by esperent
17 subcomments
- I wish there was somewhere I could earnestly and intelligently have discussions about EU related tech and tech policy, but HN isn't it. As you can see already in this thread, there's 14 comments besides mine and they are 100% negative, and about 95% low effort/reactionary.
Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.
- All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available.
Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.)
Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
- A challenge they forgot to mention is EU‘s very own new Product Lianility Directive.
Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity.
As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component.
Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.
by codingjoe
2 subcomments
- Empty words. Without changes to anti-circumvention laws, safe harbor commitments for security researchers and serious funding for foss projects nothing is going to change.
by sublimefire
1 subcomments
- I have so many mixed feelings about it. I mean there OSS software already, nobody prevents its use. It would have been better to just give OSS grants to SMEs who use OSS that originates in EU. But this is internet we are talking about, if I have an OSS repo and it contains contributions from Chinese or US citizens, is it still EU OSS? The core underlying issue is that nobody is incentivised to use EU “only”, if that changes the you will see the results. It does not even talk about devs like me who create such software.
by nickslaughter02
0 subcomment
- Will EU mandated backdoors be open source too?
> When it describes how the groundwork might be laid for mandating encryption backdoors, the EU chooses to use euphemisms such as creating roadmaps for “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and seeking “technological solutions for accessing encrypted data.”
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
> European Commission pushes for encryption ‘backdoors’
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes...
by internet_points
4 subcomments
- is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
- Always the same broken pattern of the EU: throwing shitload of money to the big actors of a field without really a coherent strategy or a real control of how the funds are used.
Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something.
Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are maintained by individuals without a corporate backing. Or to the individual contributors that are the key to these stacks.
Instead, the only one that will be able to get money, legally per EU policy, will be consortium of suckers and eventually nice but useless researchers in University...
- EU should fork Android
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410602
- As far as I know EU is a full slave of Big Tech and does not have the intent to actually break free (it is going to hurt, the more you get into Big Tech, the more it will hurt to break free).
First thing first, restore web sites in a solid security network infrastructure. Namely, noscript/basic HTML.
- They didn't even bother removing the typical AI slop from the text, lol
- I think unless they have some alternative to Github (Codeberg yes) but with comparable number of repo's this strategy does not yet look very encouraging. Difference between number of open repos is huge, about 100 times
- Just a reminder that "Made in America" Truth Social is an EU funded Open Source project.
- To people confused or wondering why it's too little, too late, too incompetent, etc.:
The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution. Just giving people money to work on open source directly would violate state aid/market disruption rules, they aren't allowed to do that because that could negatively impact the profit of some shareholder somewhere. Member states that want to do that even have to ask permission from the commission if they want to give aid to companies [1].
Everything is like that with the EU, they aren't like China that can just put money whereever to develop or fix strategically, rather the EU can't do anything strategically, or fix anything. It's by design they aren't incompetent, that is what market liberalism is. It's core to what they mean when they say "European values".
[1] https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_e...
by fleroviumna
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by trolleski
1 subcomments
- EU politicians are bought or compromised as they keep buying American BigTech. You can't be THAT stupid, sorry.
by acidhousemcnab
0 subcomment
- State monopoly on violence not holding up their end of the bargain - protection from corporate warlords, mafia formations, parasitised infra / networks / orgs. If all legislatively captured or made client in initial conditions, counter strategies need to be parallelised, and quietly. Think Microsoft on bath salts, and fevered dreams of an annihilation and renewal, toward pillaging and killing, benevolently, in totalising systems of surveillance, God-like and as "natural" aristocracy, all curled flesh and bone and sinew, the monstrosities and cyborg-aberrations of declining empires, searching and seeking and grasping for the next.
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