SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The quite famous FOSS developer Poul-Henning Kamp (aka PHK) has posted his feedback to the EU regarding European Open Digital Ecosystems [Intro in Danish, article in English] and their call for evidence. In it he brings their attention to open standards in points 2 and 3:
At the most fundamental level, the EU has three options:
1. Pick and bless a set of winners, consisting of:
a) Operating system, portable to any reasonable computer architecture.
b) Text-processing, suitable for tasks up to a book.
c) Spreadsheet
d) Email client.
e) Web Browser
f) Accounting software, suitable for small organizations.and fund organizations to maintain, develop and support the software for the future as open source, turning that software into infrastructure like water, power and electricity, free for all, individuals, startups and established companies alike, to use and benefit from.
2. Continuously develop/pick, bless and meticulously enforce open standards of interoperability, and then "let the competition loose".
3. Both. By providing a free baseline and de-facto reference implementations for the open standards, "the market" will be free to innovate, improve and compete, but cannot (re)create walled gardens.
Indeed, if the protocols and file formats are not publicly documented, freely available, and royalty-free, then what benefit would there be to implement them, FOSS or not?
There is an unreproducable javascript link on the EC page which goes to a relevant PDF document. It is labeled, "Call for evidence - Ares(2026)69111". It is worth checking before sending in feedback. Although English is the main language, the other official languages of EU member states can be used. The deadline for feedback is 03 February 2026.
Previously:
(2025) Why People Keep Flocking to Linux in 2025 (and It's Not Just to Escape Windows)
(2025) Europe's Plan to Ditch US Tech Giants is Built on Open Source - and It's Gaining Steam
(2025) Euro Techies Call for Sovereign Fund to Escape US Dependency
(2025) Petition on EU Linux Operating System in Public Administrations
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 13, @05:35PM (4 children)
Maybe they could start with chromebooks and migrate off slowly. I figure that would cover everything except the accounting software to start. Start with that, set up one of the free google-docs-alike competitors on a country-hosted server, and keep vectoring towards a completely free solution?
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 13, @05:49PM (2 children)
TIL that ChromiumOS [wikipedia.org] is completely different from ChromeOS [gentoo.org].
However, the general premise of building something from Gentoo or another foundational distro like Arch makes a lot of sense. With the right staffing the EU member states could quickly have their own collective distro up and running. Translation and localization would take time and effort and have to be funded as well. The gotcha with a project like that is that there are so few people any more with basic computer skills that enticing them into a government job might be quite difficult unless they are patriotic enough. Even then you still want to reach those few people that are skilled not the subset of people willing (for whatever reasons) to take a government job.
Then there is also the problem of vetting the new staff to ensure that the standard Redmond practice of deploying moles does not happen.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 13, @06:14PM (1 child)
[Advertisement at the end]
Maybe the government could provide computer education and skills, as a cost of running the government. You know, like a "paid internship," or maybe just "job training," like they do for the armed forces. Too much hassle? Then they'll buy the skills from private (presumably local) contractors.
Going off the FAANG grid is going to take some money, but I suspect it's just the cost of moving to a nationally self-reliant information infrastructure. But it doesn't have to happen all at once, at thanks to (at least) Google's offerings being nearly all web-based, separable, and affordable.
[Semi-advertisement]
While I'm not casting Google as an evil overlord, they also have a special half-price deal which includes a crapload of "Pro" AI access [google.com], 2TB for the year, and all of it is sharable to 5 people, but it expires Jan 14 so if you want it, jump on it now. You may not have access to it from one of your Google accounts (if it's part of a family plan, for example), but may from a different one, so try a couple of your accounts.
I would normally *never* pitch for a specific product without going into depth on which features I like about it (I've already gotten benefits from the "Deep Research" Gemini feature), but this one is expiring pretty much right away and at the price it's worth it just to experiment with the whole suite. And I really suspect they're slashing the price on this now to jumpstart making them the AI platform of choice, because the pricing feels *very* loss-leader-ish for what it offers.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 13, @11:29PM
Sorry, I think it expires Jan 15.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Dr Spin on Wednesday January 14, @07:29AM
I think you have mis-understood the concept/proposal:
The idea is that the EU (ie a government covering the European continent all (significant) European Countries (each with a different language) - imagine all of North and South America) - yes,we do have one already - funds FOSS to create a distro which they all agree to use so as to ensure interoperability. And it is free to anyone who wants it, but with well funded professional maintenance and support for the specific requirements of all EC countries.
There is no reason for this to be based on any existing distro - although it could be.
After this decision has been taken, any PC manufacturer who does not support it sells no computers in Europe because European users are going to want at home what they use at work, and what they use at work has to be compatible with the government they pay tax to.
The entire thing is not for profit although the programmers get paid obviously.
Please NO AI because obviously there is no way to have any privacy/security in the face of AI. if you want AI on your machine, "do it yourself" ie YOU bear the risk which is unquantifiable and immense.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!