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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 2026, @06:14PM (1 child)
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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.
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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 2026, @11:29PM
Sorry, I think it expires Jan 15.