[fh973]

Europe does not need more open source, it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry.

It doesn't matter if the email platform a government uses is open source, but it should be able to pick a local alternative. It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one.

Policy may help the European software industry, at least governments should actively work on getting away from their Microsoft addiction. Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software.

Blindly preferring open source may kill otherwise viable local software businesses.

[palata]

> it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry

Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.

> It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one.

I don't think they are talking about creating a mobile OS? But I do think that e-ID and similar government apps should be open source, so that people can trust them.

> Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software.

Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source.

[rdm_blackhole]

> Because it struggles to compete with the US monopolies doesn't mean that it doesn't have a software industry. It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive, and whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.

Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe? Concretely no. What's stopping this is that most governments in Europe are taxing companies to death to fund social services that end up in deficit anyway.

It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly.

The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get.

[palata]

> Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe?

The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably.

And that's apparently not regulations.

> It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly.

Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.

But the big bad monopolies being US companies, they are protected by the US government who doesn't really care about having US competition in the US, but cares about domining over the rest of the world.

> The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get.

Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.

[CrimsonRain]

Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US.

eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion.

It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.

[fsflover]

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

[palata]

I don't have anything polite to answer to this :-).

[CrimsonRain]

Please post your impolite answer. I don't mind :)

EU (software) industry is a dream for mediocre skilled people. Secure a job once, can't get fired, do bare minimum and never be proactive.

It is a hell for people who work hard and fast. The whole culture is geared towards dragging down anyone who is proactive and makes others look bad by being too good.

[noo_u]

It is, at this point, an easily verifiable fact that software engineering jobs in Europe are en masse poorly paid relative to the equivalent positions in the US, and the majority of the EU companies that actually pay well are actually US based. This causes a lot of outflow of talent. That VC funding in Europe is atrocious is obvious to anyone who has had to go through it, and have fun letting a poor performer go from your 5 person startup.

Your polite wishful responses are frustrating to read to anyone who's had to go through this hell.

[rdm_blackhole]

> The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations.

The reason why there is no other Google in the US currently is because for the average person Google works fine so if you go to a VC fund and ask for USD 100M to build the next Google, you are going to have to sell them on your vision and explain how you are going to do things better and maybe just maybe someone will be crazy enough to invest.

As of this moment that has not happened but it certainly could.

However for Europe it is not the same calculations. Everyone keeps repeating that Europe is too dependent on US tech but what do we do about it? Not much.

It should be a top priority to start a competing search engine that is better than Google in Europe and it should be so good that people start using it without being forced to do so by bureaucrats in Brussels.

Instead, the risk aversion is such that no VC in Europe will ever consider that for one, it is doable and that two, it warrants such a massive investment (which it does). So the conclusion remains the same. There will be no European Google and there will be no European Apple.

> Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.

I am only repeating your words. You say big bad monopolies stop other from competing properly. I am not seeing the evidence for your claim. Anyone can start a competing OS in Europe. Is Microsoft somehow stopping everyone from doing so?

If not, why is there no European Windows or European MacOS? Is it because of these monopolies?

You put the blame of the big bad monopolies and I say that the reason these monopolies exist in the first place is because we haven't even tried to compete and therefore de facto we are giving the entire market to the US tech.

> whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.

The laws are not going to fix this issue when you have no other competing products to replace the US tech products. Is there a better search product out there than Google (despite all its flaws) for the average person? A better Windows?

Secondly, the fact that the US can "bully" Europe is simply a second order effect of the problem we are facing now. Since there are no good competitors in the critical tech sectors of Europe then the US knows there is nothing the EU can do.

That is why the "bullying" as you put it work here and it doesn't work in China which has developed it's own ecosystem of apps and tech companies and it doesn't have to bow to the US on that front.

> Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.

The average salary of tech worker in the US is higher than in Europe. Denying this fact is simply putting more blinders on.

If you want to make good products you need talent. If you want innovation you need talent and you need to have people who are motivated to start something new and usually for most people motivation takes the form of money.

Then to get talent you need to pay them properly and/or they need to understand that they will reap the rewards of their labor somehow.

That is why you see so many founders going to the US to found their company there instead of Europe. That is why some of the founders who start in Europe end up moving to the US when they get big enough because they know that there they can get the best talent and they stand to make some potentially life changing money if their company does well.

Then these founders exit their companies and what do they do next? They invest in other companies, the create their own VC fund, they foster the next unicorns and then these unicorns come knocking on Europe's doors with their product and once gain Europe has no response or a very weak response because there are no competitors or very small ones that are merely a blip on the US's radar. Then the cycle repeats again and again.

At the end of the day, if you take into account the potential risks, the legal hurdles, the lack access to capital, the potential monetary gains and the access to talent, then the conclusion is simple: The US wins every time.

Does that mean that everyone who creates a company in Europe eventually leaves or that no company get started at all? Certainly not. But since the incentives are not there, they are just less companies getting started, less unicorns being built, less access to capital, less access to talent and if you compound that year after year you end up in the situation we are in now.

And if you think that this is somehow misrepresenting the current state of Europe, it is not. Mario Draghi himself has tried to explain these things to the EU governments and made many recommendations in order to try to close the gap. 1 year later and basically nothing or almost nothing in his report has been implemented.

The EU likes to cry foul every-time a US tech giant comes in and steamrolls the competition in Europe and it thinks that just one more law, one more regulation will fix the problem.

If the EU/Europe was instead fixing the real problem which is the lack of good competitors in Europe, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because the monopolies you mention would not exists here.

[palata]

I don't think I could disagree more :-).

[menaerus]

Sorry for being ignorant but in what universe do you live? It can't be more true than it (sadly) is. Everything what has been said is factual.

[rdm_blackhole]

You can disagree all you want, the facts don't lie but if you prefer to stick your head in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening, then by all means continue to do so.

This is a real problem with most Europeans honestly. Not being able to admit when things are not working. And then finally we wake up 5 years too late and the writing is on the wall.

[consp]

> Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source.

Or create an open source reference implementation and leave the final solution to the market. Everyone can use the reference implementation but if you think you can do better use your own. This includes a government doing it themselves either based on the reference implementation or not.

[cryptica]

> Agreed, it does not necessarily have to be open source. But my opinion is that if the taxpayer's money is used to pay for software, then that software should be open source.

Yes. The government has more than enough leverage to demand this. Skill was never the problem. The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption. The problem with the regulations is that they were designed with the explicit intent to stifle competition.

"Nobody got fired for choosing IBM" - This fact is pure corruption. I remember, when I was at university, one of the courses I took had a project management component and we did an assessment researching failed software projects and it turns out that there were a huge number of failed projects running in the hundreds of millions and even billions (and that was a lot of money at the time); always the same companies kept coming up. IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.

[jandrewrogers]

The big system integrators are often pretty terrible at their jobs but it isn't the only cause.

Extremely expensive software projects in government have a common thread in every case I have first-hand experience with. The government has no consistent vision of what they want or who is the final arbiter of these decisions, and no person in the government is accountable for the outcomes. Both the requirements and responsibility are spread across so many people that for all practical purposes there are no clear requirements and no accountability.

The government software programs that run well in my experience have the organizational equivalent of a BDFL. A BDFL doesn't really exist in government; even when someone acts in that role they are often reassigned to other projects at random.

[palata]

> IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.

I have been in companies getting money from government programs. It's not fraud from the government side, at least not for what I've seen.

The problem is that companies see government programs as a way to make easy money. If the government pays a company for X, that's because that company has expertise in X. So it's easy for the company to bullshit the government employees and sell them crap.

Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government. And on top of that we would want fewer regulations? If you want to be able to punish abuse from companies, you need regulations, and you need to apply them.

[u8080]

>Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government.

So, in well-known conditions of ineffective spending without competition government chose to waste money bypassing market? How that's not government's fault?

[palata]

Not sure if you have a specific example in mind or speaking generally.

What I am saying is that generally, private companies abuse the government money when they can. Just like private companies enshittify their products to make more money. It's all about making money.

Why are governments getting bad software from companies? For the same reason users are getting bad software as well. The software industry produces money, not good software.

[u8080]

My point is that "private companies abuse the government money when they can" is well-known fact. Thus, government as a customer should make everything possible to buy software on competitive market basis. If govt chose easy way to blindly gave shitton of money to some company with vague acceptance criteria and got bad result in return - this is 100% govt fault.

[palata]

> The problem is bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive hidden corruption

I keep hearing the "too many regulations" argument, and I totally disagree. Too few regulations (or rather no enforcement of them) resulted in the TooBigTech monopolies we have today. Of course, they got so successful because of the lack of regulations, but now it's simply impossible to compete with them. Removing regulations (assuming that there are regulations that impact them today, which I doubt) would help them, not the competition.

And we have precedents:

* Whenever the EU tries to do some antitrust, it impacts TooBigTech (which is almost exclusively US), and as a result the US bullies the EU to stop it. If regulations were weakening the EU, why would the US government fight them?

* Let's continue with the US as the example of fewer bureaucracy in this case (the complaint is that the EU cannot compete with the US because of the EU's bureaucracy): look at examples where a non-US company takes over a market (or threatens to take it over). Huawei smartphones (not the infrastructure like antennas, this is different), TikTok, DJI. What do US companies do to win against them? They lobby like crazy to add regulations that will stop the competition.

The US hasn't managed to compete with TikTok: they made it illegal instead.

When Huawei was becoming very big in smartphones in the US, they got banned.

The US hasn't managed to compete with DJI, and the biggest US drone companies are spending a ton of resources trying to get DJI banned. DJI is so superior that even banning them is tricky: it has to be done slowly because banning them right away would disrupt entire industries for lack of viable alternatives. That's how far US drones are from DJI drones.

"Too many regulations" is wrong. The successful players get protection from their government (be it the US or China), and it's high time the EU protected its own players, too. With regulations, just like the US and China does (when they don't abuse their dominant position to bully the EU).

[labcomputer]

That seems like a lot of words to basically just admit that Europe’s regulations are anti-competitive.

I especially enjoyed reading the logical fallacy of drone companies that are so small/non-existent that DJI cannot be banned quickly, but those same companies mysteriously have enough money to bribe politicians for a ban (and the much bigger DJI can’t outbid them).

Also: You wrote in a previous comment that nobody can compete with Apple due to lack of antitrust regulation:

> > Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe?

> The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably.

But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?

[palata]

Wow, that's a lot of bad faith. I'll try once, and once only:

There has been a ton of money thrown at US drone companies in the last 10 years. A TON. From the government and from VCs. It's not that those companies are so small or non-existent: it's just that consumers do not buy their products. Which is why most drone companies have conveniently pivoted to the military now. And with the military funding, they have money.

And they have been lobbying A LOT to ban DJI, and they are winning that fight. But that does not mean that the consumers want to buy their US drones. DJI drones are still vastly cheaper and better, and professional users (including US government entities) rely on DJI. So much that it is unreasonable to just ban all existing DJI hardware. It has to come progressively so that those consumers can get used to paying a lot more to get worse drones.

There is no question here: without regulations, NOBODY can REMOTELY compete against DJI, period. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the drone industry.

> But now you are saying that Huawei was about to unseat them and therefore needed to be banned. So… which is it?

Huawei and TikTok and DJI are Chinese companies. US people never forget to mention that they don't exactly play by the same rules (e.g. they can grow in their protected market until they reach a size where they can try in the rest of the world). US companies cannot do that (try to build a US smartphone manufacturer and compete with Apple in the US, just for fun).

But in those very rare situations where US companies get competition (and that will happen more and more from China), and those US companies suddenly find themselves in the weaker position, the VERY FIRST thing they want is more regulations.

"When I win, that's because I am the best. When I lose, that's because the rules are against me". You think Europe sucks because their tech companies lose against the US? Have fun comparing the US to China then :-).

[carlosjobim]

What is a European made operating system I can purchase for my computer?

[fsflover]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552049

[carlosjobim]

Do they have any paid consumer offerings, with consumer support?

[fsflover]

I assume if you come with money, everything is possible. Also, you don't have to get support from the same company: There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS unlike with proprietary software.

[carlosjobim]

I could purchase the fully fledged OS X operating system as a consumer for $20, and get customer support for it. Now the OS is free with customer support.

> There is no artificial monopoly in FLOSS

I don't care about that as a consumer. I want software / a computer which works and easy customer support if I need it. People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know. Because FLOSS developers hate consumers and worship corporate enterprises.

[u8080]

But this is US operating system, Linux trademark is registered to US citizen(Linus T.), it is being mainly developed by US companies and complies with US sanction laws.

[fsflover]

> Linux trademark

doesn't matter. You can't close it or prohibit its usage or forking.

[u8080]

Idk, europeans saying thing like "It's hard to compete with TooBigTech when they are being anti-competitive" implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist.

[fsflover]

It's hard to be really anti-competitive when you compete with trillion-dollar megacorps, https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

[palata]

> europeans saying thing like

Where did I say I was European?

> implying EU companies are not anti-competitive and EU government is not extremely protectionist

Anti-competitive behaviours from TooBigTech are well documented, and they are regularly fined for that. I'm sure it happens from EU companies, but it has less impact given that the software industry is almost entirely dominated by US companies.

Now I can't remember the last time the EU threatened the US to prevent them from regulating EU companies?

Also are you aware that pretty much all governments in the EU rely on the US monopolies? I wouldn't call that "extremely protectionnist". As compared to e.g. the US banning Huawei or TikTok or DJI.

[u8080]

I mean, EU has some de-facto BigTech giants like SAP which are on same anti-competitive side. It just happened that US was quicker and more successful in various areas including software.

EU tactics on protectionism is creating legislative framework to apply tariffs to competing imports(i.e. import taxes and quotas(TARIC, etc), ecology-related fees, subsidies for local industries, restricting imports of goods for private citizens by postal limits and others)

[palata]

I am not sure what you are trying to say. My whole point is that regulations are required for a sane market.

The fact that the US wins because they don't play by the same rules does not mean that it is fair.

And the fact that the US bans Chinese tech when they do to the US what the US does to the rest of the world shows that the US doesn't find it fair either. It's just easier to accept an unfair situation when we benefit from it.

[PurpleRamen]

> Europe does not need more open source,

Europe is not one country, not even the EU is perfectly united. It's a dozen different countries, each with their own political and technical landscape, and Open Source is seen as the logical solution to unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator.

> it needs its own healthy and competitive software industry.

It has a good software industry, and it could of course be always better, but USA is still bigger and more dominating. Ther eis also a difference between software and service. Popular Cloud-services for common work is rare in Europe, building them is and making them popular, especially on a european level, is important.

> It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one.

It's all about control. Open Source matters, becausse it gives more control, more insight, less chance some other country is spying on your and someday switching off something important.

[pembrook]

> unite them without raising a new (local) software-dictator

If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot.

Instead of harnessing the best talent the EU has to offer, you're making sure they never get off the ground in the name of 'fairness.' Tall poppy syndrome in the extreme.

I'm sorry but the free market-denial that's become endemic among European central planners is getting wildly irrational at this point. Every year we creep closer to USSR-level government spending as % of GDP, crowding out private sector activity.

Do you understand that the entire tax base of the EU is dependent on private sector businesses competing with each other to offer better products and services? Unfairness and exceptionalism and its winners are what funds our entire way of life.

We can redistribute some of the earnings from the winners to the losers after the fact (as we already do at 50% on average). But we absolutely need to have the market competition to drive value in the first place for there to be anything to redistribute!

[PurpleRamen]

That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case.

> If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot.

That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour product, but because the company is better at playing the administration, which usually comes down to "investing more money". Open Source and open standards can remove some of the leverages they use, enabling smaller companies to play on a bigger field, and thus improving the market overall.

And with the actual political situation in Europe, there is also the beneficial sideeffect that more players in the market, and less dependecy from single point of failures, will allow everyone to raise their survival-rate in case of hostile actions.

[pembrook]

I'm confused with the disconnect here, so you simultaneously believe that:

- government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)

AND

- government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?

[PurpleRamen]

> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)

That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?

> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?

The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.

[pembrook]

You're talking past my criticism and haven't addressed the core logic flaw in your argument.

If government is competent enough to build its own software solutions (and these creations would be valuable enough that open sourcing them would create opportunities for startups in the private sector as you've claimed!)...then they are also competent enough to buy the correct software product from a European private company.

If they cannot be trusted to buy the right software for themselves without the process being corrupted, they sure as hell can't be trusted to BUILD that software from the ground up (a much harder task!).

[iso1631]

We've seen that some open source licenses make way for American money to steal the monetisation -- Elasticsearch found this to their peril when Amazon swooped in and offered it as a service

The other problem is the ability for American companies and funds to just buy European companies.

If Europe wants to stop this is needs to be very aware of the licensing agreements, and to pass laws to limit foreign investment - like China, India etc do.

[wtarreau]

No, it needs first to encourage local investment. Companies who seek investors or who get sold do not do it by pleasure, but as a last resort before dying. And in the EU you don't get any offer to save a company that has a limited commercial activity. Many companies die every day by lack of money. It turns our that US etc are willing to take much more risk and invest sufficient money to transform such fragile companies into durable ones. And in the case of software it's great, because software is sold all over the world, and the income serves to hire more local people, so in the end it's a way to really develop EU sales to the rest of the world. It would clearly be better if the investors were EU-based, but at least it's better than nothing that some investors are willing to risk their money on such companies.

[tgv]

It's not that simple. The Dutch government uses a commercial service for their digital id, and now that company is going to be sold into American hands.

[torginus]

I disagree. Let's say there's an app that stores healthcare data in an EU compliant format, there's 3 possibilities:

- Every country develops its own solution, which is good for employee demand, but can be inefficient

- Every country standardizes on a proprietary solution. The problem will be that said solution will most likely come from one of the major EU countries (say Germany) and others will feel left out and forced to use that solution. Said solution will be Germany-first, so local demands will have to go a slow and expensive contracting process. Said company will sell access to APIs, meaning integrating and building innovation on top will be tied to that commercial entity

- Every country uses the same standard software that's open source. There's no licensing fees, everyone can modify the code to accomodate local needs. Development costs are low. Proprietary local solution can be built on top without having to pay anyone.

It's clear to me, that when the customer is the public, and open-source solution should be preferred.

[fh973]

This app currently runs on Android or iOS.

Anyway, open source is fine there. But you're not getting things like a Desktop or Web office suite (OpenOffice is an historical accident), an enterprise device management, endpoint security, ... this way.

[amunozo]

There is another option, to develop pan-european software as it has been done in other areas such as aerospace.

[torginus]

As long as you define pan-europe as like 5 countries.

[amunozo]

Fair enough. A better word would be multinational.

[jszymborski]

They say "open source" but they are looking for "no-profit motive" IMO. Which is fine, but they should be opening a generous fund for democratically-run non-profits whose primary activity is developing open software which is useful for the EU and is an alternative to US corp-controlled software.

EU has plenty of these orgs it can generously fund, and scoping funding like this would create more. Some existing examples (many of which accept gov't funds but need a lot more to rival big tech):

- https://framasoft.org/en/

- https://www.igalia.com/

- https://deuxfleurs.fr/

- https://www.chatons.org/

[wtarreau]

In my opinion it's the opposite. This type of associations is welcome, and they are fine to promote free software and help people, but they are exactly like neighborhood associations: they're mostly local, relying on volunteers with limited time who become a new dependency for people who were not using these services. That's fine for limited use case but it doesn't scale at all, and causes a huge duplication of efforts (organization, software creation -- several of them reinvented stuff that already exists, advertising etc). And associations rarely if ever merge, because most often association creators have a very clear view of what they're seeking (often idealist) and are rarely willing to compromise it and accept to adopt another association's mostly similar but not exactly identical goals (it often works very similarly to political parties). GAFAMs would never exist under this model.

The problem is that such services which proudly run on low budget, volunteers and recycled hardware, cannot be relied on by companies without risking to enter legal trouble in case of major incident, so it means that a higher-grade service is still needed, with a dedicate funding, and we're facing fragmentation. We must not reproduce the scheme of cloudwatt either. Too much money injected into a wet dream that was only used to spend lots of money in consultants coming here just to confirm their presence and get their check.

What is needed instead is to sponsor the development of such activities by a few (2-3) well-established competing companies, so as to avoid the regular risk of monoculture that diverges from what users expect, and help them reach the point where their offerings can compete with GAFAM's for both end users and enterprise. The contract should be clear that services must rely on open formats, make it possible for leaving users to retrieve all their data, that software developed under such funding must be opensource, though technology acquisition is fine, and that these offerings must become self-sustaining at one point (i.e. a mix of free+paid services). The EU funders should have enough shares of these activities so that their permission is required for business acquisition and that they can restrict it to EU-based companies, so that such companies can still grow and seek public funding.

What we need is a few durable big players, not 10000 incompatible associations each with their own software suite, that no enterprise can trust over the long term and that cannot resist a trivial DDoS by lack of a robust infrastructure, and who are not organized enough to run full-stack security audits to make sure that user data are properly protected. These ones are only fine for friends and family but that's not what we're missing the most (the proof is that they already exist).

[orochimaaru]

Why does the governments Microsoft addiction have anything to do with European software industry? Asking as an American whose governments are also addicted to Microsoft.