• Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    300
    ·
    1 month ago

    Also

    The reasons for this shift in budget away from funding Free Software and the NGI initiative seems to be an allocation of more funds for AI, leaving internet infrastructure by the wayside.

    Good old AI bubble strikes again.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    109
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    If there are any French or Germans in particular reading this please share on your numerous native instances: If you are in the EU you need to contact policy makers (as outlined in the article) about this. I’m sorry I can’t be with you on this one but Brexit.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      1 month ago

      The beauty of high level corruption is that local peasants can’t do much about it.

      Good news is that Germany for example if trying to get away from corpos and use OSS, so at least we know within german government there are people who [see] this issue properly.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        30 days ago

        Unfortunately your information seems a little outdated. It’s true that Germany did try it for a moment until Microsoft showed up with suitcases of money in the chancellor office so to speak and he announced to essentially move away from open source again.

        Though on the federal level, there‘s still some hope. Maybe.

        • shrugs@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          29 days ago

          You are talking about Limux which started 2 decades ago, but there are other initiatives to enforce oss software in german government.

      • endofline@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        29 days ago

        And also the same who wrote the bundes trojaner :-) ( I know it’s most likely the German intelligence but still funny )

  • Beaver@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    88
    ·
    1 month ago

    They have lots of money for corporate software from Microsoft though.

    • nadir@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      29 days ago

      Read about this on the site of the garage project. they apparently wouldn’t be a thing without this funding.

      Recently set up a cluster and it’s great. Sad to hear this went through

    • endofline@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      29 days ago

      Well, they still can’t underfund gnu privacy guard :-) It’s pretty much already finished product and working pretty well.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        29 days ago

        Eh? I tried it about a year ago, and I found all the same clunky problems that were there 20 years ago.

        • endofline@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          29 days ago

          clunky

          Thunderbird + kleopatra? K-9 + OpenKeyChain ( android )? Where did you have issues?

          • frezik@midwest.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            29 days ago

            I went through an exercise with a few other developers to see if we could use it for transferring sensitive information. I was using Windows w/WSL2 at the time (now I’m full Linux for my work machine), and I believe the other two were on Macs.

            Our conclusions were that while it might be useful alongside other ways, it was too clunky to use in general. One of the more useful things we could do is have developers sign git commits.

            The email plugins for various clients make it easy to mistakenly think you’re sending an encrypted email. When even technical people are making this mistake, then it’s a big issue for widespread adoption. The plugins also don’t always send it in a format that works for every client out there. We found the most consistent way was to encrypt the message in a file and attach it to the email.

            The plugins don’t work with modern webmail, anyway.

            Public key servers are unreliable. They’re largely maintained by volunteers, so this is understandable, but we couldn’t recommend that the company use them. If we wanted reliability, we’d need to run our own internal keysever.

            Then there’s the key signing meetings we’d need to have. Even technical people find these a bother. These are, unfortunately, inherent to the web of trust model.

            I really wanted to make it work. The decentralized nature of the web of trust–as opposed to the hierarchical model of TLS–is appealing to me personally. But this shit hasn’t gotten better in 20 years, and at least some of it is unfixable.

  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    1 month ago

    Damn, rare technology L from the EU. Hopefully they walk back this decision.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      29 days ago

      Not rare, they’ve been trying to block encryption for a while unfortunately

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    Weren’t there recently EU calls for using open source software in government applications due to concerns about proprietary software like Windows in the wake of gestures generally at Windows?

    • MegaTraveller@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      30 days ago

      Yes, there are calls to move towards OOS, but as I assume that is it. Only calls. I remember cities moving onto open source and than thanks for lobbyists moving back to proprietary software again.

      • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        29 days ago

        I remember cities moving onto open source and than thanks for lobbyists moving back to proprietary software again.

        What you remember is the news cycle covering the City of Munich switching from Windows to Linux, then another news cycle about how they’re moving back to Windows.

        What didn’t get much coverage though, is that Microsoft did a (suspected under-table) deal with the outgoing government to switch back to Windows if Microsoft built an office in Munich.

        What then happened is the new government came in, looked at the situation, and cancelled it (although MS may have built that office always). Right now Munich is still using Linux and still actively rolling it out.

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    1 month ago

    US Mega corps really getting good at lobbying within EU.

    This is likely related to DACH countries trying to get off mega corp’s tit. just a speculation though.

    But mega corp never goes down without corruption and crime! You can take that one to the bank.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    30 days ago

    Is it as vague as “funds for AI” or cloud computing capacity to keep up with China and the US? Because we could use that in the EU. But who would be operating it, Universities? MIC?