“We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “This is about protecting our citizens, defending our interests and making our own choices.”
@EUCommission @europe @fsfe
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-plots-long-game-against-us-digital-supremacy/
What if, instead of swapping out American tech barons for European tech barons, the free people of the world decided that critical software needs to be free and open source in order to be verifiably secure? What if we all decided to make our governments make free software and just… everybody share?
What if that?
Open Source is not that automatic solution to all problems as some people make it sound. A lot of software used by tech oligarchs is open source. Netflix is in great parts open source. Open source software doesn’t give much power back to the people if it runs on server farms and communicates on data cables owned by billionaires. Verifiability is also in question for server code. If you want to take power away from tech oligarchs, you have to start at the physical infrastructure, not the virtual software.
I think both are necessary, and I don’t think “automatic solution to all problems” is the bar for something to be worth pursuing. I also don’t think that you have to start with one or the other; progress in one domain makes progress in the other domain easier, and they can and should work in parallel. I just happen to be more on the software side so that’s where my mind naturally defaults.
But yes, generally agree we need decentralized, de-corporatized hardware as well as the software to operate it.
That’s why I believe its worthwhile to put out reminders for other sides, too. ;-)
We, of course, both agree about the overall issue and I’m the last person who would be against open source software.
I concur ❤️ Technology is a complicated thing, and making the whole stack work for humanity is a full team effort.