[esperent]

I wish there was somewhere I could earnestly and intelligently have discussions about EU related tech and tech policy, but HN isn't it. As you can see already in this thread, there's 14 comments besides mine and they are 100% negative, and about 95% low effort/reactionary.

Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.

[Tharre]

What points could we even discuss? It's all terribly vague and I imagine nobody here can even tell how that supposed 'strategy' is different from the one 5 years ago. And half of the things mentioned there, like the EUDI Wallet or age verification have been heavily criticised for good reasons.

If the headline was "EU invests 100B into open source to further independence from US", I imagine things would be different. But right now it's "we have intentions to have plans about tech and open source in the EU sometime in the future".

[port11]

It’s a PR website meant for… people that read PR websites.

The agencies downstream that will spend 4 million euros comparing LibreOffice with OpenOffice are the ones doing some of the work.

I think it’s okay for the institutions to signal something positive, as long as they actually back it up later.

[throwaway67678]

A huge chunk of HN is 20-something kids who are way too online and parrot in earnest Polandball-style memes like "Germany doesn't have freedom of speech" or "France has too much regulation". They are fine to discuss tech with but I wouldn't take their opinions on politics or culture seriously

[shevy-java]

> Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.

You dislike criticism? I find criticism an important part of discourse and discussion. HN is very clearly not anything like reddit - just the insane amount of censorship on reddit alone, is already one argument against that claim. Many more could be given. I have been using reddit in the past for many years, so I know how reddit changed. Not that everything is perfect on hackernews; I dislike the "you are posting too much" limitation, for instance. But we don't have over-eager censor-mods here whereas that was locking down numerous interesting discussions on reddit.

With regards to the EU situation: the EU is in a very strange situation. On the one hand it is doing good things; this then gets cancelled by the EU commission acting as a pure lobbyist group, as well as a huge army of bureaucrats who want more and more money and dream about assimilating more and more countries, which makes zero sense. Whether the EU will succeed with regards to their open source strategy or not, who knows. What I do know is that individual countries, such as France or the Netherlands, are quite intelligent when it comes to good decisions (Germany is absolutely undermined by lobbyists, so it is totally paralysed here); I am not convinced the EU is in a similar situation. It would have to be reformed, but people in Brussels don't want to see their job axxed away, so nothing will improve here.

My recommendation is that if you are unhappy, go and talk about it - but don't expect others to turn to your assumptions about how a discussion should happen when it comes to the EU, because they may not share your opinion here.

[esperent]

> You dislike criticism

No, I love criticism, as long as it's balanced and thoughtful, and invites discussion rather than being knee-jerk reactionary. Please read my comment more carefully.

[ExoticPearTree]

> No, I love criticism, as long as it's balanced and thoughtful, and invites discussion

You forgot to add "and it matches my worldview of things". Knee-jerk criticism is very fine, like "Microsoft sucks" anytime someone mentions Microsoft. You can just ignore it and move on.

[esperent]

No, I intentionally didn't add that. Please challenge my worldview, engage and disagree me. Just put some effort in, please.

However, you're still missing the salient point of my comment - that is, overwhelmingly the comments on any post related to the EU here are low effort, negative, reactionary. Honestly, I feel like you're not willing to engage with the point. It's not even the negativity that's my main issue here, it's the overwhelming low-effort, thoughtless nature of it which prevents any attempt at genuine discussion (positive or negative). It's groupthink, reddit style, and while HN is far from perfect there's almost no other subject that brings out this kind of reaction. Except for React, maybe.

[ExoticPearTree]

You're wrong.

[mrdevlar]

Honestly, as a European, I am okay with this.

I want the US tech community to continue thinking of us as some sort of technological backwater. Ridiculing and deriding us, so they never see as any place where they are welcome. Since given the last ten years, they pretty much aren't. There's basically little to nothing that US tech services have to offer Europe.

[pi-err]

True but it also reflects that the EU has indeed destroyed most goodwill towards it in the last decade regarding most things digital.

Most EU initiatives have damaged everyday UX on the web and in tech. Yes, some malicious compliance has played a role by over-reacting to well-intended regulations. But overall the EU has brought this upon itself.

This specific Open Source Strategy memo is typical. It's in fact not a strategy but a list of key goals and requirements, put together in technocratic jargon. It will have zero effect on the actual open source ecosystem.

[blitzar]

> True but it also reflects that the EU has indeed destroyed most goodwill towards it

Or you have been brainwashed by the billions spent annually to make you believe stories about bendy bananas and occult initiation ceremonies as a condition of being a member.

[port11]

Care to explain?

[samrus]

> True but it also reflects that the EU has indeed destroyed most goodwill towards it in the last decade regarding most things digital.

Not for me, my opinion of things like GDPR and forcing usbc on phones gives me the impression that the EU is holding corporations accountable and looking out for normal people.

Its been mentioned before but i feel like while alot of negative views might be organic, alot are also the result of tech companies' smear campaigns against the EU

[snowpid]

" True but it also reflects that the EU has indeed destroyed most goodwill towards it in the last decade regarding most things digital. " And these criticism destroys any goodwill from me. These are non topics my among political diverse friends. Most people criticise the EU internet regulations are American cry babys. Their arguments are shallow, their knowledge about EU is low.

[dash2]

If your friends have never said “man I hate these cookie popups”, they sound like a highly selected group.

[whilenot-dev]

Don't be silly, the legislation doesn't state that websites have to show cookie popups. It's rather where the term malicious compliance enters the picture, a compliance incentivized by the financial interests of the biggest advertising businesses the world has ever seen.

[M95D]

^ That, and lazy devs who prefer to add a one-line cookie banner js, than review if they need or even use tracking cookies.

[dash2]

Let’s accept for the sake of argument that all the cookie banners are malicious compliance. Fine. Then they should change the law to stop the malicious compliance! Regulation has an outcome nobody likes. Are you gonna wait for every company to stop being “malicious”? Or are you gonna fix the law?

[frankvdwaal]

The latter, obviously, and that is what's happening with the Digital Omnibus.

[enedil]

To be fair, I don't remember people complaining about cookies. The question is fairly simple, etc. Meanwhile ads? They try to steal the attention. So yeah, lots of friends complain about internet ads, not so many about cookies. I'm EU based.

[snowpid]

My friends / co worker are computer and non computer people, hobbys, cultural background. Maybe your friend group is highly selected. Which country are you from?

[iamacyborg]

> Most EU initiatives have damaged everyday UX on the web and in tech.

Are you really trying to suggest that GDPR and PECR are bad pieces of legislation because businesses have decided that they’d prefer to give you a bad UX?

[gib444]

Right. It’s the loopholes that make them bad

[iamacyborg]

What loopholes?

[tcfhgj]

- digital services act mandates interoperability in chat, but apparently companies can put require obnoxious terms for interoperating parties such as sharing their users IP addresses - which service is going to agree to that if a very large portion of the alternatives target people not wanting to share data with Facebook?

- pay "ridiculous price" or accept ads & tracking instead of allowing to disable tracking

[iamacyborg]

NOYB have raised a complaint on the second one for a publisher in the Nordics.

https://noyb.eu/en/nordic-media-giant-schibsted-switches-pay...

[em-bee]

i haven't heard about the first one yet. i totally believe it, but do we have an actual example of facebooks demands? are they documented somewhere?

the second one i experience daily and it's driving me nuts. i am sure it is actually illegal, but i have yet to find an explanation on why it should be allowed or a convincing legal argument in why it actually violates the rules. something that i could send to violators.

[red_admiral]

The "legitimate purposes" pre-ticked hidden box on some cookie dialogs, for one.

[iamacyborg]

AFAIK, those are not legally compliant.

[omnimus]

It's not only HN. You can see big tech media hate against any effort europe does. Everybody is mocking europe for building 10 years old chip fabs or their measly small unusable clouds or bad startup scene.

It's interesting because not that long ago nobody cared about what europe did in tech. Or more like everybody was fine with the fact that europe imported computers and exported something else. It was like that forever. I am not sure where this is coming from. It almost seems like even these weak efforts might mess up with somebodys business.

[earthnail]

It’s even more interesting because a big supply chain problem during Covid were related to old chips used in tons of mechanical engineering products, like cars. Given that experience you could argue that the old fabs are much better value for money for resiliency.

[sunshine-o]

Asianometry just released a video about this: The EU Chips Act is a Failure [0]

Definitely the most cynical video he ever released.

- [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI

[omnimus]

Is cynical? I see lot of mocking in the comments but the video is basically saying to focus on the uncool older stable stuff and use that for stability. The very not recommended path there is to jump on hype of AI chips and fund some random Mistral AI chips.

[PurpleRamen]

There is a type of videos, where people mock US-citizens for their ignorance about the rest of the world and how things are working there. Those mocking EU for their efforts, usually have that same smell.

[shevy-java]

The thing is that Europe needs to really decouple as much as possible from crazy dictatorships such as Russia or the USA. US companies are part of that toolbox of containment that the USA is presently doing against Europeans.

Sooner or later Europe will wake up. Right now we still have too many lobbyists but this will change - at the latest when key lobbyists are put in jail for many decades. Sadly this also means the current EU commission has to go to jail too.

[scihuber]

Unfortunately, even figures such as the leaders of the United States or Russia — or their associates — won’t end up behind bars either.

[nickslaughter02]

Don't forget to say Russia is behind it.

[esperent]

I didn't say that because I don't think it. Honestly, I expect it's mostly Americans plus a couple of self deprecating Europeans making these comments.

[zoul]

Mastodon works fairly well for that I think.

[teroshan]

Is there a specific instance that you believe would be most suited to discover like-minded individuals on this particular subject?

https://fosstodon.org seems like a good fit but is invite-only

[zoul]

Any instance will work I think, just start following someone like https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert and you should discover relevant people and hashtags soon enough.

[PurpleRamen]

HN is full of people which EU is fighting against, so of course is there little chance to find sane discussions here. You could try some european subreddits, or local tech-sites from Europe, there is usually a better chance to find people who benefit from EU-regulations and have a more rational view on them.

[stogot]

If you create one, I would join

Free to copy this code base https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

[throw-the-towel]

Even on HN we're still human, and have the same human weaknesses and failure modes.

[ExoticPearTree]

I guess the hate is because the EU also invented the following monstrosities:

- CRA (cyber resiliency act): Manufacturers must handle and release security patches for vulnerabilities, and developers are required to report actively on exploited vulnerabilities and breaches.

- PLD (Product Liability Directive): A failure to provide critical security updates or the presence of exploitable vulnerabilities can now legally constitute a "defect" and if defective software causes physical harm or property damage, manufacturers are strictly liable and cannot contractually exclude or limit this liability.

And the kicker is this: Non-commercial open-source software is generally exempt from these commercial liability frameworks. However, if an open-source component is integrated into a commercial, for-profit product, the responsibility shifts to the corporate manufacturer.

So good luck making some money of your open source project where the risk outweighs any potential profit, or integrate an open source project into your commercial offering.

[earthnail]

Sounds like plausible clauses to me? Please explain why they are so toxic. What cases are there where these clauses present an unfair threat or disadvantage to a business?

In case it is unclear from my tone, I am genuinely curious.

[ExoticPearTree]

Here it goes:

- CRA mandates vulnerability patches for products. This puts undue burden on manufacturers whose products are out of the production cycle. Basically the EU wants updates for products no longer manufactured.

- PLD requires fixes for products deemed to have critical vulnerabilities, again, if the product is not manufactured anymore, why should the manufacturer have to support who knows what old software?

Then, for OSS it is even worse: you have a pet project, you give it away for free, it has success, you want to sell a paid version of it. Automatically you're on the hook for vulnerability fixing. Which takes time. And if you're in the early stages of maybe selling a few copies here and there, the time spent fixing stuff will outweigh any winnings.

Than again with "you're on the hook if you ship commercial products using some OSS components" - either no one ships OSS packages with their commercial software given the advent of coding agents that can replicate OSS software functionality, or there will be a ton of forks, with vendors claiming they fixed the problem in their own way.

With all this said, then the EU has the nerve to come and say "use OSS" because freedom and BS.

[Kinrany]

All of this makes perfect sense

[sam_lowry_]

There was so much more they could do... like 25 years before requiring detachable batteries, they should have required selling the OS separately.

[mjanx123]

IIRC Microsoft has a no liability clause in its licenses. How did they react to this?

[snowpid]

? Usually the clauses arent valid from the contracts and you can sue Microsoft on court. What did you expect?

[regexorcist]

What is your point again? All of the above sounds perfectly fine to me.

[lenkite]

That's because American BigTech Bros are afraid of the below and will take every opportunity to diss on it.

"Support uptake of open source alternatives to proprietary solutions together with Member States and the Digital Commons EDIC — cloud, workplace tools, secure e-mail, decentralised social media."

[_the_inflator]

With the European Chips Act I already a total disaster, please help me with your intelligence, thoughtful discussion to explain the feasibility of miracles to me in rational terms, since the EU is obviously oblivious to the fact, that they are delusional and hubris might be a better term to explain, what "the EU" wants to achieve - and maintain.

BTW, the EU also plans for a energy transformation, being a military powerhouse, surveillance state - what else could be wish into reality?

[kyboren]

Sovereign manufacturing supply chains? A competitive EV company? A competitive space launcher?

How about a healthy native birth rate and relatively low levels of immigration?

But to create that many strategies, you're gonna need a huge EU bureaucracy. So better create a strategy to reduce the growth of EU bureaucracy, too.

[lukan]

So instead of adressing the article and provide the potential base for a intelligent debate, you decided to raise the bar by lamenting?

My impression in general is that there is rather a very EU friendly view here on HN in general, but HN is critical of everything.

So I also say, lot's of nice words, great that they at least start so late with that now, but more concrete steps would be more welcome.

"Making public administrations anchor users and contributors to open source, through procurement guidance, open-source friendly tendering, strengthening the Open Source Programme Office and its networks, reusable public digital assets and by embedding openness and sovereignty in digital investment decisions"

Because this for example sounds great. But is it very concrete? It sounds like it, but I don't see how it is.