'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off(www.theregister.com)
16 pointsby belter3 hours ago1 comment
  • helterskelter2 hours ago
    It's pretty clear that Linux, or even BSD, is the way forward. My concern at this point is what the picture will look like with embargoes around software development and FOSS -- we saw this with the Russian devs contributing to Linux being cut off a few years back, though it's possible that LLM's will make this point moot very shortly.
    • conz29 minutes ago
      You say: "My concern at this point is what the picture will look like with embargoes around software development and FOSS"

      Can you elaborate on this point?

      To my mind, there is no better warranty mechanism for digital sovereignty than FOSS, even if that means each nation has to fork the software tools that they're embargoed from.

      • helterskelter14 minutes ago
        It's going to be a headache if America and Europe can't share code and we see the balkanization of Linux and FOSS in general. Developers, many who work for free, will potentially have a whole lot of hoops to jump through to submit (or accept) code, and there's the potential for them to commit serious crimes without even realizing it.

        Yes it's great for sovereignty, but I really hope it doesn't get to that point.

    • TacticalCoderan hour ago
      > It's pretty clear that Linux, or even BSD, is the way forward.

      Yeah and in many EU institutions and companies there's been a move to webapps. And in the big ones, like the EU parliament or EU Commission, there are rules: for example webapps must work on every MEP's smartphone, no matter if it's Android or iOS. So those webapps tend to be very portable (they work on any phone and on any desktop/browser combination).

      For many "whatever OS + whatever browser" is literally all that's needed. So switching to "Linux + a browser that ships with Linux" is not a showstopper.

      People are convinced there's no way out of Microsoft's grip but Windows getting viruses (just like Microsoft's founder btw, like the Epstein files showed) may be a thing of the past for many very soon.

      Now I like Anthropic and I'm a very happy paying Google customer: can we please just ditch Microsoft and not the entirety of products made by american companies? Microsoft produces shit but it's not the case of every american company.