Edit: It is a joint open source initiative between Germany, France, Italy, & Netherlands to make Cybersecurity, AI, Cloud, & Social Media Network alternatives
Maybe we can finally get a Facebook open source alternative with mobile apps /s
Spotted this on Mastodon so I decided to inform you all. What you think?
EU OpenSource alternatives already exist since a lot of years, often even superior as the ones from the US. It’s not the lack of EU alternatives, it’s only the lack of their use by corporations and goverments, eg. Blink and WebKit are forks from the German KHTML (killed by Apple) by KDE, In the AI, there exist, among others, the Swiss Apertus (FLOSS) by the Swiss Supercomputer Center (CSCS) used also by the CERN. Proton, Nextcloud, Murena, Mastodon, Fairphone…It would be easy for the EU to have total sovereignty in Soft and Services, it just lacks the political will to have it, while Trump is occupied with his Ballroom scam, paid by Google, M$, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Cryptocompanies & cia.
https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to
https://european-alternatives.eu/categories
On the other hand, it isn’t so important the country of community driven OpenSource, more important in those made by the mencioned Ballroom spomsores which are to avoid, also in commercial proprietary apps, there are also preferable those from EU companies.
Something that should not be forgotten is that hardware matters to. If Nvidia, Intel or AMD has an interdiction to sell to a country, you can have all the FLOSS software (Fair, Libre and Open), if you have no hardware then tough shit. China is getting good GPU with a shiton of investments, so Europe needs to do the same. Using RiscV for this would allow to have an instruction set that already have nice support (I even heard it can be used for GPU) to bring nice or newer stuff to the table. For manufacturing, a Netherland company is producing the tools of TSMC so there is that, at least.
Edit: added links
The EU is also going away from trades with the US (not only because tariffs) and prefering to trade with China as a more trustworth client and provider.
Imagine how fast the US turned to shit, that China is now more trustworthy. Or at least, much more stable.
In trading stability is that what count. Apart that China offers way more in tecnology than the US, whose tecnology is only centred in weapons. Look at Chinas EVs, they are light years more advanced as Tesla, same in robotics, already massive implemented in the society (surveillance apart)
In my opinion, only turning to China is not enough. Diversifying is good, but in the same time, nothing “under control” is built, your stability depends on diplomacy and in this case, and it is a big weakness (this is how Xi made Trump bending with rare earth)
It is always best not to depend on third countries in the essentials. This thing about rare earths is basically not so correct, since they are not really rare, they are found in practically all countries, only the extraction is enormously polluting, but on the other hand there are in each country old exploitations and mining in an environment that has already been destroyed. Urban mining may also should be more used than currently, with the huge amount of electronic waste available everywhere and are a big source for not only “rare earth”, but also a lot of other raw material. As always, political, economic and corporation interests prevail the common sense.
TOPXI
does anyone know what the difference between OsmAnd and Organic Maps is?
If the EU doesn’t also pursue Open Source Hardware (OSH), then vulnerabilities will still exist.
FOSS or FLOSS is good, but OSH should be with it side by side.
Isn’t the Fediverse already an open source social media platform?
It is, but developing is also supporting existing software, so supporting Mastodon, or other fediverse platforms would fit the bill.
Regarding the social network piece, I’d like to see a push in the worldwide OSS community to make an installer for self hosted federated services. I know it’s not realistic to make that completely push-button, but something that will take local machine config and connection information and then configure docker and the necessary containers for whatever services the person wants to host.
I’d start the project myself but my coding ability amounts to only a little more than hello world in a couple languages.
finally. i’ve been waiting for this for a long time. finally a worthwhile software development project again.
France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands will work to develop open, European alternatives in “key areas” such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and – curiously – social networks.
especially social networks are important, as it allows people to connect and exchange messages outside of the influence of US big biased algorithms.
does anybody have a link to the project website, where one can sign up and contribute?
Link preview, my ass
each instance gets the link previews independently of each other, and some instances might be blocked to get them, mine shows it clearly.
deleted by creator
Apologies I had no idea that would happen. I’ll look for a better source to add alongside that one
Edit: It’s the only source…
You’re good. Just furry instance is not the best instance in the Lemmyverse lol
Furry instance? I’m unfamiliar with what you mean
pawb.social - “Fediverse Communities For Furries By Furries.”
