Don’t get me wrong, I do think independence is a good thing and should happen faster, I’d go as far as to say almost every penny spent by governments across Europe (including UK/Norway/Switzerland) on proprietary software is shameful.
I’m fairly certain if European govts got together and spent one year’s MS Office budget funding an open source Office suite for instance - LibreOffice would be on another level.
In reality we’re probably at the feasibility study stage for most (if anything is being done at all).
I just don’t think we need to start bandying about terms like “seriously mentally ill” or the hyperbole of “saboteur”
Again, the problem is worsened under the current regime, but american tech has had a severe end enshittification/usability problem for a while now, and trump normalized some very shady crap in his first term, which started last decade.
The idea that a single piece of American commercial software will still be usable by 2031 is optimistic.
Tbh this kind of hyperbole makes you come across as deeply unserious, the kind of argument that sets back any argument for OSS being used.
You’re ignoring the relatively stable Biden years in between, if Haris had won I doubt we’d be having this conversation.
Things are substantially worse under this regime than the first. Governments mostly don’t flip their entire IT and digital infrastructure planning on a whim. The three major governments on the continent haven’t even been particularly stable over the last 4 years to push through this kind of change.
Earlier this year is the first time the general public have started feeling vulnerable to an unpredictable actor. That’s when govt might do something about it, I’m not sure any have a particular mandate for digital sovereignty. I’m speaking here as someone who has regularly petitioned govt to use more OSS over the last 20 odd years.
Funds need allocating, teams built out (what you’re suggesting is a huge enterprise), a plan, all that would take years before any practical implementation. They’re also not going to abandon existing contracts, that would be a catastrophic waste of public finds.
Take the rollout of the encompass health software in Northern Ireland, 18 months for go-live of a prebuilt well understood piece of software. That doesn’t include any of the preliminary planning work or testing. Small population, relatively few hospitals - a relatively small job. What you’re suggesting is decades of work without a wartime-esque effort.
I’m suggesting that it should be a ‘wartime-esque’ effort
And biden put on a better face, but the industry’s been heading this way for a while. The software is just fucking shit on its own and using consumer commitment to keep profits up. No government required. American shit has been at the bleeding edge of enshittification.
Valid, but it wasn’t sane for the previous 8 years, and the threat is substantial.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think independence is a good thing and should happen faster, I’d go as far as to say almost every penny spent by governments across Europe (including UK/Norway/Switzerland) on proprietary software is shameful.
I’m fairly certain if European govts got together and spent one year’s MS Office budget funding an open source Office suite for instance - LibreOffice would be on another level.
In reality we’re probably at the feasibility study stage for most (if anything is being done at all).
I just don’t think we need to start bandying about terms like “seriously mentally ill” or the hyperbole of “saboteur”
Again, the problem is worsened under the current regime, but american tech has had a severe end enshittification/usability problem for a while now, and trump normalized some very shady crap in his first term, which started last decade.
The idea that a single piece of American commercial software will still be usable by 2031 is optimistic.
Tbh this kind of hyperbole makes you come across as deeply unserious, the kind of argument that sets back any argument for OSS being used.
You’re ignoring the relatively stable Biden years in between, if Haris had won I doubt we’d be having this conversation.
Things are substantially worse under this regime than the first. Governments mostly don’t flip their entire IT and digital infrastructure planning on a whim. The three major governments on the continent haven’t even been particularly stable over the last 4 years to push through this kind of change.
Earlier this year is the first time the general public have started feeling vulnerable to an unpredictable actor. That’s when govt might do something about it, I’m not sure any have a particular mandate for digital sovereignty. I’m speaking here as someone who has regularly petitioned govt to use more OSS over the last 20 odd years.
Funds need allocating, teams built out (what you’re suggesting is a huge enterprise), a plan, all that would take years before any practical implementation. They’re also not going to abandon existing contracts, that would be a catastrophic waste of public finds.
Take the rollout of the encompass health software in Northern Ireland, 18 months for go-live of a prebuilt well understood piece of software. That doesn’t include any of the preliminary planning work or testing. Small population, relatively few hospitals - a relatively small job. What you’re suggesting is decades of work without a wartime-esque effort.
I’m suggesting that it should be a ‘wartime-esque’ effort
And biden put on a better face, but the industry’s been heading this way for a while. The software is just fucking shit on its own and using consumer commitment to keep profits up. No government required. American shit has been at the bleeding edge of enshittification.