Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.
If the headline was "EU invests 100B into open source to further independence from US", I imagine things would be different. But right now it's "we have intentions to have plans about tech and open source in the EU sometime in the future".
Most EU initiatives have damaged everyday UX on the web and in tech. Yes, some malicious compliance has played a role by over-reacting to well-intended regulations. But overall the EU has brought this upon itself.
This specific Open Source Strategy memo is typical. It's in fact not a strategy but a list of key goals and requirements, put together in technocratic jargon. It will have zero effect on the actual open source ecosystem.
Or you have been brainwashed by the billions spent annually to make you believe stories about bendy bananas and occult initiation ceremonies as a condition for being a member.
Are you really trying to suggest that GDPR and PECR are bad pieces of legislation because businesses have decided that they’d prefer to give you a bad UX?
So yes, it's all the fault of the EU.
- pay "ridiculous price" or accept ads & tracking instead of allowing to disable tracking
Not for me, my opinion of things like GDPR and forcing usbc on phones gives me the impression that the EU is holding corporations accountable and looking out for normal people.
Its been mentioned before but i feel like while alot of negative views might be organic, alot are also the result of tech companies' smear campaigns against the EU
My impression in general is that there is rather a very EU friendly view here on HN in general, but HN is critical of everything.
So I also say, lot's of nice words, great that they at least start so late with that now, but more concrete steps would be more welcome.
"Making public administrations anchor users and contributors to open source, through procurement guidance, open-source friendly tendering, strengthening the Open Source Programme Office and its networks, reusable public digital assets and by embedding openness and sovereignty in digital investment decisions"
Because this for example sounds great. But is it very concrete? It sounds like it, but I don't see how it is.
It's interesting because not that long ago nobody cared about what europe did in tech. Or more like everybody was fine with the fact that europe imported computers and exported something else. It was like that forever. I am not sure where this is coming from. It almost seems like even these weak efforts might mess up with somebodys business.
Definitely the most cynical video he ever released.
Sooner or later Europe will wake up. Right now we still have too many lobbyists but this will change - at the latest when key lobbyists are put in jail for many decades. Sadly this also means the current EU commission has to go to jail too.
I want the US tech community to continue thinking of us as some sort of technological backwater. Ridiculing and deriding us, so they never see as any place where they are welcome. Since given the last ten years, they pretty much aren't. There's basically little to nothing that US tech services have to offer Europe.
https://fosstodon.org seems like a good fit but is invite-only
- CRA (cyber resiliency act): Manufacturers must handle and release security patches for vulnerabilities, and developers are required to report actively on exploited vulnerabilities and breaches.
- PLD (Product Liability Directive): A failure to provide critical security updates or the presence of exploitable vulnerabilities can now legally constitute a "defect" and if defective software causes physical harm or property damage, manufacturers are strictly liable and cannot contractually exclude or limit this liability.
And the kicker is this: Non-commercial open-source software is generally exempt from these commercial liability frameworks. However, if an open-source component is integrated into a commercial, for-profit product, the responsibility shifts to the corporate manufacturer.
So good luck making some money of your open source project where the risk outweighs any potential profit, or integrate an open source project into your commercial offering.
In case it is unclear from my tone, I am genuinely curious.
Free to copy this code base https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
"Support uptake of open source alternatives to proprietary solutions together with Member States and the Digital Commons EDIC — cloud, workplace tools, secure e-mail, decentralised social media."
You dislike criticism? I find criticism an important part of discourse and discussion. HN is very clearly not anything like reddit - just the insane amount of censorship on reddit alone, is already one argument against that claim. Many more could be given. I have been using reddit in the past for many years, so I know how reddit changed. Not that everything is perfect on hackernews; I dislike the "you are posting too much" limitation, for instance. But we don't have over-eager censor-mods here whereas that was locking down numerous interesting discussions on reddit.
With regards to the EU situation: the EU is in a very strange situation. On the one hand it is doing good things; this then gets cancelled by the EU commission acting as a pure lobbyist group, as well as a huge army of bureaucrats who want more and more money and dream about assimilating more and more countries, which makes zero sense. Whether the EU will succeed with regards to their open source strategy or not, who knows. What I do know is that individual countries, such as France or the Netherlands, are quite intelligent when it comes to good decisions (Germany is absolutely undermined by lobbyists, so it is totally paralysed here); I am not convinced the EU is in a similar situation. It would have to be reformed, but people in Brussels don't want to see their job axxed away, so nothing will improve here.
My recommendation is that if you are unhappy, go and talk about it - but don't expect others to turn to your assumptions about how a discussion should happen when it comes to the EU, because they may not share your opinion here.
No, I love criticism, as long as it's balanced and thoughtful, and invites discussion rather than being knee-jerk reactionary. Please read my comment more carefully.
You forgot to add "and it matches my worldview of things". Knee-jerk criticism is very fine, like "Microsoft sucks" anytime someone mentions Microsoft. You can just ignore it and move on.
However, you're still missing the salient point of my comment - that is, overwhelmingly the comments on any post related to the EU here are low effort, negative, reactionary. Honestly, I feel like you're not willing to engage with the point. It's not even the negativity that's my main issue here, it's the overwhelming low-effort, thoughtless nature of it which prevents any attempt at genuine discussion (positive or negative). It's groupthink, reddit style, and while HN is far from perfect there's almost no other subject that brings out this kind of reaction. Except for React, maybe.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/26/app-store-eu-rule-chang...
This is monopoly 101. That’s why the US broke up Standard Oil.
Do you really believe products win because they’re the best? I’d strongly argue that monopolistic power and loss-leading VC investment is what drives success.
This was the first example that comes to mind. And hardware wise I would argue the iPhone is the best phone because so many people buy it compared to other alternatives. And I don't believe for a second people buy because iMessage.
Sorry, but these companies spend much more effort on making sure their product is walled off and incompatible with everything than giving it any actual quality.
You think Whatsapp for example is this lightweight and easy to use on basically any phone because no one spent a dime on some R&D on how to make it the way it is?
Granted, this data is usually "boring" by today’s dopamine-driven attention standards, so it's no wonder people rarely talk about it. But if you actually stop and take an interest in what has been accomplished, you start noticing the impact everywhere—it just takes a little effort. After all, how hyped can you really get over a repaved road in some remote village you've never even heard of? You can't. But the people living there certainly feel the impact, even if they don't always notice where the money came from.
Go search for maps provided by EU or your government sites, for instance https://mapadotacji.gov.pl/?lang=en
You might disagree with certain aspects of the EU, but leaving a rage-baited, hateful comment is the easy way out. Looking at actual accomplishments—despite your frustrations—takes real effort.
For stuff which actually can matter and had impact on daily lives (beside aforementioned public transport impact):
- USB-C as a standard power connector
- hassle-free travel between countries
- GDPR you mentioned
- recent "stop killing games" public initiative which shows that common people can stand a chance against multimillion dollar companies
- abolition of roaming charges and access to a free internet up to certain limits — huge PITA solved for people going on vacations
- universal healthcare between countries on vacations
- strong 14 day guarantee for online purchases, free return policies and minimum 2 year warranty
- food safety regulations (but if you don't care you won't be impressed by it)
- certain regulations regarding flights and passenger rights (cancellation compensation, recent regulations regarding baggage, to fight with scammy practices of flight operators)
- right to repair
- even the commonly memed bottle caps is nice UX — you (or more commonly a kid) won't be able to drop a cap on sand rendering :) And thanks to that there is noticeably less "small trash" on beaches and in parks (left to solve are beer caps ;)
Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.)
Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co.
And there needs to be some kind of value in actually doing that for normal people, otherwise it will be just like netbooks, most people will return them and ask for a Windows PC, after being "tricked" into getting one of those Linux PCs.
This is the big thing.
Even as a massive nerd, I keep trying various distros and going "meh" and right back to MacOS.
I have simply given up
[0] - You will find emails from me with M$ like signatures during the 1990s, in whatever archives
I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad.
I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of crazy workarounds to make their MacBook fleets workable).
So yeah overall no good options here. I would love to see the EU fund development of a better distro for this usecase, but doubt it's the highest ROI thing you can do in this space.
It would certainly be the highest ROI to have a local, open system built (by funding) local enterprises. Who knows, maybe a slice of the private sector might adopt it instead of sending money overseas.
Yes we could build a serious distro with a massive investment to get Flatpak, systemd, bootc, up to scratch, set up OSS endpoint management software, set up a safe package supply chain, etc. And yes I would love to see it. But I think in the short term the money would be better spent replacing crap like Outlook and OneDrive than Windows. Note this doesn't require building much software it's about figuring out how to run infrastructure in a way that's friendly to the bizarre world of public sector organisations.
Maybe Dunning-Kruger but the latter just seem like much easier problems to solve.
Also totally pointless until we have an OSS web browser that the whole sector can adopt (maybe we already do, but any funding gaps for Firefox should still be addressed before we build our own EuroOS). No point in having a wonderful sovereign OS that just serves as a bootloader for Chrome.
Other than the elephant in the room that most FOSS projects are anyway sponsored by US companies, that is.
I am just talking about the pure tech fact that GNU/Linux desktops do not have any meaningful intra-host security boundaries.
Is this a worthwhile tradeoff against being tied to US tech? Yeah maybe, like I said there are no good options here, and Linux might be the least bad.
Secondly, are you sure that it is impossible to secure a system for a whole department? I have seen relatively big companies having an IT team managing their own Linux flavour. That is, whitelisting the packages that can be installed by the users. Given that most computer users in the administration use a handful of programs, it doesn't seem super hard to audit them?
I'm honestly having trouble taking you seriously, Windows has always been at the butt of security jokes, I guess you maybe didn't grow up with winnuke etc? But maybe you could elaborate a bit more concretely about what kind of intra-host security boundaries are missing, and why they would be required on single-user computers in this scenario?
Windows being a buggy spyware wouldn't
It is not enough to fund a new distro. EU needs its own OS (may be based on Linux, sure) and it needs to fully control it. Otherwise it will end up like most other FOSS projects, full of personal drama and technical bike-shedding.
https://github.com/MinBZK/mijn-bureau-infra/
They show all the components they use here https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau-infra/docs/category/com... and have set up guides for departments to operate it all on Kubernetes
I'm guessing from my own use of NextCloud, Matrix etc that this will simply be deemed not good enough compared to Google Workspace or Microsoft WhateverItsCalledNow as these things are pretty rough around the edges in my experience, but this looks like a good step in the right direction to me
It looks much more polished than a lot of the existing open source tooling, they've been building a lot of stuff in-house and really been paying attention to UX (which imo is the biggest problem with a lot of existing FOSS solutions).
I have high hopes this'll become a viable solution going forward, maybe even for non-gov users.
Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity.
As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component.
Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.
For freelancers / oss companies - you can still sell services such as consulting or support - without selling your oss project - then its a service - not a product.
Why not?
Besides, supply chain payments are already a thing and help maintainers like myself already while providing security benefits for corporations.
this is a sure way for grifters to make a boatload of money by lobbying for various projects to be funded.
> When it describes how the groundwork might be laid for mandating encryption backdoors, the EU chooses to use euphemisms such as creating roadmaps for “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and seeking “technological solutions for accessing encrypted data.”
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
> European Commission pushes for encryption ‘backdoors’
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes...
Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something.
Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are maintained by individuals without a corporate backing. Or to the individual contributors that are the key to these stacks.
Instead, the only one that will be able to get money, legally per EU policy, will be consortium of suckers and eventually nice but useless researchers in University...
Agreed. Fraunhofer institute in Germany is a prime example.
Not just public, private funds as well. Typical EU, I call that helicopter regulating: you see a problem, throw a regulation at it, then close you eyes.
GDPR pop-ups are the most obvious example, but there are so many more.
For instance, now apparently companies can opt to send payslips digitally instead of physically (paper). Of course, some smart ass nitpicked that employees could loose or change their mail address, so the company is now forced to store digitally delivered payslips in some kind of European-hosted vault for 10 years. And since no sane company want to be liable for that, we now have a wonderful ecosystem of trash "payslip digital vaults" startups, which companies use to proxy-send employee payslips.
So in essence, my company is now sending my payslips (with name, address, contact details, compensation breakdown, etc) to a stupid start-up with egregious ToS, just because "send it by mail and let the employee back it up" was too simple. Thanks !!!
First thing first, restore web sites in a solid security network infrastructure. Namely, noscript/basic HTML.
The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution. Just giving people money to work on open source directly would violate state aid/market disruption rules, they aren't allowed to do that because that could negatively impact the profit of some shareholder somewhere. Member states that want to do that even have to ask permission from the commission if they want to give aid to companies [1].
Everything is like that with the EU, they aren't like China that can just put money whereever to develop or fix strategically, rather the EU can't do anything strategically, or fix anything. It's by design they aren't incompetent, that is what market liberalism is. It's core to what they mean when they say "European values".
[1] https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_e...
I think that's a perfect summary.
As an aside, regarding what I would like EU to do in opensource - when American government writes some code, it must be put in the public domain (no copyright). EU doesn't have a similar rule.