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The Helsinki Times reports that Finland's Minister of Finance suggested during a recent foreign policy speech that Finland and the EU could pursue self-sufficiency in computing, in particular to avoid over dependence on just a handful of companies. She pointed out that this overreliance on said companies has become so severe that company policy has already started to override existing relevant legislation. The topic had earlier been brought up by President Sauli Niinistö. So far, though, not even Russia has made progress in that direction despite over a decade passing since announcing plans.
"Cyber self-sufficiency, in practical terms, could mean having a European operating system and web browser. The EU could also function as a provider of certificates," she envisioned in a foreign and security policy speech in Helsinki on Wednesday, 26 February.
Previously:
Moscow Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:52PM (8 children)
Chrome is open source. It can, and has, been rebuilt so that it doesn't phone home with every juicy detail of your sordid porn browsing. Why would you have a problem with the EU forking an open source project? They can fork all of Linux, if they care to, and it will be "their own" operating system. BTW, we all realize that Torvalds wasn't an American when he created his operating system? What's that called, again? Torvuldix, or something like that? Yet another 'nix-like OS.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:17PM (3 children)
Linux
Is
Not
Uni
X
Especially after udev, pulseaudio and the init system that shan't be name-d
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 28 2020, @06:15AM (2 children)
FTFY
I mean, how would something that is merely an init system interfere with encryption of your home directory? [launchpad.net]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday February 28 2020, @06:26AM (1 child)
I just noticed that the page I linked to didn't mention systemd; my source was in German and linked to that page; I neglected to scan that page for mention of systemd, sorry about that.
Here's the German page: https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/ecryptfs/ [ubuntuusers.de]
Quote of the relevant part:
Translation:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 28 2020, @07:12AM
first they came for encfs and i didn't speak up because there was ecryptfs
then they came for ecryptfs and i didn't speak up because all my speeches were in the encfs dir and i lost the key.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @07:08AM (2 children)
Because its direction is controlled and will be controlled by Google. Unless you want to completely diverge from them, which would be quite a bit painful task and require quite some euros.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 28 2020, @08:07AM (1 child)
In this case, divergence would be good. Google spies too much, and it only benefits Google and a few partners. Google wouldn't have any control over a new browser, let's call it EuroFrugal so we can get a dig in at Google.
I'd like to place a wager here. I'll bet that there are more than enough qualified people in Europe to develop and maintain an indepentent fork of Chrome. If the EU were backing the browser as an indepence from US influence, I'm sure they could hire some of those qualified people to do the job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @08:11AM
That'd be an interesting development, although I don't believe at the moment that it will actually happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @01:39PM
As long as the Chromium project is the foundation for a near monopoly of browsers and Google controls the Chromium project, it gives Google an effective control over web standards. So, for example, standards work that would make it harder to do browser fingerprinting will never get any priority either in the standards body or in implementation. Standards work that would make migration away from GMail will never get attention in the standards body or in implementation. And so forth.
Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled Chromium is open source. But even with open source a monoculture is dangerous - especially one controlled by a for-profit entity.