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by lejalv 118 days ago
That's why the European way to tech sovereignty is (publicly-funded) free software. Cannot be bought by unlimited VC money from The Valley, and it benefits the rest of the world, which is a tiny drop, and hence a necessary one, in Europe offsetting the damages of colonization, past and present.
1 comments

Free software alone doesn't give you tech sovereignty. What matters is who integrates and runs the software.
Can you explain how you mean this? Obviously, it helps if the knowledge of the codebase is with a trusted partner. But taking as an example Grist (https://getgrist.org), which is developed by a NY-based US company and is part of the French La suite numérique (LSN). Should a geopolitical reason get in the way of Grist devs further collaborating with LSN, don't you think that France's sovereignty is safeguarded by the availability of the code?

Granted, it'd be a setback. But nothing a couple of dedicated French devs could not tackle.

What am I missing?