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I am loving that things are finally moving to make European countries less dependent on US software (especially cloud providers), but I am disappointed that there isn't more of a focus on open source software.

There are several government programs within EU counties to fund the development of open source software. We need WAY more of that, coordinated at the EU level.

The best way to avoid being beholden to big tech is to fund viable open source alternatives.

reuters.com/world/europe/dutch

Bhante Subharo :xmpp:

@notjustbikes What assurance do you have that those governments won't pick really inefficient, cumbersome-to-maintain, bogged-down-with-complexity OpenSource projects, which get mired in problems down the road - BUT have the virtue of having more bells and whistles (conveniences, simplifications) that the end users will like?

Do those governments have incentive to pick the mature, lean-and-mean choices, which have less bells and whistles, -OR- the bloated, cumbersome, Johhny-come-lately Open Source choices, *with more end-user convenience*, and are likely to run way over budget in the longer term? I predict they'll choose the second kind of choice, in a short-sighted, desperate attempt to bring the most convenience to the end users. And it'll bog down in a few years - being really hard to maintain and support; the project being a failure. They'll return back to closed source in a few years - *and thereby get all the end-user convenience they were wanting all along*, realizing they have to pay for it.

@sbb @notjustbikes hopefully they will have IT leaders that have enough sense to tell one from the other and pick what makes the most sense. Or, ideally, spends some developer time and money to make the robust stuff convenient or the convenient stuff robust.