Marcin CieślakFeb 28
Antti Peltola ⁂

I saw this on a Finnish post, so let me reformulate it a bit and post it in English.

Finnish universities 1996:

"Here's an operating system we created for you. Here's a chat network we created you can use with the operating system."

Finnish universities 2026:

"We don't know how to replace Facebook for public communications."

Learned helplessness.

#Linux #IRC #Finland #Suomi

Feb 8 at 7:44amWeb
Show threadEivind (like the Terrible) ✨Feb 8
@anttipeltola Does it perhaps have something to do with the takeover of the managerial class, the HR people and the Professional Communicators, or has that not happened in Finland?
Show threadFunamboloFeb 8
@anttipeltola exactly. It is also absurd how the public sector believes it is ok to pay hundreds of millions of euros to U.S. companies instead of probably spending a fraction of that money build their own solution based on existing open source code and open standard.
Show threadZ̈oéFeb 8
@funambolo @anttipeltola „it’s not that simple! if it was so simple then why would they charge so much money for it??“ 😒
Show threadLauri KotilainenFeb 8

@uint8_t @funambolo @anttipeltola

Yeah, it’s not like WhatsApp is built on a foundation of open standards and free software or anything like that. *side-eyes at ejabberd*

Show threadAlexFeb 8
@uint8_t most of these services are overcharged for what you get and they are built on top of free labor. @funambolo @anttipeltola
Show threadAntti Peltola ⁂Feb 8

@Mellivora @uint8_t @funambolo

The age-old Silicon Valley trick of freeloading on others' free labour and making huge profits out of enshittification while calling themselves "innovators".

Show threadAlexFeb 8
@anttipeltola the world would crumble if all these oss devs went on strike and pushed out an update that broke their library or framework. @uint8_t @funambolo
Show threadAntti Peltola ⁂Feb 8

@Mellivora @uint8_t @funambolo

Yes, this could be a reasonable anarchist solution for taking down the system without firing a shot.

Show threadStryder NotaviFeb 8

@funambolo @anttipeltola @uint8_t Its also that by paying them, they can blame them for any problems.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/aws-and-microsoft-are-selling-much-more-than-cloud/

AWS and Microsoft are selling much more than cloud services - Bert Hubert's writings

Ten, twenty years ago customers over at large corporations would often ask me what hardware they’d need to run my software. As software developers, we’d tend to be rather blasé about such questions: “whatever you have lying around!”. If pressed, we’d say you’d need this much RAM and that much storage. We thought we were doing our users a tremendous favor by being so flexible. Yet, customers were very much not happy with our responses.

Bert Hubert's writings
Show threadZ̈oéFeb 9
@StryderNotavi @funambolo @anttipeltola oh yes. running on cloud, vendors are also less incentivized to write efficient code. if they spend a million on aws anyways, they won’t mind a 200k software license on top of that. You’ll have a harder time selling the same solution if your software runs just fine on just 2 servers from 5 years ago.
Show threadMix Mistress AliceFeb 9
@funambolo @anttipeltola And as the public sector is mainly financed through taxes taken from the workforce, it's a shame.
Show threadAntero HytönenFeb 9

@anttipeltola @funambolo

Universities still do cool things in Finland. The Finnish space industry got a big boost from essentially an university project.

Hopefully stuff like that still keeps happening.

Show threadTobiasFeb 9
@funambolo @anttipeltola This is exactly what @zendis is trying to do with https://www.opendesk.eu/en in Germany … and beyond; the ICC is to switch to openDesk, too: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/international-criminal-court-invests-open-infrastructure
The office and collaboration suite for public administration

openDesk is a flexible all-in-one office suite for the public sector: word processing, collaboration, file sharing, video calls, chat, and project management.

openDesk
Show threadFredFeb 8

@anttipeltola @ucas

Here's a similar toot with some good takes on the situation (though not specifically aimed towards Finland):

https://hsnl.social/@eloy/116003176888188762

Eloy. (@[email protected])

universities in the 1980s: writing the majority of internet standard RFCs and their implementations universities now: moving away from Microsoft cloud is really hard okay? 🥺

HSNL Social
Show threadNiniFeb 8
@anttipeltola I'm guessing in the intervening 30 years the MBA set came in and stripped all that "thinking" nonsense because it wasn't profitable and you could outsource it for cheap. It's not only learned helplessness, it's decimating institutional knowledge because some beancounters thought it cost too much to maintain it, happens frequently with many social pillars that are hollowed out by capitalists.
Show threadTony 💉x10 🇦🇺Feb 8

@anttipeltola

Creating a successful Facebook replacement has little to do with underlying technology or university education system. Success depends far more on access to deep, liquid capital markets and a large domestic market that can serve as a launching pad for international growth.

Show threadDudula the DudFeb 8
@anttipeltola sounds like complacency and laziness to me, but I am lazy and complacent.
Show threadGeli Gak?Feb 8
@anttipeltola come on Europe, I believe you can do that.
Show threadBfPVDFUeFeb 8
@anttipeltola not just Finland. I'd say most of europe?
Show threadPetri SalmelaFeb 8

@anttipeltola @openfactory The point was, that Linux was literally released at the University of Helsinki. IRC was developed at the University of Oulu. The first version of ssh was developed at the Helsinki University of Technology. All rather ground breaking.

(Edit: Fixed "University of Helsinki" to "Helsinki University of Technology")

Show threadKähisijäahon Pää-ÄljyFeb 8
@anttipeltola @openfactory @pesasa wasn't ssh deveped while Ylönen was researcher at Helsinki University of Technology?
Show threadPetri SalmelaFeb 8
@anttipeltola @openfactory @poppis Yes exactly. My mistake.
Show threadBfPVDFUeFeb 9

@pesasa @anttipeltola fair enough. I was answering more to the point of the learned helplessness and not to the invention. Would not dimish the impact finnish unis did (compared to the population especially)

but the "oh but we use teams because everyone does and we don't know how we could do anything else people <<demand>> their tools" is crazy

Show threadBfPVDFUeFeb 9

@pesasa @anttipeltola

and another challenging thing is that if we look at our own community, even the citysec' are all moving towards slack/gmail/discord instead of running our own. At least @turkusec is on mastodon - dunno about any other here.

Show threadTurkuSec ryFeb 9
@openfactory @pesasa @anttipeltola Indeed! It's a bit of a shame - the lower rate of adoption. Hopefully, there will be more people/organizations joining the fediverse
Show threadToni AittoniemiFeb 8
@anttipeltola Learned helplessness = The boring end of authoritarianism. Submission.
Show threadJeffFeb 8

@anttipeltola

Unfortunately, this isn't really a technical problem, it's a policy problem.

Organizations certainly have the technical capabilities to replace these tools, but the network effect is hard to break unless you're compelled to do so.

Show threadCalcaneoFeb 8
@anttipeltola It makes me so sad to see this is true elsewhere... I truly thought it was a local problem for us 😞
Show threadHannuFeb 8
@anttipeltola my state government is doing this for everything. Handing ot over to contractors then claing ignorance on issues of medical licensure, license plate renewal, etc
Show threadAntti Peltola ⁂Feb 8

@FknHannu

Yup. Over 500 boosts now. That's "going viral" for me.

Show threadVladimirFeb 8

@anttipeltola Microsoft DreamsPark/Azure Tools for Teaching.

Let's put it this way: for past 15 years, life science graduates with pretty advanced degrees can't do a non-linear regression unless there is a specific 1000 EUR per year per user software package provided.

Show threadtuban_muzuruFeb 8

@anttipeltola

Also Finland: ( seen in Turku ) a young man in his 20s ordering a coffee with his phone. He is sitting two meters from the counter.

Show threadJuho MäntysaloFeb 8

@tuban_muzuru @anttipeltola

Well, one less social interaction for the customer, and less need for a dedicated cashier.

By local standards, this counts as a win-win.

Show threadFoolishOwlFeb 8

@anttipeltola When I've read histories of computers and programming, I was surprised how often Finnish universities were mentioned.

This also sounds like what's happened with universities in the US. In the 90s, a lot of significant software was developed and supported by universities and government-funded research organizations. But universities ended up outsourcing their IT.

Show threadΓιανίρηςFeb 8

#Finland B 4 NATO and Finland after

Linux before Trovalds became a millionaire and after ... he moved to FB-land

@anttipeltola

Show threadTommiFeb 8

@anttipeltola found it!

https://jontka.fi/@tommi/116011921642382637

Tommi (@[email protected])

suomalaiset yliopistot 90-luvulla: kehitettiin tämmöne 😎 reaaliaikainen keskusteluohjelma 😎 sinne voi perustaa omia kanavia. Tietenkin se pyörii meidän palvelimella. Haluutko sen omalle palvelimelle? Otas tosta, ja sit hei! Tässä olis tämmöne käyttöjärjestelmä mikä tehtiin. Se on ilmainen ja paras.🤌😎 suomalaiset yliopistot 2026: te ette vaan voi ymmärtää miten vaikea on siirtää meidän viestintä pois facebookista 🫩

Jontka
Show threadWorldTravelerAll7Feb 8

@anttipeltola

I would think if any country could do it, Finland could

Finland already has the best open instance of #Friendica in English

govts could do like France & make all employees be off certain platforms that collect data

they could even subsidize an instance of an opensource friend app for citizens

reaching out individually to get a friend to switch platforms rarely works. We could set up a #meta mass exodus day

people will go where their friends & people go

Show threadTero HänninenFeb 9
@anttipeltola the early 90s Internet in the NORDUnet space was so excellent. Plenty of great things coming out of universities during that time. Visiting some of these places now, they’re all rumning on either Google or O365 and American social media. IT departments don’t work with the faculties anymore. Etc etc
Show threadThat monocatFeb 9
@anttipeltola
I was thinking the other day that a step to securing an open internet would be for a collaborative state organisation such as the European Union to organise and fund an explicitly non-political org for the creation and management of an open standards browser (with plugins framework)
Show threadrailsFeb 9
@anttipeltola Meanwhile a certain Finnish student:
Show threadRevSPLRFeb 9
@anttipeltola No niin.
Show threadVincent SparksFeb 9
@anttipeltola in fairness, when you want to do public communications, you can't ask the public to come to you
Show threadJörn NettingsmeierFeb 9
@anttipeltola German universities in 2002: we use Java on Windows because it was there. German universities today: we don't understand the problem, we use X and Tiktok, plus you can follow a small subset of classes on MS Teams.
Show threadMichael LabowiczFeb 9
@anttipeltola hard to vibe code an os Kernel...