Mastodawn

kit 2d ago

@dch one wonders when and how they’ll deal with phone sovereignty.

@hypostase I keep expecting a Nokia Communicator to arise from the ashes in Finland

Diane 2d ago

@dch @hypostase

By any chance do you mean @jolla ?

Anu Lahtinen 2d ago

@alienghic @dch @hypostase @jolla I have already ordered my new @jolla

kit 2d ago

@anulahtinen @alienghic @dch @jolla I did look at it, and if sovereign level interest gets behind it it may well be a good choice.

It wasn’t clear to me whether I could get necessary tools (bankid signal) on it, and that’s still the sticking point.

Even if I use a degoogeviled phone, their are critical apps, for banking, identification, and, of course, signal, that can’t be acquired outside of a US based app store.

I’d really like to se an EU sovereign supported ”store”, at least for those apps that are required to interact with government and society.

Urzl 2d ago

@dch They're pretty sure that when Trump declared himself world emperor that he'll force everyone to use Windows/CoPilot so in the long term, they're not worried.

In the long run, the idea is to subsume all private computing into their cloud/panopticon.

gra 2d ago

@dch @revk I'm sure someone at ms would already be drafting an angry email to the French government right now if they could figure out which copy of outlook was working.

mmu_man 2d ago

@dch not really, only the government section that's responsible for digital stuff (so those who know what they do, not the rest of the gov…)

Yes, that's the DINUM (Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs), a department with approximately 250 users. It's still quite an event, though.

Paolo Vecchi 2d ago

@nicolasvivant It's a good start and an example that will be followed by other departments. @mmu_man @dch

Yep, fingers crossed!

@nicolasvivant @paolo @mmu_man @dch

David 2d ago

So this part just means "a plan to do something" and not "a plan to go Linux"?

> The press release also requires each ministry, including public operators, to develop a plan by autumn 2026 addressing desktop systems, collaboration tools, ...

@nicolasvivant @paolo @mmu_man

@idbrii I think its somewhere in between.

- you have to have a plan by the year's end
- no commitments on timeframe, budgeting, resources

That's why my toot says "moving off MS" and not necessarily switching *to* a particular system.

I think, across Europe, govts are realising that having the entirety of your economic strategy, defense planning, and more, on US hosted and run systems, is no longer a trustworthy, and is a significant strategic threat for the nation.

Andrew Millar 2d ago

@mmu_man @dch I'm not so sure about that limited scope.
From the original, "S'agissant de la migration vers des solutions souveraines, la Caisse nationale d'Assurance maladie a annoncé il y a quelques jours la migration de ses 80 000 agents vers des outils du socle numérique interministériel (Tchap, Visio et FranceTransfert pour le transfert de documents).
Le mois dernier, le Gouvernement annonçait la migration de la plateforme des données de santé vers une solution de confiance d'ici à fin 2026."

mmu_man 2d ago

@A_J_Millar @dch yes (though technically the CNAM is not part of the gov), but we've been having that for years, some migrate partly, while others renew "open bar" contacts with Microsoft. Some even do both, they do a little migration but keep ties with MS.

mmu_man 2d ago

@A_J_Millar @dch the best example being the gendarmerie (a branch of the police that's part of the military) which took 10 years to migrate completely to their own linux distro.

Andrew Millar 2d ago

@mmu_man Interesting example, thanks.

rickf 2d ago

@dch Excellent news!!

Alex Bardsley

@dch
The whole crap with MS not updating Windows 10 like we're going to trash perfectly good machines or pay extra for the updates? Bye-bye.

(^^)2d ago

@dch i really can't understand why it's taken this long.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bavaria-wants-to-move-to-Microsoft-cloud-by-year-end-11066929.html

Andreas (82MHz)2d ago

@dch
Meanwhile, where I live:

Bavaria wants to move to Microsoft cloud by year-end

Bavaria wants to equip its authorities with Microsoft 365. Critics expect license costs in the billions and warn of the loss of digital sovereignty.

heise online

Ben Todd 2d ago

@dch

The one thing Copilot actually has helped people do is to ditch Windows for Linux.

Franz Graf 2d ago

@dch I just hope that open source really benefits also financially. But it's a bold and good move.
Those monopolies are just not good

Rolf Cronberg 2d ago

@dch This is very good and long overdue.

I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥2d ago

@dch
Microsoft's marketing people consulted Copilot, and it said there's no problem.

@oblomov

Anu Lahtinen 2d ago

@xinit @dch @oblomov 😂

luca 2d ago

@dch Microsoft can't do nothing more than hail their king. They're just oligarchies in a rogue nation.

What I hope is that Europe will keep breaking chains even after the current US administration's end of mandate. Then we will see if EU has finally gained a sense for reality.

⠵⠻⠷⠕⠭ 🍥🍉⚪🌹2d ago

@dch microsoft heart linux tho

musashimaru 2d ago

@dch

It would be great to have some regulation (EU is great at it) to make mandatory for computer distributors to have drivers available for linux / bsd system.

That would solve a lot of issues with such migration.

@uramihsasum a better organisational lever is to *require* that major vendors must provide full specifications for their systems, to be supplied as part of their bid documentation. I think in most cases this would be largely sufficient for enabling open source to build those drivers.

Otherwise we end up with a world of Windows-like blob drivers, that comply on paper with whatever requirements are placed on them, but are broken in ways that can't be fixed by open source communities.

musashimaru 2d ago

@dch

I agree partly.

Full specification would be great but might be too big to ask. Also users of such products should not solely rely on open source developers agenda.

I know it's simplistic approach but some driver that does the job (even badly) is better than none.

It is pain that since I first experimented with linux desktop (20 years ago) the installation / setting experience have not changed much.

If you are lucky you got a wifi from the right provider, also to set a screen properly that does not flicker it feels pure lottery. Not to mention make two screens work at the same time.

Would be great to have the bare minimum for up and running such system are built in.

(Great topic by the way, I appreciate you raising it)

Alexander Dyas 2d ago

@dch Microsoft, but also Digital Sovreignty, breaking away from a foreign country that has concretely demonstrated it cannot be trusted.

@alexanderdyas yup, that is the underlying driving force. Although EU will still be buying either USA or Chinese CPUs for the forseeable future.

The Penguin of Evil 2d ago

@dch @alexanderdyas USA and Israeli and more A huge amount of Intel CPU design happens in Israel, and chunks in other countries. Dunno about AMD but an Intel CPU is very international.

Trying to assign corporations to nation states is like trying to give oligarchs nationalities. They are powerful above the level it has meaning. Just like the kings before them they are really a separate international family connected more to each other than any state

[tj] - knows what your packets are thinking 2d ago

@dch @alexanderdyas I think some would argue that ARM is UK CPUs, but that is honestly just nonsense.

@tj @alexanderdyas “Since 2016, it has been majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.” I guess all we are missing is an EU foundry to build them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants suggests that the leading edge nanoscale ones are in Taiwan.

List of semiconductor fabrication plants - Wikipedia

[tj] - knows what your packets are thinking 2d ago

@dch @alexanderdyas all production happens in one please.

I think the core nationalism to this argument is the problem, but it seems the world doesn't agree with me and is leaning super heavily into nationalism again.

@tj the wider picture is that I don’t practically see today nor in the near future that, for use in a secure environment, you could buy or build a performant server from a trusted supply chain. Too many components and too many places to compromise it, from cpu design, to ipmi security, and all the software in between @alexanderdyas

Demallien 1d ago

@dch although the big expensive machines at the heart of all those fabs is Dutch if i remember correctly.

1d ago

@demallien yes but the advanced foundries are all in Taiwan. Truly global, and that’s what makes the actions of the current US administration so mind boggling asinine.

Interpipes 💙2d ago

@dch imo this will only be transformative if they take a sizeable portion of the money they otherwise would have spent on licensing and fund development hours instead. i.e. while unit-cost savings will exist, it should not be seen primarily driven on lower costs overall. Otherwise they merely join the list of people submitting demanding bug reports to the one person actually working on a thing.

@interpipes true! I think this will happen - there are aisles of bureaucrats used to paying license fees, and companies like Suse are well positioned to do a RedHat like model and be that channel. No more Nebraska support!

J$2d ago

@dch YM Microslop, the Copilot Company, formerly known as?

It believes money will rain from the sky, onto a definitely not burning earth. This is the basic generative “AI” hallucination that has consumed that company. Not that it wasn’t a shitshow before; but now it’s a burning shitshow running off a cliff.

Good riddance.

David Monniaux 2d ago

@dch Sadly, it is in practice far from "the entire French government is moving from MS". The only organization that's mostly off MS is the Gendarmerie. (And some in higher education & research, but only the research side, not the admin/financial.)

Fazal Majid 1d ago

@MonniauxD @dch they are expanding based on the Gendarmerie, and all agencies have to submit a migration plan by October. As always, talk is cheap, it's deeds that matter.