- CEOs of European technology companies told CNBC at the Web Summit technology conference this week that the continent should adopt a “Europe-first” approach to tech, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.
- Andy Yen, CEO of VPN maker Proton, said Europe should “step up” and “be aggressive” to counter U.S. Big Tech firms’ tight grip on many important technologies, such as web browsing, cloud computing, smartphones — and now artificial intelligence.
- Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuania-based used clothing app Vinted, urged Europe to take the “right choices” to ensure it doesn’t get “left behind.”
If there’s a way for that to happen without just building equality abusive and exploitative mega corporations of similarly monopolistic scale, that seems like a very good thing.
Though I honestly kinda worry the only way to really compete with the US would be for Europe to make choices that are similarly shitty as all the ones we’ve made here in the states :/
We need to push for open source software, contribute existing FOSS projects, and focus on open standards and interoperability - that way companies know if they don’t play fair people/governments can move to other suppliers more easily.
Properly punishing US tech companies for their shenanigans would help too.
If you are an EU-citizen support the petition for an EU-Linux.
And publiccode.eu, if the code is paid for with tax money it should be open source.
I was supporter #2000! Now I feel special.
👏👏👏
Voted. There is OpenSuse, but I’m not sure how percentage of European it is.
wiki says it’s sponsored by the German company SUSE, however the webpage says OpenSuse LLC 🤨 It does say represented by some dude in Germany in the imprint. Maybe a translation from the German GmbH, which does translate to LLC in English.
Suse is headquartered in Luxembourg, privately owned by Swedish finance. It was at times owned by Novell and they moved headquarters to the US. It’s the copyright notice which says LLC, and their US branch might be contributing a lot, the imprint says… what, exactly? This is German-style “responsible in accordance with MStV” type language but without mentioning that treaty, and it’s not an organisation or person but “the chair” of… “the board” of… what organisation? I couldn’t find any bylaws, legal identity or such. An implicit German association? I guess that’s what stuff would default to push come to shove. Represented by an address in Germany. Which indeed is the address of SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, but an address is not a legal entity. Maybe the site is managed from the US and some German lawyer said there needs to be an imprint page and the US side just completely misunderstands what’s that supposed to be and why it’s a thing in Germany.
They are indeed pretty international, with development happening largely in Germany, Czechia, Bulgaria, India, China, and the US. The US branch does much of the marketing and some development (e.g. anything Rancher, i.e. Kubernetes).
That said, the offices that grew most in recent years are those in India and those in Bulgaria, whereas Germany went on a hiring freeze. I could imagine that the US and China offices of Rancher also grew quite a bit.
Proper antitrust enforcement would help literally everybody except the very wealthy - which is why they pour so many resources into preventing it. If you want to change things, support any politicians, policies, or public officials which take antitrust action (basically anybody who does what Lina Kahn has been doing for the past 4 years).
In quality of life, especially if you add equality and time-off variable’s we’re not lagging behind the US, we’re squarely beating them.
But in the neoliberal GDP growth rates, which is the only thing capitalists seem to care about, yes we’re lagging behind.
These companies invented the important stuff before becoming abusive and exploitative mega corporations, so it should be possible in theory.