- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- Europe@europe.pub
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- Europe@europe.pub
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Lmao. Germany too busy deporting people for speaking for Palestine
Kukies should know better than this. I know that this article is tendentious by framing the German finance minister as Germany or the German position, but it is in so far right that Merz (CDU) or Klingbeil (SPD) haven’t said anything yet, likely for coalition peace (either this coalition works or fascists might be involved).
German here. Our spineless government has a kink for getting bullied—they absolutely love it.
But only by the rich. It’d be a cold day in hell when Merz or Söder will allow a poor person to live in peace.
Germany can’t decide. Every few weeks I see an article that says “German city/company/institution is Ditching MS for Open Source”, and the next article is “Germany Cucked by Microsoft for Ten Billionth Time.” Can we just completely ditch all MS and agree to an open standard?
It’s almost like German Government and it’s federalism isn’t a monolith. 🤦♂️
Kukies justified Germany’s position for not taxing digital services by saying that the EU had not alternatives to US data centres, cloud, and artificial intelligence services.
I think Germany is a great source of experience in how dropping these Big Tech companies would impact everything. It’s not weird for them to be against it because it makes it so European countries and Germany have more time to make the needed changes in tech infrastructure so they can do it themselves too.
Europeans are slow and steady. Minds are most likely already set on dropping US reliance. It just doesn’t need to be pushed right away.
Munich of all places offers an interesting case study on open source software in German public service. They ditched MS 21 years ago despite Bill Gates’ personal lobbying of mayor Christian Ude. But they had to go back eventually because they simply couldn’t make the alternative (based on a custom Linux implementation with Libre Office) work. They’ve now shifted to using open source as much as possible without sacrificing interoperability.
This page has a great writeup on the topic: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document/munichs-long-history-open-source-public-administration
They had to go back, because Microsoft moved it’s German Headquarters to Munich (and thus paying corporate taxes there)in a backroom deal with the Mayor
Thanks for sharing. I remember reading about this while it was happening. Interested to see how it turned out.
I think it is certain German States vs. German federal government.
Like New York vs. USA’s policy.
But yes. All government should move away from Microsoft and Google suites.
Germany is not one person. Ditching Microsoft is the effort of more regional politics. Talking about the US and things as a whole, that is national politics, which has just been elected and are currently showing that it was not a good election.
That’s just sad. Of all countries, Germany should be on the front line when it comes to European sovereignty.
Germany wants their fax-machines back.
I mean not surprising but come on Germany grow some spine.
Come on guys, this idea that we can just tell big tech to fuck off overnight is naive even by standards.
Big tech offers several services and capabilities that are used by european companies and that we just don’t have in Europe at the moment, and if we decide to retaliate against them we end up fucking up our own economy just like POTUS is doing.
This article explains the problem:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-european-cloud-ladder/
highly recommend the blog BTW, at least the articles that are not in dutch. He has talked a lot about these issues and has proposals m how to begin to improve the situation without shooting ourselves in the foot.
Nevertheless, the European Parliament could decide to phase out all non EU based cloud services for public entities by 2030 and let European companies build those services in the mean time. The switch for private companies would be much easier once these European alternativess have built the infrastructure to address big clients.
The blog in question has several proposal in that direction, though a little more sophisticated.
He basically says that the EU should fund the development and deployment of certain key services that are technologically feasible and hugely important. Even doing this at a total loss, the benefits would be beyond huge and build the capacity we would need to take further steps.
He lists 7 examples, but I’ll give you 3. We need viable, comparable quality, alternatives to:
- GMail/Outlook.com
- Google Docs
- Github
The article is here:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/now-how-to-get-that-european-cloud/
We already have viable European Alternatives for all these 3
- Mailbox.org/Posteo/Proton/MailCow/OVH etc…
- CollaboraOffice/OnlyOffice/CryptPad
- ForgeJo/Codeberg
Scoop for the German government: we also have no real alternative to US troops/military supply. Should we lower the EU flag and welcome anyone wishing to took hold of it since the USA has made it clear it’s now up to the EU to defend itself?
Maybe work with Poland and France and figure out some sort of more tightly integrated military infrastructure. The bones are already there in NATO, even if us Americans fuck off (or get kicked out for absolutely fucking the credibility of the alliance)
False equivalence.
