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
Related Stories
https://decrypt.co/11947/moscow-bans-sale-of-gadgets-without-russian-made-software
The potential to integrate mass surveillance into the common Internet infrastructure has analysts worried. A booming blackmarket for foreign smartphones seems likely.
A law requiring that foreign-made consumer-electronic devices must be pre-installed with Russian-made software was passed by Russia's lower house of parliament on Thursday. It covers smartphones, computers and smart televisions, and will go into effect in July, 2020.
The aim of the new legislation is to promote Russian technology, according to its proponents. But some fear that making Russian-made apps mandatory will provide a backdoor for surveillance. Critics also claim that this promotes technologically inferior software, and might cause international manufacturers to pull out of the Russian market.
[...] On Reddit, users expressed concerns about the quality of the Russian alternatives, in comparison to international brands such as Windows and Google.
"I'm sure you meant Gugal, comrade. You no use Gugal, you go to Gulag," quipped one Redditor.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:38PM (10 children)
It will be best if all our Self-Sufficient™ systems can all talk to each other.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:42PM (4 children)
What if... we built our network... so there was some kind of "protocol" that everyone could use to communicate the same kinds of information without needing to use the same software? Then you could hook a billion computers with 10 thousand different operating systems and a million different applications together and they'd all somehow communicate effectively.
...Nah. That'd never work.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:47PM (3 children)
We need self-sufficiency in protocols too...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:51PM (2 children)
I mean, I get what you're saying. But it doesn't have to be turtles all the way down.
But standards bodies, good ones at least, don't do the equivalent of fucking shipping a patch that fundamentally changes how a program operates and autoupdates all your shit regardless of how you want things to be. Or predicate your security on accepting the patch.
There's an extent to which Microsoft, Google, and to a much lesser extent Mozzilla, get to dictate how the next versions of HTTP, HTML, and JS will work. But there's also a huge open public warfare about it that encourages at least some public participation and governments can throw their weight around if it really matters.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @02:31PM
Let the free market work it out, like they did with phone chargers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday February 28 2020, @04:59PM
Well. Not (good) standards bodies, but of course the end-user application and OS-vendors do it all the time.
Witness the raft of "deprecated" and "removed" and "obsoleted" features, system calls, and even CPU architectures, that are thrown under the bus by everyone from compiler- through OS-vendors. Some of this is very regular — and very little of it is reasonably justifiable outside of market manipulation for profit.
Comm protocols are constantly mutating as well, again under the aegis of entities like Google, who (for instance) have been running a campaign to pressure site owners into HTTPS, and then there's the Google-originated push for those AMP pages — mutation is the order of the day, and there's probably no way to stop the "new, shiny!" crowd from keeping at it.
There's an awful lot of "we know what's good for you" when in fact, they don't.
--
Dark humor is like medical care.
Not everyone gets it.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:26PM
Nope, they will use trinary for bit inclusivity.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:59PM
<no-sarcasm>
It will be best if all our Self-Sufficient™ systems are Linux.
</no-sarcasm>
Every country would build their own. To avoid the monoculture of Windows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:01PM (2 children)
The point of balkanization is to undo the benefits of the internet. It will happen after the internet has realized the potential for control.
This is why I was surprised when the internet really took off. Too good to be true. Too disrupting its potential if it could result in a transparent society where it is impossible to steal and the identity of any owner is known, and whether any owner contributes to or hinders society is apparent. Instead we had porn and a post-orwellian degree of control.
And they will take away porn too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @09:53PM
Time to go out and buy a printer. Oh wait, I guess you can download it too, but that's no fun. They probably even have DVD and Bluray in those dirty shops my mom said I wasn't old enough to go to. I said, mom, I don't want to wait in the car, I'm 36 and the kids in the other cars make fun of me.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday February 29 2020, @12:33AM
You said something about an inconceivable universe in your other reply. Would this be an example of such a thing?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:40PM
Sure all they did was slap a watermark on fedora, and change the icon of firefox to be all juchey.
But now they can skip all the patches they want!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:42PM (26 children)
Good luck making a new browser from scratch. Unless you mean reskinning Krome which changes about nothing.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Freeman on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:47PM (4 children)
It was good enough for Microsoft.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:07PM (3 children)
Actually Microsoft did not make the browser from scratch. They licensed Spyglass Mosaic and built from there.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:17PM
Sorry, I meant with regards to the rebranded Chrome.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:02PM
Microsoft acquired Spyglass for $100,000.00 up front plus a generous royalty percentage of sales.
Microsoft then renamed Spyglass to Internet Explorer.
Guess how many copies of IE were ever sold?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:04PM
> They licensed Spyglass Mosaic
no they scammed them into licensing their product for nothing.
Hey, BTW, "Spyglass" is the most appropriate name for the modern browser.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:52PM (2 children)
Good luck making a new browser from scratch.
What, you only need ~13 billion years, more or less...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:14PM
Are you kidding me? you also need the plus infinity years for the random quantum fluctuation that made the universe bang happen in a proper combination, and you also [ineffable] the ineffable that meta-encodes and meta-enforces the quantum behavior, because even if you formally proved that that behavior is the only conceivable one, you still have to disprove the inconceivable ones, as conceiving stems from being in the conceived universe, so it is tautological.
13 billion years is an estimate from when the bang happened, as proven by the calculations that trace back stuff assuming the bang happened and by interpreting the CMB as the echo.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @02:35PM
13 billion to develop a secure Javascript and animated autoplay spank the monkey, 2 minutes to disable it all back to the Stone Ages.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:31PM
I would suggest calling up the Norwegians and convince them to resurrect the Presto engine.
(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.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:00PM
To avoid a monoculture, every country should have their own web browser.
They each should base their browser on Chromium.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:08PM (6 children)
It's not like nobody knows how to make a web browser. The dev process goes something like this:
1. You get a window with a forward, back, reload, and home button, an address bar, and a menu.
2. You get it to go out to a URL, download content, and display the source contents with no formatting.
3. You get it to display the contents reading HTML formatting more-or-less correctly, but without worrying about fonts, CSS, or Javascript.
4. You get it to handle links.
5. You get it to display the contents as properly formatted HTML with CSS and fonts.
6. You add in a Javascript engine. This will be the really hard part. Or you borrow one from another web browser.
Is it a pain to do? Yes. Is it impossible? Heck no, and we know this because many organizations have done this.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday February 28 2020, @05:37AM (3 children)
Make it a generalized document viewer. For steps 3 and 5, why limit the program to just HTML? Instead, make it out of a generic XML engine and then it can potentially handle other formats than (x)HTML, an important one being OpenDocument Format. There are already many web browsers out there, even if only a few engines any more. So if they are going to reinvent the wheel, they could at least invent a better one.
Javascript though? A for point 6 there, I'm disappointed, to say the least possible about it, that it is perceived by some as being part of the web. What on earth is beneficial about running unsigned, unverified programs from random external sites on my computer thus giving them access to my system and network?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 28 2020, @07:20AM
yes, javascript should be limited to UI elements. It is already dangerous that way. The trend is towards javascript frameworks, while I considered that most of my sites do not really need to be rendered by pulling data from a db, i am going json to templates to static html and the site is lightning fast, has no cookies and tracking, and all I need to care for is bugs in the www server which is completely interchangeable anyway.
If I needed a db, I would test the http://gun.eco [gun.eco] database though, it is fascinating. if it works.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @01:58PM
With respect to Javascript, I don't think it's going away on a large scale without an economic revolution. The advertising uses JS to the tune of tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars a year, you won't get that shut down without attacking the industry directly. Google owns Chromium, they sure as hell aren't going to adopt anything that reduces Javascript's power.
Even if JS is bad, I think WebAssembly is interesting. It seems to take the original concept of Java but do it right. Write one, run anywhere, much better sandboxing than the JVM, and from what I understand lower performance overhead than the JVM too (though I could be wrong). And while your C-to-WebAssembly or C++-to-WebAssembly code can still have race conditions and memory leaks, and maybe (it's not clear to me) use-after-free errors, as far as I understand it the WebAssembly runtime protects against buffer overruns and stack smashing.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday February 28 2020, @05:01PM
I don't like the fact that some sites are completely non-functional without it, but that's where we are right now, and Aunt Tillie isn't going to go for a browser that doesn't work on their favorite website. This hypothetical new browser might be able to do a better job of sandboxing it than what's currently out there, but even so there's going to be a tradeoff of things that don't work as a result.
Now I get the argument that those websites are broken by design, but the tools to make those websites work should exist and a setting should exist to break them on purpose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @07:12AM
It's an always moving target. While you are doing all of that HTML will be doing genetic engineering.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday February 28 2020, @09:47PM
7. You add in a KeepTheJavascriptUnderControl engine.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Funny) by stormreaver on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:25PM (7 children)
The article talks about having a Finnish operating system. Surely there is someone of Finnish descent that has some experience with operating systems.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:52PM (5 children)
Andrew S. Tanenbaum?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:57PM (4 children)
I think he's Dutch.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:36PM (3 children)
He's in the Netherlands. Don't know if he's Dutch now; I think he's of American origin.
But his Minix definitely originated in Amsterdam, the Netherland's capital city. Hard to be more Dutch than that.
But Holland is still part of Europe, so the OS inside the Intel Management Engine is as European as Linux.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:00PM (2 children)
True, but Finland is less connected to the EU. (I think it's EEC, but not EU.) And this article *was* from the Helsinki Times.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday February 28 2020, @04:18PM (1 child)
Huh. Finland was actually one of the earlier members of the EU, joining back in 1995.
Before I looked it up, I assumed it was one of those things that would never happen, because Russia would get pissy and give them the Ukraine treatment if they did. Throughout the Cold War Finland's entire national policy was basically try to keep Russia only semi-pissed at them so they wouldn't invade, by not having too close of ties with the West.
Finland is, however, not a member of NATO.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 28 2020, @05:01PM
You're right, and I'm surprised. I was certain that when reading about BrExit it was stated that Finland was only a member of the EEC and Schwengen Agreement. (And maybe it was, of course. I didn't validate what I thought to be a trustworthy source.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:04PM
Maybe someone from Noika with OS experience?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:28PM (12 children)
so dumb.
Build your own operating system and browser? What? Why? That is the worst and most narrow minded "solution" to this problem that will change exactly nothing. "We have a problem with the mainframe, we'd better build a new terminal!" I was hoping this was going to be an enlightened call to action about using open standards, protocols and systems, to avoid getting stuck with shitty vendors. It seems the person issuing this statement is only aware of the front-end of the computing systems they use, which at this point is almost trivial to swap out. They should be focusing on their back-end data systems if they want to be self-sufficient.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:04PM (10 children)
It's not that dumb. It's not like you need to start from scratch. Since it's intended to be the official OS of multiple governments, GPL should be fine. The problem, such as it is, is handling maintenance. Even that's not too large a problem. Lots of people would be willing to get paid to work on GPL systems...as long as they stayed GPL and open.
I do think, however, that they should avoid systemd. It makes designing repairs difficult.
OTOH, if they want to keep things secret, they could start with one of the BSDs. That makes maintenance and such more difficult, and probably makes it more expensive, since you can't get community help, but it's still readily doable with a government's budget. Probably even Grand Fenwick could do it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:10PM
OTOH, thinking it over a bit, perhaps he was thinking of Intel as the company on which they were too dependent. That's a much harder problem, as AMD isn't that much a "better choice" in the area of reducing dependence on externalities. Even China has been having problems with that one. And then there's the question of fabs. If you want to run your own fab at one step below cutting edge, you're talking real money.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:32PM (8 children)
Why do you think you can't get community help with BSD? I've found many individuals quite helpful in OpenBSD, and to be fair, most of the time all you need to do is RTFM. I can understand being told to RTFM may be frustrating, but in OpenBSD's case, it can solve many problems. Best documentation I've seen.
There's a couple of pretty good forums too.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:57PM (7 children)
The idea here would be that the justification for that choice would be to enable secrecy. I.e., closed development.
Yes, there are openly developed BSDs, but if you're going to choose BSD over Linux, the most significant reason to do so is because you can close the code. (There are some other reasons, but the BSDs are basically devoted to a large niche: stable, long-uptime centralized servers. For general use Linux is a more reasonable choice.)
However, if you want to take your code closed source, BSD is an extremely much better choice. (A government could decide that "government interest" trumped copyright laws, but this would cause lots of push back from diverse sources.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:56PM (6 children)
if you're going to choose BSD over Linux, the most significant reason to do so is because
you want stable code that is properly engineered, well documented, and does not support systemd.
People with no BSD experience are probably not the best once to advise on this kind of decision.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Friday February 28 2020, @12:30AM
Thank you. The reasons to choose BSD are far and beyond just having "closed code", which is a new consideration for me.
Proper stable code, excellent documentation, no systemd (meaning the absence of that terrible philosophy that goes against UNIX), are just some of the talking points.
I rather like the fact that Perl, which comprises most of the tools and scripts I've created recently, has the most important core modules reviewed and repacked every cycle. No chance of infection from a compromised repository, when you're doing it right.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @02:06AM (4 children)
SystemD does not support BSD, neither care much about other libc than glibc.
OTOH, a BSD muppet praised it and wants to recreate it in BSD.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 28 2020, @02:14AM (2 children)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH
You think there was resistance in Linux? Try OpenBSD. SystemD's feet shall never feel the blessed lands that are BSD. Ever.
The core philosophy is at odds. Not just a little, but extremely.
You may as well as try introducing pork to Islam.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @04:24AM
I did not say there will be no resistance... jus that a muppet is trying to get something like systemd in BSD (most probably making some going "oh, see, systemd is good, BSD people want it too" in Linux land). That was the sad joke, the sycophants.
And that systemd has no will to support anything they do not want (kernel, libc or whatever) because the whole point is vendor lock-in and making Linux ecosystem their bitch.
Of course OpenBSD is going to say no, and any other BSD worth it's name. Like non-glibc libc mantainers, once they realized what the game was about. Same thing about tmux / screen coders when systemd demanded special changes to keep on running after log out.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday February 28 2020, @07:19PM
You think there was resistance in Linux? Try OpenBSD. SystemD's feet shall never feel the blessed lands that are BSD. Ever.
There are other BSDs than just OpenBSD. FreeBSD comes to mind and there several muppets, Benno Rice to name one, have been going praising systemd and scheming to get someting similar injected into FreeBSD. It could be Poe's Law in action, but they seem serious. I could see FreeBSD eventually succumb to the SJW politics that carried in systemd. However, for OpenBSD, I don't see it gaining a foothold there, ad least not as things stand for now, even if one does sometimes see some shaky stuff there now and again, unlike in the old days. So all that said, a collaborative fork of OpenBSD could be a great base for a national or regional operating system: the code is very cleanly written, well-documented, and actively culled to remove bloat.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @07:11PM
SystemdExit.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday February 28 2020, @09:35PM
The browser and the operating system are the entry points to the modern communication system. If you're going to secure a place, it makes sense to guard the entry points, and not let the evil eavesdroppers in, no?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:40PM (1 child)
They have a head start already! They could start with Linux!
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 28 2020, @07:26AM
Nice speech, I could almost feel the claws of control freaks snipping. Red Star OS here we come.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday February 28 2020, @06:18AM
Alternatives are good. Especially when the current situation is dominated by a few big corporations that are doing the embrace, extend, and extend, and extend, and... while pretending to comply with interoperability standards. I'm sorry, but that's not what a standard is. RS-232 is a standard. Something that changes every week is not. Trying to turn a PC into a cell phone is not innovation either.
Whoever decides to be the next Terry Davis, let's have memory protection this time, OK?