[voidr]

I'm an EU citizen, I would like the EU to be a competitive place in terms of software, however at the moment I have to say that it's a hostile place for software development and software as a service.

They are making too many dumb and potentially dangerous laws, just look at the cookie consent laws that accomplish nothing but erased millions of euros.

They AI laws and aspirations make me not even consider making any software that runs AI in the EU. I don't want to harm people, but it's next to impossible to make the distilled LLM I'm using to not say occasionally dumb shit. Just because an AI is "dangerous" doesn't mean you cannot use it in a place where it poses no real risk.

[tensor]

Most software businesses operate internationally, so the EU regulation is something you'll have to deal with no matter where you host, assuming you sell into the EU. I don't believe that hosting in the EU means you need to treat non-EU jurisdictions with EU law.

Note too that places like OVH have data centres in multiple countries, just like AWS and Azure do. I can't comment on taxes for companies registered in the EU as I don't live there, but again, where you are headquartered as a business is up to you, and there are many choices.

In terms of being competitive, some European services like OVH, Gandi, and Mistral are absolutely competitive internationally. For AI, Mistral is up there with the best of them.

[voidr]

> I don't believe that hosting in the EU means you need to treat non-EU jurisdictions with EU law.

Let's say to that I want to develop something that uses an "evil" AI and I only want to sell to countries outside of the EU, I just can't do that because during development I would be suffocated by unhelpful regulations while someone in the US doing the same would be not.

> Most software businesses operate internationally, so the EU regulation is something you'll have to deal with no matter where you host, assuming you sell into the EU.

Having my whole business being at risk is not the same thing as only having a significant market being at risk.

> where you are headquartered as a business is up to you, and there are many choices.

Yes and the problem I was pointing out is that I would unlikely to pick an EU country because broken legislation that would hinder me is not something I want to deal with.

The EU problem is that legislation that is not around manufacturing is very knee-jerky, I don't feel like it would be a safe place for my potential software business, because legislation seems to be driven by headlines rather than rationality and the people making the legislations don't look too competent based on the end results.

> In terms of being competitive, some European services like OVH, Gandi, and Mistral are absolutely competitive internationally

Azure, AWS, Digital Ocean, ChatGPT, Meta, DeepSeek are a league of their own.

[tensor]

I'd say developing "evil" AI is a bad business idea. And if you really think that Mistral is not competitive then you clearly know so little about the AI landscape that it's hilarious that you think you're going to go develop some "evil" AI company.

[voidr]

> I'd say developing "evil" AI is a bad business idea.

You know that quotes have a meaning, a knife can kill people, but it can also be used to make tasty food, the EU wants to ban the knife because it can kill people in this case.

> And if you really think that Mistral is not competitive then you clearly know so little about the AI landscape that it's hilarious that you think you're going to go develop some "evil" AI company.

Making up childish nonsense does not advance your argument.