Is this already a thing? Would it make sense? Could it allow the FOSS ecosystem to properly compete with big tech and proprietary software? What sort of impact might it have on projects like peertube and issues like online anonymity and privacy?
I a kind mixed about this, on one hand, i think it will help a lot for linux to thrive, but on the other hand, i do not trust the gov with linux , i do not want backdoor on my system,
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This is a legit difficult topic that we can discuss indefinitely, for better or worse.
The EU is a political organization, not ideological. This means that they will not promote Linux because it’s Free Software. However, they might promote it if we frame it as software independence from USA big tech — which is what is the current topic in various EU talks. What I am trying to say is: If you are talking to EU gov, on any of their official channels, pay attention to HOW you frame it.
Also the money. It is a good way to position Linux as means to circulate the EU money inside the EU instead of gifting it to USA.
As for PeerTube — that I do not know. EU tried “chat control” already, and they keep trying to invade our privacy so I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one. But it’s worth discussing in public. You never know when someone intelligent, from the EU gov, will stumble upon this topic and possibly learn something. Learn what citizens want. So keep expressing yourself.
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I definitely believe in 1984 since I read it some kind of 10 years ago. I also believe the movie Idiocracy. I don’t think EU promoting Linux (but here we should say GNU/Linux I think) to public is a good stuff. I don’t trust in governments as I don’t trust anybody. Government promoting Linux , or even FOSS, is a bad thing I think as people will not read the code and just follow what the government says. I see it with my friends, I try to tell them for years that privacy is important and they still using Discord (they don’t care about MY privacy). So, I don’t think it would be a great idea. Linux for the elite of thinking people, not for the sheeps.
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All politics is largely about where power lies, who pays, and whose head rolls when shit-hits-fan. In the case of the EU the main stakeholders (or power players) are member states, political parties represented in the EU Parliament, a range of associations, lots of industry lobbies and a number of non-EU countries. Civil Society groups representing normal people have much less influence and struggle to compete ( Civil society contribution to EU policy-making remains informal | EESC ), this is a major problem affecting the quality of EU democratic processes.
We saw it with chat control, where the security institutions of quite a few member states called for it, with very few other political actors initially opposing the policy. A couple of member states actively pushed for it, many others acquiesced, say like Spain, where it was largely seen as a non-issue which only the far right Vox party openly opposed. In the end what blocked the proposal (for now) was public debate involving key civil society actors in one key country (Germany), swinging its political support to the ‘no’ camp.
Those who pushed for chat control will doubtless try again in the future and the only way to stop them will be to push back harder and more effectively. This must therefore be an ongoing campaign.
On Open Source, the European Commission recently launched ‘The EU Open Source Strategy’, for which apparently 2B EUR in funding will be ‘mobilised,’ though I’m not sure how much from EU funds and how much from the private sector. This is a drop in the ocean compared to the 260BN plus that EU countries supposedly spend on proprietary IT solutions every year.
But although it could be a big step forward for open source, the wording of the policies suggest the focus will all be on companies while the word community doesn’t appear even once. This is what happens when you don’t have a voice in the development of policy, you get left out even when it’s your community that forms the basis of what they are trying to build on.
An example of exactly this would appear to be the apparent migration of the European Commission and the ECB from twitter/X to W Social, a questionable project which might be going closed source and doesn’t look amazing ( W Social, Public Institutions and the Theater of European Digital Sovereignty ).
Because at the end of the day, when it comes to govt policy and govt money, either you play the game and fight your corner, or you’ll get walked over, left behind, end up with chat control and have to pay for it too. So do we need to pay more attention to this or does someone already have our backs?
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