| has been developing "La Suite" for YEARS, Italy had experimented
| with Jitsi Meet and Big Blue Button at GARR during the COVID era,
| but what the EU wants is to create EU GAFAMs, whereas what we
| need, and not just in the EU, is FLOSS, self-hosting, desktop
| computing. This, however, is not welcome, starting with eIDAS 2.0
| which pushes for a "super-sovereign" app-wallet for the
| notoriously sovereign Android and iOS instead of smart cards and
| USB readers that we've had for years and that various countries
| have used for years to log into online banking and, more
| recently, to sign documents.
|
| The substantial point is that they don't want freedom, they only
| want to steal like others steal, to do business like others do
| business, instead of doing something different.
| input_sh wrote:
| 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/suitenumerique/
|
| Dev handbook (in English):
| https://suitenumerique.gitbook.io/handbook
|
| Not French and I can't say I personally tried deploying any of
| them, but I've been admiring their efforts from afar for a while
| now.
| aanet wrote:
| 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 behemoths. If this
| realization happened ~20 years ago, they might have stopped FB,
| Goog, Amazon, MSFT, etc. much earlier, and wouldn't be hand-
| wringing _now_ trying to stop or delay the evil effects of
| social media.
|
| I am pleased that AUS has banned social media for teens <
| 16yrs, and perhaps Finland is thinking the same route.
|
| Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply
| their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise
| enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local
| languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| 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.
| bulbar wrote:
| 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.
| Teever wrote:
| 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 to use it.
| cianmm wrote:
| 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.
| Teever wrote:
| 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_ happen. I 'm saying that
| should this happen you know France is serious about
| eliminating dependencies on unreliable and threatening
| countries.
| bigfudge wrote:
| EU have access to Windows source code. Presumably if the
| shit really hit the fan we'd have a European build
| without all the spy/crapware added? Not much of a
| consolation given we'd have to be on the brink of WW3 for
| it to happen...
| snowpid wrote:
| Germany has https://www.opendesk.eu/de and
| https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund. both mentioned on
| HN
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Hmmm not entirely true. The text chat of their suite is simply
| element.io (matrix) and they're paying them for development.
|
| Visio does seem built from scratch but I wonder if it's a
| temporary thing until element is feature complete with their
| move away from Jitsi.
|
| You can find more about la suite on their website and the
| opendesk one (German project using mostly the same software).
| Unfortunately I don't have the links to hand here.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Tchap (the chat part of the suite) is indeed a fork of
| Element. Unfortunately they haven't funded upstream
| development for many years (otherwise both Element and Tchap
| would be much much better!)
|
| Visio (aka meet) began in parallel with Element's work on
| MatrixRTC and Element Call. Hopefully the two can converge,
| given they are both built on LiveKit.
| tabbott wrote:
| It really has been a huge disappointment the extent to
| which governments using open source projects for mission
| critical work go out of their way to avoid financially
| supporting them.
|
| How much better could open source alternatives to Teams be
| in this moment if only 1% of what Europe paid Microsoft for
| Teams went to investing in open alternatives?
| dfex wrote:
| It boggles the mind as to why they choose a name for this
| application that is very clearly a Microsoft trademark.
|
| In understand it's also the French word for
| Videoconferencing, but even still...
| sylvinus wrote:
| We do support the foundation:
| https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/espace-
| presse/dinum-...
| tombert wrote:
| I am certainly not going to complain about more well-funded
| FOSS software being out there.
| dbl000 wrote:
| I've been using the docs tool in my homelab for ~3 months now
| as a knowledge base for some projects I've been working on with
| some friends.
|
| It's really good. The typing experience "feels" right and the
| collaboration features work. I haven't played with the other
| solutions yet but I'm very excited if they are up to the same
| standard.
|
| I deployed it with docker and it was relatively smooth. I had
| to play a bit with the OIDC but I'm pretty sure that was more a
| me issue than anything.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| 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.
| input_sh wrote:
| That website is specifically to explain it to French
| audiences.
|
| German version is here, but unlike France they're mostly
| boosting already-existing German open source software (like
| Nextcloud and Open Xchange): https://opencode.de/en/home
|
| I don't know how the Netherlands really fits into all of
| this, but I know they're one of _the_ biggest funders of open
| source projects in general via NLnet. Seriously, their list
| of projects they 've given money to is ridiculously
| comprehensive, you're going to struggle naming some that are
| not listed here: https://nlnet.nl/project/index.html
| econ wrote:
| je maintiendrai!
| latexr wrote:
| > Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that
| can't have been easy.
|
| Why not? Plenty of French people speak English at a native
| level.
| phito wrote:
| As a francophone, I can tell you that the vast majority
| doesn't.
| eloisant wrote:
| Among software developers, the vast majority does.
| paulfitz wrote:
| 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://www.getgrist.com/
|
| A write-up of how the French gov uses it https://interoperable-
| europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...
| sequoia wrote:
| wow it reminds me of Microsoft Access, a great piece of
| software in terms of rapidly building an application!
|
| Does grist have forms?
| flowerlad wrote:
| If you want forms try https://visualdb.com/ it is another
| tool that aims to be Microsoft Access
| mkl wrote:
| Not open source though?
| flowerlad wrote:
| Right but it is cheaper than open source products if you
| self-host. Most open source products in this space,
| including grist, are only partially open source.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| With Access, a business doing data entry could -- with a
| business user not a software engineer -- craft a Form and
| voila, easy onboarding to train new employees instead of
| filling out sheets of paper and filing them.
| znhll wrote:
| MS Access was on its way out by the time I started
| working in software, but the simplest explanation I can
| give about why the "forms" question is this, let's say
| you're a business person and...: * You
| have a huge Excel document that's basically a DB. (What
| Access kinda was) * You want users to interact with
| said data document, i.e add record, find/query record(s),
| edit records * You add a "form" for users to do
| just that. You can also add a "login" form to give some
| users more permissions.
|
| It's basically if you could turn a SQlite file into a
| low-coded desktop app.
| gpm wrote:
| Form support is touted on the homepage:
| https://www.getgrist.com/forms/
|
| For what it's worth, which isn't much because this is
| probably outdated: I remember trying grist a few years ago
| and leaving mildly unimpressed with form support (I think
| because I was hoping to have image upload in the forms and
| that wasn't supported yet).
| mrits wrote:
| 0% chance of working out
| input_sh wrote:
| > Used each month by more than 500 000 staff, in 15
| ministries and many administrations.
| mrits wrote:
| Right. Just like edge is used on 100% of windows
| input_sh wrote:
| Okay fine, I'll take the bait. How do you define "working
| out" to conclude that there's 0% chance of it?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| You think government staff just use whatever software
| they want?
| epistasis wrote:
| Looking through the resources you've linked is one of the most
| hopeful and awesome software experiences I have had in a while.
|
| There's a chance to unlock tremendous value for society here.
|
| Imagine if you _could fix all the awful bugs making video
| conferencing software shitty for you_! It 's perhaps the most
| bug-plagued software out there in the world, with the highest
| number of complaints I have ever seen.
|
| We've had a large detour away from open-source running the core
| of the internet, at least outside of web pages, but this sort
| of software feels like we're getting back to the 90's and
| earlier.
|
| Vive la France!
| Agingcoder wrote:
| This one made me laugh , thanks ! I wish there was some kind
| of slashdot like 'funny' tag
| philipallstar wrote:
| Zoom isn't buggy I wouldn't say. It's really good.
| epistasis wrote:
| That's been my personal experience, but colleagues on Linux
| are continually fighting it.
| distances wrote:
| I gave up on the native Zoom client on Linux right away,
| it was completely broken. It worked well enough on a
| browser to get through the project though.
|
| Same with Teams, the video calls work fine on a browser.
| You just can't use any background pictures or effects.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > Code bases are on GitHub
|
| Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/
| alpha_squared wrote:
| This is probably just the first big step (communications) in
| a series of big steps.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe they have local copies as well, and just figured they
| might as well take GitHub's free bandwidth and social
| networking features.
| dkga wrote:
| Next year: LeGit !
| amarant wrote:
| I propose gitgud.eu
| bilekas wrote:
| Or GitOobe.. although I like the idea of UberGit.eu
| fsckboy wrote:
| "la forge" in french is feminine, it would need to be
| LaGitette
| sylvinus wrote:
| Exactly, we do have private forges we build and deploy
| from.
| cortesoft wrote:
| 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 moving to another forge
| would be pretty simple if necessary.
| thrance wrote:
| I remember seeing some projects by the French government on
| their self-hosted Gitlab. Maybe these are just public mirrors
| of their private repos?
| bilekas wrote:
| 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.
| nxm wrote:
| As if EU doesn't involve itself with software, policy and
| censorship which has its own inherent risks
| jepj57 wrote:
| Open standards, private software is the way to go. It makes
| sense for any entity to control their own destiny.
| caycep wrote:
| I mean if they're half as good as Handbrake and VLC I'm up for
| trying
| Aeolun wrote:
| I like how they go to digital sovereignty on office. And then
| immediately turn around an host on Github.
| richardw wrote:
| Great. There's no reason why all countries don't start preferring
| locally or regionally developed software. Of course
| interoperability is always a thing but there needs to be another
| option between "one company" and "everyone host your own
| instance".
| shevy-java wrote:
| 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 interests over
| European interests. So it makes no sense to pay for outsiders who
| would work against you.
|
| France does a few things right; scandinavian countries too (I
| include The Netherlands here, though they are not really
| scandiavians but in their decision-making, they are often a bit
| like a hybrid between France and Denmark or Sweden). Spain and
| Italy lag behind but sometimes, surprisingly, also do the right
| thing. The real troublemaker is ... Germany. For a reason nobody
| understands, Germany is like an US satellite in everything it
| does, but only ... half-hearted. Naturally, "the economy" is one
| reason (export centric country so it is readily blackmailable by
| the USA here) but even then you have to ask why german
| politicians have absolutely no pride at all. France has pride -
| that's good and bad but good in this context. (UK is more an US
| colony really after Brexit anyway, with Farage probably going to
| win - and cause more damage. Brits just don't learn from this.)
| derektank wrote:
| >For a reason nobody understands, Germany is like an US
| satellite in everything it does
|
| I don't see what's surprising about this. In the post-war
| period, most of Europe was hostile to German empowerment, from
| initial opposition to West Germany's inclusion in NATO to later
| resistance to German reunification. The presence of tens of
| thousands of US troops in Germany also required more diplomatic
| communication and alignment to maintain status of forces
| agreements.
|
| The status quo has only really changed in the last twenty
| years.
| chungy wrote:
| > The US corporations are forced by law to always prioritize
| whoever represents the current US government
|
| Where do you get your information from? This is just plainly
| false. Heck, it runs afoul of the Constitution, so even if the
| government were to try something, it'd be smacked down real
| fast.
| bigfudge wrote:
| 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.
| dyslexit wrote:
| > This software dependency that Europe has on the USA is very,
| very bad - no just with regards to Zoom, but literally
| anything.
|
| More to this point, the article points out that one of the
| drivers of all this is when Microsoft killed one of the emails
| an ICC prosecutor's email because the US administration
| sanctioned them:
|
| > A decisive moment came last year when the Trump
| administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court's
| top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague,
| Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime
| Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.
|
| > The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan's ICC email, a
| move that was first reported by The Associated Press and
| sparked fears of a "kill switch" that Big Tech companies can
| use to turn off service at will.
| philipallstar wrote:
| 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.
| victorbojica wrote:
| Doesn't really matter if copycat or not in this case. I'd
| argue it's even better to be a copycat in order to move
| faster.
| chakazula wrote:
| To me this is the point right? Everything that's spent enough
| time in the oven and has been commodified should be
| eventually launched as a public service. If we lived in a
| reasonable world this would be how things are done instead of
| installing permanent toll booths on everything and letting it
| get shittier and more expensive.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Since WW2, German national pride is something that is not very
| well received, added to that the old east/west divide, and the
| generally strong identification with ones own state/region. It
| is a complex affair.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| You're basically saying Western European countries'
| relationships with the US haven't changed much since the Cold
| War.
| atonse wrote:
| I couldn't tell from the article but any reason they wouldn't
| just adopt Matrix? I thought some European governments
| (especially in France) were already adopting Matrix.
| Arathorn wrote:
| France was one of the first to already adopt Matrix. However,
| when they began Visio, Element was embedding Jitsi for VoIP.
| Meanwhile Element built Element Call, which is somewhat similar
| to Visio (except E2EE and decentralised thanks to Matrix).
| Hopefully the two can converge :)
| esel2k wrote:
| Working for a large business in Europe- I think MSFT and Google
| co know exactly about the threat to their business.
|
| Thats why the aggressively integrate every AI tool where they can
| - like copilot to make large companies and government stick to
| their solutions. I wish government will find am even better way
| to embed LLM to their tools...
| benob wrote:
| Too bad it doesn't have zooms echo cancelation / isolation
| Fairburn wrote:
| How refreshing.
| n4pw01f wrote:
| Why not Jitsi - genuinely curious
| nemo44x wrote:
| Cool. It won't even be a blip on the earnings report. I guess a
| sales rep in Europe isn't getting their preferred vacation this
| year. But other than that this is of no consequence.
|
| I'll still buy France's wine.
| caycep wrote:
| does Zoom still dump an unkillable web server into the bowels of
| your OS?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think this is one of the silver linings to this new era. By
| trying to renegotiate intolerable terms, the Americans are
| forcing the rest of the world to figure out how to make it all
| work without them. This will inevitably be a rough transition but
| it results in more worldwide resiliency and product/service
| options.
|
| I think one question, which we might be seeing a bit here and
| there, is if the Americans decide that no, you can't also do
| that. You must accept the intolerable terms or be punished.
| teffy512 wrote:
| RIP: Zoom Public Sector AE, EMEA
| whatever1 wrote:
| If they also make US copyright not enforceable then they can have
| office clones and then it's game over.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| This was always going to happen as soon as the USA decided to be
| overtly all about itself.
|
| Tact and diplomacy meant that previously the USA was seen as, yes
| being all about itself, but not threateningly so when it came to
| its allies/friends. As soon as that veneer was removed the
| reaction was always going to be, "we'll look after ourselves
| then" - using the same tools China has (see: China having its own
| linux distribution)
| lagniappe wrote:
| How many times are we going to see this same exact topic posted?
| tzs wrote:
| How did they decide to name their Zoom/Teams replacement "Visio"?
|
| There's already an extremely well known program called "Visio",
| namely Microsoft Visio, and it is included in many of the same
| Microsoft commercial office products that include Microsoft
| Teams. If you tell someone to switch from Microsoft Teams to
| Visio a lot of people will assume you mean Microsoft Visio and
| get rather confused.
| znhll wrote:
| They named their video conference tool "Visio" ? lol
|
| Meanwhile... Micro$lop: Aha! Sharpen your lawyers, mes amis!
| pyuser583 wrote:
| What does Europe imagine their relationship with Silicon Valley
| looking like?
|
| I'm looking for examples here - Israel has a very specific
| relationship with the tech sector, as does Taiwan, China, South
| Korea, etc. Even within the US, North Virginia, Huntsville, and
| Manhattan have specific relationships with Silicon Valley.
|
| Is the idea to copy Silicon Valley's stuff into government
| sponsored, "to committed to fail" operations? Create
| complementary tech ecosystems? Recruit Silicon Valley veterans
| and put them in charge, or just fire them after they get their
| tech?
|
| Just look at how hard it is to come to a decision on something
| like allow Huawei to build a telephone network. Is it a good
| idea? Smart people say, Huawei should be allowed to provide the
| dumb pipes of the system, but not the high level stuff. Anything
| sensitive needs to be reviewed by domestic security services.
|
| Is that the approach to America?
|
| It seems like the article saying: "copy America's SaaS
| offerings." Not clear how that makes you digitally sovereign.
| mikelpr wrote:
| wonder why they didn't use jitsi
| dash2 wrote:
| Is this gonna go as well as when they built their own search
| engine?
| dperhar wrote:
| Actually its now worth it to be building software in EU. It will
| have its market for sure
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