Randahl FinkIf you do not want to use software from a US tech industry that supports Donald Trump, this is the website you have been looking for:
Frans Veldman ⁱ ᵃᵐ ᵃⁿᵗⁱᶠᵃ🚩I think we should stop looking for geographic/political bound services. The internet was designed to be used without that.
We have email servers all over the world, and various email clients that can make use of it. There is no owner of the email service, no country the host of the email service, no one who has power over the email service. Email is nor “American” nor “European”.
The danger we are now facing is that we will get “European services”, owned by Europeans, yet again locking you in, this time in a European scheme. Europe is not the holy grail however, they have grifters, nationalists, ultra rights, Trump-wannabee’s too. We will just swap one problem for another.
The keyword here is decentralized. That is what we should be looking for. Not American, not European, but truly decentralized. Nobody in ultimate power, nobody who can make it politically lean to one side or the other, nobody who can pull the plug, or sell it to a billionaire. This is how the internet was intended, and how many of the initial services (email, name servers) were designed. This path was abandoned when big tech wanted to commercialize services, but it doesn’t have to be like this.
For most services, if not all, decentralized alternatives exists.
Good starting points to learn more about this can be, among others, found here: https://redecentralize.org/
@FransVeldman the hard part is all the non-cloud software, because that is never "decentralized".
Also, in my work I am bound to a ton of American apps like Photoshop and Davinci Resolve which requires a significant skill level.
It has taken me three years just to learn Davinci Resolve — switching is not always just a choice, but a considerable investment.
What do you mean with “non cloud software”? I host a lot of decentralized services which have nothing to do with a cloud. They just run on a VPS, which can be anywhere in the world. Currently, I have my services hosted in Iceland, because I like their privacy policies, but I can just plant them in any other country if I wish to.
Photoshop? Have you tried Gimp? Many professionals who abandoned Microsoft and have chosen for Linux claim that Gimp can do everything Photoshop can do, often even better.
@FransVeldman all I meant was, a regular old school installed app is not hosted. It comes from a company and is installed on your device, so obviously, there is no decentralized aspect of it.
But the learning is the main problem. I know quite many people who hate Apple, yet use their products because learning something new is a considerable investment.
I think, with all respect, that you have to educate yourself on this subject. An app is usually just a client, for some other service that runs somewhere on the internet.
Ok, not a calculator-app, because that one can run without any outside support.
But most apps, they use some kind of host. If that host can be anywhere in the world, then it is fine. However, if it is bound to a specific host, like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, you are locked in by some vendor, with a host that is placed in a country that might not so pleasant to do business with.
An email-app however, is usually not restricted to one host. You can tell it which email-provider you want to use, and that can be anywhere in the world. Don’t like gmail? Then use another provider, or ultimately, host an email server yourself.
The same applies to the messenger app Matrix. It is not restricted to one host. There are hundreds of hosts. I self-host a Matrix instance in Iceland, and just like with e-mail, it will communicate fine with any other instance where my message partner has chosen to subscribe to.
Anyway, I urge you, do not advocate “European services” because that is just moving the problem from one place to another. To really solve the problem, we have just to go back to how the internet was intended, and only promote decentralized services that can be anywhere on the world (you pick one you like), with an open standard, so there can be multiple clients using the very same service.
I self host my email server. I use Thunderbird on my laptop to access it, and K-9 mail on my GrapheneOS phone. I’m not bound to just one provider, nor to just one client app.
atanasoff@FransVeldman @randahl while your approach is good, and I myself self-host stuff at home, regular people wants convince and promoting EU tech is the way to go. Internet from the past is not coming back, and Europe needs its own tech champions.
It is not “from the past”, it is alive and kicking and the most important elements from internet are working according to the core principles. Like email, name servers, etc.
Nobody “owns” the name servers (which is a very, very good thing).
The only reason to not follow this decentral principle is to dominate some market. And this is not “what regular people want” but what some TechBro’s want. Can you explain to me what the advantage is that with WhatsApp you can’t choose another app? Why you can’t choose a European based server?
The Europe Tech Champions can do it right from the beginning, and just allow whatever they design, to be used with configurable providers, not just the one they own themselves. And they can make the protocols open, so that third parties can develop their own apps for it.
Think about what will happen if we don’t go this way. In which country should they set up the server? Hungary? What if we kick that country out of the EU? Ok, another one? France? What if they get an ultra right nationalist government which suddenly mandates that all services running on “their” servers should be in French language?
Really, a decentralized design is the only way to go, the only way to make it future proof. Nobody should own it, nobody should be able to force their own rules on it.
Khleedril``switching is not always just a choice, but a considerable investment''
But it will be worth it.