[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.

[seec]

I agree with some reservations about this being completly generalised. There are still some successfull companies that rewards good players. But yes, there are very few and most of the rest are stuck coasting at a glacial pace, doing stuff that are not very competitive on so many levels it is impossible to describe succintly.

I would also argue that it is not just about the software industry. Many EU industries have become extremely uncompetitive on so many level. Even when you are ready to pay more for EU made products, it is not easy to find something that is decently competitive and not just a pale copy of better offerings.

It is clear that the EU has become too collectivist but they are still stuck blaming capitalism (just like the soviets I guess).

In France, even old big players that were once at the top and/or were (semi)public organisation have fallen very hard or have been scandalously sold piecemeal to foreign actors. The problem is not even that they are governement funded but it really is rooted in the collectivist organisation model that gives too much power to politics and very little lattitude to consumer/key actors choice.

Those systems become necessarily corrupted because they rely too much on human behaviors and most humans are fundamentally corrupt.

[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.

[palata]

Are you saying that Europe can't compete with the US monopolies because all the good developers move to the US?

[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.

[palata]

Opinions are not facts.

[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]

My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots.

They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems.

If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse their dominant position by convincing (sometimes downright lying) to the government employees.

It is a very difficult position to be in. It's not about buying a car and being able to just test it. Many times the government funding goes for some kind of R&D. Which makes it easy for the experts to bullshit them and never produce anything useful.

Those who say that it's 100% the government fault should maybe try to go work there. They could truly help their country, if they could actually do better. But chances are that they can't.

[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.

[fsflover]

> I don't care about that as a consumer.

Until this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075. Or, worse, this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114 or this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556. Megacorps don't care about your requests for support.

> People are very willing to pay for that, but there is no such FLOSS offering as far as I know

https://www.debian.org/consultants/

https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/hardware/certified-h...

and much more. Have you tried using search?

[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.