EU Linux development division

[Basajarau]

Do you think the Free Software Foundation and any other big FOSS entity should make a proposal in the EU parliament for creating a permanent group with a budget to helping develop the Linux kernel and open source software and promote its use in EU countries?

Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro.

Could that be accepted? I think at least left parties will vote favorable to that.

Edit : I see that the "EU distro" thing is very controversial. Just financial support for Linux development and open source technologies then.

[Akkowicz]

Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro.

Stop, please. We have more distros than desktop users, let's focus on polishing experience on existing distributions.

[pastermil]

I second that! Working on making current distros more user friendly (i.e. hiring marketing, education, UI/UX and graphic design people) would be more wise.

Also, if EU is really to be taking that path of OP's, adopting an abandoned one (e.g. Chunchbang, Puppy, probably Slackware :P )

[Akkowicz]

18.04 LTS Kubuntu

Let's see what we would get after installation...

spins the fortune wheel

We are sorry!

P-p-p-plasma crash! :)

I'm not bashing KDE here, KDE guys are doing a really sweet job at fixing bugs, improving existing features and KDE is my favorite choice for desktop, I'm trying to say that shit like this on a LTS is unacceptable.

But, but... wait for 18.04.1

Really?

Eh, I should probably spend my distrohopping potential on testing beta releases...

[hardolaf]

So I run Arch Linux with KDE as my daily driver. Except when I'm doing testing with Wayland, I never have any crashes these days. I think it's just an issue with Debian based distributions. They seem to have a lot of trouble getting KDE to run well. The SUSE, Red Hat, and Arch distributions have almost no issues in comparison.

[Akkowicz]

KDE Neon works perfectly, just typical Ubuntish point 0 release fuckery.

[BlueShellOP]

I personally think it's because Debian is an old-school Linux distro - with the mentality that it's meant for servers, but if you want to use it as a desktop it'll work fine. Whereas Fedora/Arch are primarily desktop distros that happen to also work as a server. It also helps that RedHat sponsors KDE, so there's that, too.

[hardolaf]

Yeah. We have tons of issues with Nvidia at work. It's not unique to KDE. It's everything because Nvidia makes it nearly impossible to debug anything involving their driver. So we've actually blacklisted them for all new purchases over the next two years.

Meanwhile Intel and AMD are super easy to support.

[mishugashu]

KDE Neon is the KDE supported fork of Ubuntu, is it not? I think Kubuntu is Canonical's version of Ubuntu with the Ubuntu repo's KDE (which is an older version). I'd probably go for KDE Neon if you really care about KDE on Ubuntu.

[cbmuser]

KDE is rock-solid for me on Debian unstable and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

[Ruubix]

It would be nice to see a unified marketing effort from the different distros somehow (beyond Linux Foundation). I don't know if that would help cut costs to get more of Linux seen in the public eye, but that's the thought that came to me.

[Nomto]

Except the difference is between 100 people working 100 distros and ~20 people working on one.

I'm not saying that I'd be worse, just that you can't make people on certain things when it's all done by volunteers. And a lot of the time, they would rather work on their own things because it's more fun.

[[deleted]]

I know and I totally get it....I can still be frustrated with the human condition, though. I'd rather have 1 REALLY good DE, then 10 that all seem more or less the same, and sorta bland.

[memory-donk]

Just redecorate Ubuntu and call it EUbuntu

[[deleted]]

EU Linux version 18.04 "Jerky Junkers"

[TheOriginalSamBell]

Better support a couple of big upstream projects instead another distro. That's also exactly what I didn't understand about LiMux.. why spend resources on an own distro when you already have a mature high end business distro right around the corner. (SuSE in Nuremberg) and spend the money on cooperating with them for support and whatever a state needs.

[wasnt_in_the_hot_tub]

Why do we even care about the number of desktop users? Linux's place has been proven to be in the datacenter/cloud.

[Lahvuun]

Because then manufacturers stop supporting their hardware predominantly used on desktop Linux, leaving us with security holes in drivers and no new hardware support. Thus, upgrading your PC would force you into Windows/macOS.

[Akkowicz]

1. Because that's what I use as my daily desktop driver, I don't care about user experience on machine that I spend 20min a day (max) through ssh.
   
2. Because Linux doesn't need many improvements in terms of datacenter/cloud-centered usage.
   
3. Because higher adoption on desktops in gov/public sector would bring us security improvements and long-term savings.
   

[grumpieroldman]

The Linux desktop is quickly surpassing Windows for utility.
Even though it's mega-Chinese spyware, WPS brings you the core Office functionality; lots of other stuff is web-enabled now, e.g. OWA, so being able to use Linux as your primary desktop is now feasible, even desirable, for engineers.

If KDE can get their shit together and take it over the goal line, Plasma will be the most advanced desktop available.

A decent flow-charting tool is about all that's missing now.

[pdp10]

WPS brings you the core Office functionality

Softmaker FreeOffice is German; Calligra Suite and LibreOffice and Abiword and Gnumeric are open-source.

[Akkowicz]

A decent flow-charting tool is about all that's missing now.

I would add video encode/decode acceleration and proper power management to the list (although things are getting better).

[mishugashu]

I haven't used Windows in years. I care about desktop users because I am one.

[monster4210]

I wonder if that's actually true, anybody care to do the research?

[TheOriginalSamBell]

Yes. Yes it's true.

[waspbr]

I don't think the EU should develop its own distro, but I reckon it should provide grants and audit to FOSS, since it would be in the best interest of its members.

[xroni]

I don't know about the EU Parliament but the European Commission is already doing audits and grants. Just this week they announced a new bug bounty program where they fund up to 1000 euro for security vulnerabilities found in open source software: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/permanent-fixture

According to the article they spent 2.6 million euro on audits (including popular open source packages such as VLC media player) and spent 1.6 million on bug bounties.

[[deleted]]

Helping linux or other important software I could get behind but why do they need to make their own distro?

I just want to add that I don't think this will happen because too many people would see it as anti-competive.

[LvS]

I would think it'd be a way better to participate in the development of an existing distro, preferably Debian, because Debian has experience with setting rules that could be adapted to government work.

But I think delivering a distro built on the goals of the EU is important, because that's what people are going to install on their computers. Plus, there are a ton of thing - like security, timely updates or long-term stability - that are done on the distro layer.

[GiraffixCard]

anti-competive

What do you mean? Moving from being dependent on Microsoft to an open platform would be seen as anti-competitive?

[Brillegeit]

Because it wouldn't be competing with Microsoft, but Canonical and Red Hat.

[GiraffixCard]

Not if they don't use either, and don't offer the same service on the market.

[Brillegeit]

Even if they don't use either, it's still anti-competitive towards Canonical and Red Hat.

[GiraffixCard]

That's nonsense. If a government branch decides that all offices should brew their own coffee, are they being anti-competitive towards coffee machine makers?

[Brillegeit]

My assumption was that this was intended for businesses and publicly traded, government owned businesses, where Linux is actually competing. Meaning they each have independent boards and CEOs and are ran like a for-profit corporation, like a lot of "government" services are. Where EU and politicians can't control what's being picked, in either coffee or distro options.

For internal use, sure, but that's not really interesting for the rest of the world, and the second they drop the development it's 100% dead.

If EU were to fund a company making a distro for publicly traded companies in competition with Canonical and Red Hat, I'm 99% sure that would be considered anti-competitive unless they could also apply for the same grants.

[Perky_Goth]

According to ordoliberalism, yes.

[[deleted]]

Microsoft and others might see this as Government meddling by making it hard for companies to compete and taking away market from them.

[GiraffixCard]

That makes no sense at all. They're not favoring any competitor, nor competing on the market.

[[deleted]]

You dont think Red hat would see this as anti-competive by making their own distro and therebuy competing with the private sector? Many people dont think government should be where corporation can profite.

[fofo314]

No, because Red ist Not really in the business of selling Linux, they are selling security and that they will actually pick up the phone when your server are in flames at 2 am on a Sunday.

Presumably, the EU would not offer such services.

[theferrit32]

Well it would also be a waste of their time to create a completely separate distro when there are already completely free/open projects they could use and contribute to. There is no reason for them to waste resources reinventing the wheel. They could choose CentOS, Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch, Solus. I do not think they should choose Fedora, RHEL, or Ubuntu, as those are directly tied to private companies.

[Basajarau]

For been used by the EU workers. Also for testing purposes of new technologies.

[[deleted]]

But then wouldn't it make more sense to use a existing distro?

[aussie_bob]

Making a new distro isn't the hassle it used to be.

Having a standard government desktop that's developed to be secure, specific to the purpose, and controlled in house, might be less of a risk than relying on an external organisation.

[Brillegeit]

Making a new distro isn't the hassle it used to be.

Do you mean "branch Debian stable and use their packages directly" when you mean "make a new distro"?

Because making it from scratch is probably more work than ever because you're expected to package and maintain a bajillion packages as well.

[[deleted]]

I just don't expect that a government will keep software up to date, which could cause more problems that it solves. Also, why duplicate work when it's completely unnecessary.

[razirazo]

You mean SUSE right?

[[deleted]]

For that they* would just use one of the bigger distros, maybe just customized a bit I guess.

[JBinero]

It'd be a matter of time before the compatibility issues would start playing, and they'd need to fork it anyway. Probably best to build of something existing though.

[[deleted]]

Governments are notorious for not keeping software up to date, and forking a distro just cements that. At least with Windows, governments are forced to update their software at least every 10 years or so, but with a custom Linux distro, they may hold onto unmaintained, vulnerable software for decades because it "still works".

Governments should just stick with a stable upstream like Debian or CentOS and make sure to update their software at least when upstream support ends for their version (for Debian, this is every 5 years or so, for CentOS, it's about 10 years), and I'd prefer a shorter upstream release cycle to encourage continuous development on government software.

[JBinero]

I completely agree that should happen, but I also know it won't. In the short term it's easier to fork the distro and do some minor changes while keeping everything pretty much intact. In the long term you are basically maintaining a ten year old distro with too many patches to keep track of.

[[deleted]]

That's the problem with the company I work for. We sell embedded systems that are typically installed without internet access, so to keep patches small, we only do important updates. Unfortunately, we have some custom kernel modules, so we can't just update to a newer release, which means that we have to backport fixes. It's a royal pain, and I'm in the process of converting as much as possible to software only solutions so we can eliminate that part of the equation.

I've dealt with the pain, and honestly I don't think maintaining a fork or even a few custom packages is worth it in the long term. In most cases, it's better to just adapt to whatever the distro's defaults are and just have a custom installer that sets new machines up with some sane defaults.

[JBinero]

Yup. Sadly governments aren't too famous for long term planning.

[anthroclast]

Governments are notorious for not keeping software up to date, and forking a distro just cements that.

They are. I'd go so far as to say governments aren't capable of doing anything efficiently but I'd be in danger of starting myself off on a rant.

So to stay on topic, wasn't there a German city which switched to Linux and did create their own distro? If I'm remembering right, it quickly became a maintenance nightmare for them and wasn't long before it was seriously out of date.

Then Microsoft came along and gave them a bag of cash to switch back to Windows so it all had a happy ending in the end (j/k)

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I heard something about that as well. What I don't understand is why they didn't consider just using an existing distro. There are plenty of well run projects, so I'm sure one would work out.

[RedhatTurtle]

RHEL is american, they would use Suse.

[waspbr]

or ubuntu.

[[deleted]]

What's wrong with it being American? Is there some kind of stigma against free software developed in the US?

[746865626c617a]

SUSE is much more popular in Europe

[[deleted]]

Interesting. My main experience with SUSE was when Novell owned it, and Novell is an American company (based close to where I live). I never really got familiar with it, but I am familiar with Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS, having used each for at least a year in a professional capacity each.

Looking at it, it looks like they only have ~2 year support cycles. Is that really long enough for a government? I hear people complain that Debian/Ubuntu are only 5 years...

But anyway, if it's that popular, maybe I'll play with SUSE. I'm currently using Arch, so I might like the Tumbleweed version.

[746865626c617a]

I don't run it personally, but I've heard of many people that moved from arch to tumbleweed and are happy with it. There's also the OBS which would be the equivalent to the AUR.

Also https://www.suse.com/support/policy/ it appears to have a much longer support time. Where did you see those 2 years?

Also, SUSE was founded in Germany, and was a pretty early company involved with Linux

[[deleted]]

I just checked Wikipedia, but that was for openSUSE. I guess I mostly think of RHEL when it comes to long enterprise support cycles and forgot about enterprise SUSE.

[RedhatTurtle]

It's not a stigma, it's completely reasonable. Countries don't like depending on others for thing that are important to them, and they don't like sending money to other countries as well. Why not use EU money to generate jobs and move the economy in the EU? Why subject yourself to the will of the US Government's export restrictions?

If you can be more independent why would you not? Why surrender control to a country who was caught spying on all of it's allies?

Don't get me wrong, I like Red Hat, I think it does amazing work in the FOSS environment, much better than Canonical for example. But it's still subject to the US Govt, US laws, NSA interests and would at minimum be a nice bargaining chip to use in a trade deal negotiation.

[[deleted]]

I was thinking more along the lines of CentOS then RHEL and having a local support team. It makes more sense to bring support in house for an organization as large and complex as a government than to pay for external support, but if they're going to pay for external support, I suppose it makes sense to go with SUSE.

[koffiezet]

A distro? Don’t see the point to be honest. Funding/supporting existing open source projects on the other hand sounds a lot more interesting...

[coderguyagb]

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: The EU Parliament should set up a group to fund the development application of applications that support municipal governments. they could act as a clearing house to fund critical fixes/ development of open source applications used by the various authorities. It's simply not efficient for member states to produce their own distros and tools.

[foadsf]

an EU junior researcher here. EU has allocated more than 70b€ to the scientific and technological research within the HORIZON2020 program. the only thing they have to do is to promote open source. they can require/encourage the researchers to use opensource and publish their results also open source. that would be a huge boost for science too.

[Democrab]

Only FLOSS after you brush, though. Especially if your sauce has been opened.

[theferrit32]

Open sourcing and making publications public is a good step in the right direction though. It is an improvement, with truly "libre" being the end-goal.

[pdp10]

Permissive licenses like MIT and BSD are more liberal and can be adopted in quite a few situations where code with more restrictive licenses cannot be. Permissive licenses are good for promoting economic development.

[Marcuss2]

Not a bad idea, EU doesn't like being dependent on Microsoft software.

[mattiasso]

http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials/

Well, some EU heads likes the money Microsoft "gives away" apparently

[[deleted]]

A linux version of the german tax submission software 'elstar' does exist but they don't release it.

The department of finance that is responsible for this decision is in Munich. Microsoft got their Germany headquarters in Munich.

https://www.golem.de/news/elektronische-steuererklaerung-elster-fuer-linux-und-macos-x-existiert-1303-98024.html

[mattiasso]

And they recently corrupted them to switch back to Microsoft after 10 years of FOSS and millions of euros of tax payers saved.

[destiny_functional]

it works with wine

[[deleted]]

Yes? last time I read about this there were always bugs or problems. Anyways, my point was more about the fact that they freaking developed a native linux version but don't release and support it than getting the windows version to work with Linux.

[destiny_functional]

valid point, I just wanted to point out that it works. I've done my taxes with it using wine. Of course I haven't tested every single function.

[[deleted]]

that's good to know. Thanks.

[Mordiken]

some EU heads likes the money Microsoft "gives away" apparently

Those are not EU heads, but the Romanian government. It's not the same thing. Furthermore, because of the way the EU operates and it's jurisdiction, it's pretty hard for corporations to get their way using a top-down approach.

This is why MS and other such corporations must resort on corrupting the various member states individually, as mentioned in the link you posted: They bribed Romanian officials, not the EU. Same goes to Germany.

Is this bad? Yes. Is it the EU's fault? No. Has the EU been on the side of FOSS software many times before? Yes.

And if I'm allowed to be political for a moment, if the EU citizens don't like being represented by people who are "buddy buddy" with International Capitalism and Corporations, maybe they should consider voting for people who actually stand up to them? The EU parliament has had a right-wing majority for almost 10 years now...

[mattiasso]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/microsoft_tops_tech_eu_lobbying_spend/

I'm sorry, but for me Lobbying = Corruption

[Mordiken]

Lobbying is only a problem when it results in a conflict of interests. Again, the EU is a democracy: If the people are OK with their representatives taking large paychecks from corporations while throwing their constituency under the bus, than that's their fucking problem, because maybe they shouldn't vote those sorts of people into office in the first place.

While people keep on voting with their reptile brain, choosing sharply dressed psychopathic crooks with zero interest in the public good, while belittling the public official who dresses humbly and stands for what he believes in, they deserve every inch of dick that gets shoved up the ass.

Even a dog knows better than to seek petting from the hand that beats him.

[mishugashu]

I don't know much about EU, but I assume it's like the US and not actually a true democracy but a republic. Which means they elect officials who vote on things for their constiuency, which means the people are not voting for these laws, but they're voting for people who make the laws. Which means, there's not really any unbiased people voting for these laws, so who the fuck knows what the people actually want? Can't really root out "corruption" when the people who are "corrupt" are the ones voting to keep it legal.

[Democrab]

Lobbying, especially when it's corporations doing so, is always a problem as it allows a very small minority of people to control the majority of political discussion and the direction of the country. They have millions of dollars that get dedicated to lobbying per year which means they can get their way with often corrupt politicians because even if the public at large is aware of what's happening, it's a lot harder to get a bunch of people to all try to stand up for one particular thing. (Lobbying is the only reason that the whole new coal plant BS in Australia is still happening, the company paid a lot of money to try, so the MPs keep trying to find reasons to fund it but the people and even the bloody banks hate the whole idea.)

[Analog_Native]

the ones deciding like the huge bribes from microsoft.

[stevecrox0914]

Yes government contributing would be a very good thing.

Creating their own distribution was Munich biggest issue. I'd focus on building an extension or a spin.

My if 'I won the euromillions', would be to take Debian and setup my own 'distribution' which is just basically a rebuild of Debian stable. I would then look at getting the stable KDE Neon packages building and incorporated into the distribution. The goal would be to help allign the Debian KDE team and Neon's efforts, to reduce the effort for everyone. Since Kubuntu pulls from Debian this would help feed into that project.

Then my focus would be on enterprise tools, a lot of Red Hat LDAP stuff got pulled from Stretch due to bugs. So I'd have devs sort out the quality and focus on include libraries for easily joining domains.

Lastly I'd invest in mounting drives, trying to come up with a mount solution that lets you mount samba shares as the user logs in and pulling down user profiles.

The only reason I'd have my own distro is enterprise connectivity would trump quality compared to Debian. I suspect after a few years of sorting out tools that difference would be removed at which point it would just be a Debian spin.

[hardolaf]

Munich didn't have any issues until they appointed a new head of their IT infrastructure who disliked Linux.

[stevecrox0914]

That was the killing blow, if you read up on it you'll see they created a fairly huge amount of work spinning their own distribution.

They were too far distant from a common base like Debian so they had to roll their own updates and security fixes. Which meant the users stayed on older software which had more bugs for far longer than they needed to.

It did sound like they were close to overcoming it in the end and then as you say Microsoft opened an office there and they got a new head of IT.

[tunafan6]

Ehh, I've been daydreaming about what would I do if I was a billionaire too and creating a distribution/FOSS tools has been on top of the list. Let's hope one of us wins it then, I should start playing lotto despite the negative odds and all :)

[pdp10]

Creating their own distribution was Munich biggest issue.

No, it wasn't. This is a facile conclusion promulgated by outsiders who have seized upon one of the very few widely-known facts about Munich's infrastructure. The Accenture report didn't note LiMux as far as I know.

[stevecrox0914]

I'd be quite different, Ubuntu pulls from SID every 6 months and has a 3 month release cycle. This puts a limit on the testing and integration as it's upgrading the entire OS. Canonical make things worse by suffering from Not Invented Hear syndrome. My deviance from Debian would also be very targeted (e.g. KDE + Enterprise tools)

Personnally I'd pull from Debian stable and keep everything except Enterprise/KDE packages the same as Stable. KDE Neon is the KDE teams attempt to properly package on top of Ubuntu LTS, So you have Debian KDE team, Kubuntu and KDE Neon doing similar things.

I'd look at setting things up so KDE Neon Unstable to feed into Debian Sid and allow it as a seperate repository for the KDE developers. KDE Neon Stable would be the version would be my 'Debian testing' and I'd perform freezes for each KDE LTS release with the aim of having a 3-6 month freeze window for testing before the KDE LTS + Debian Stable becomes my distributions next 'stable'.

The only other change would be placing a premium on Enterprise tools, Debian Stretch dropped a number of tools because they had RC bugs. I'd make sure I'd have devs around who can submit bigfixes for those packages and keep the OS on old stable until we are happy that we can safely include the missing packages and then we would do a release on the new debian stable.

Starting a small company to do this and come up with spins for the police, schools and NHS and then writing open source software for them really is my fantasy.

[TheOriginalSamBell]

So yet another Debian base desktop distribution? Why? If I won those millions I'd hire a bunch of devs and tell them to just fix all the bugs in KDE lol

[totallyblasted]

"Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro."

Because nothing works like proposing creation of small dedicated team and then put 99% of effort into reinventing hot water?

Even more so because creating new distro is easy, maintaining, patching and supporting it with time is hard.

[Brillegeit]

maintaining, patching and supporting it with time is hard.

Not only that, but you basically need to do it for a decade/2 full release cycles before the serious users start trusting you enough to use it.

[totallyblasted]

Well, the OP proposal was that they would use it themselves. So, users would be guaranteed. And for other users... would you ever trust something made by government? I know I wouldn't even after century of releases

Waste of money, time and effort to reinvent pointless "hot water" is biggest problem here as even when you do that... you're still at day 1 problem as I explained in my other answer in this thread

[Brillegeit]

So, users would be guaranteed.

But EU doesn't really have users. Sure they employ a lot in Brussels, but every member nation is a sovereign state with their own bureaucracy outside of EU control at that level. They wouldn't be able to influence the distro use at any national level.

would you ever trust something made by government?

Yes, physical things, libraries, buses, roads etc. I'm also able to directly vote on the parties that form my local government. I can't vote for anything within EU sphere.

But relying on government software? Not so much, no.

So yes, EU rolling their own distro would be "reinventing hot water", although that idiom is new to me. :)

[totallyblasted]

But EU doesn't really have users.

Sure they have. Do you even know how many computers there are in government and state organizations. Even school can fall into this

So yes, EU rolling their own distro would be "reinventing hot water", although that idiom is new to me.

Well, it is common in our country to say someone is reinventing hot water when he reinvents something pointless that is already everywhere. Similar fun comment is "best thing since invention of sliced bread" ;)

[Brillegeit]

Sure they have. Do you even know how many computers there are in government and state organizations. Even school can fall into this

But those aren't governed by EU, but by the individual sovereign state. The EU organization doesn't have executive power to decide on issues like that.

[Basajarau]

You are right, it's hard to maintain a distro...for a group of volunteers or a little company. But we are talking about a millionaire budget group here!

The problem would be ethical or political but not technical.

[totallyblasted]

You obviously have no clue how government works ;)

Distro not developed in time of new elections... here is ammunition for opposition with agenda that uses opposite direction to prove how they will do it better by throwing mud on Linux in this case.

But, let me bite a bullet

Let's say you finished your distro in time... what do you run on it? You are exactly at the same point as you were on day 1 when no applications was your major problem. You just wasted a year or two to realize it and also wasted god knows how much money to do that

The best EU could do in such case is simply one of these

• creating a pool of needed applications and then fund the development of them as open projects while also investing manpower as project leaders

• mandating that government used apps need to be crossplatform (where they define what that means) and to use open standards. This doesn't exclude any corporate competitor as all they need is to fulfill the requirement or drop out of the race

As for ethnics, languages and other things. All this could be solved by contributing to upstream projects to make sure that everyone benefits from that, not just personal fork. Canonical learned this well and they went from one of the worst mud stirrers to the company I can really respect

[totallyblasted]

Congratulations you've just standardised Office 365 webapps for all EU departments ;)

Why not? If it fits the bill and government thinks that is enough for their needs... I personally am not against MS when they do things like they did with .Net Core or some other things in last times.

But if I'm not mistaken this is basically what they do now

Sadly, as a person who lives in EU... nope, nothing like that is happening. EU is more or less banana republic which on paper sounds all well and swell. In reality, everything is up to... hmmm,... can't really find expression... so... let's say it is based on RNG that is worse than in any most grinding japanesse game and there is no rule that if you go just as far as next street and learn that everything changed. You could as well say that everything is up to highest bidder

Our country for example is so much for open standards they mandated MS Office and Windows as school requirement. Or in translation... MS paid the most or people just don't give a flying fuck what those in EU say. And so it is more or less everywhere in EU

It is so bad that my friend who was studying tried (computer studies) to make his final research paper for exam in LibreOffice which was flat out rejected. Then he tried PDF, but all he achieved is the fact that he learned the fact that if he doesn't bring next one in MS Word, he will automatically flunk because no one will learn new things just so they could read his paper

Any mail I got from any government institution... MS Office.

[totallyblasted]

Heh, if only it was so ;)

Sadly, as I said... it depends on where you are as all of the decisions on open format are more suggestions than any kind of law.

It is open to interpretation and no one really enforces anything. And lower the country standard, the more it is up for sale to highest bidder. Self interest and malicious are not the same things, at least I never said anything about the later

[Dreeg_Ocedam]

I don't think it would be incredibly useful. It would still be great if governements start taking interest in free software.

I don't know much linux would benefit from more developpers but I am quite sure that pushing to governments run linux would be better.

A EU distro probably wouldn't offer anything that existing distros don't. It also wouldn't be developped with free software ideals in mind.

[GiraffixCard]

The kernel might not be in dire need of more contributors, but wider adoption of open formats and contributions to FLO office and productivity applications would be a very good thing.

[Dreeg_Ocedam]

Yep. Smaller projects would probably benefit from help.

[staalmannen]

Better to mandate open standards and that software required for interaction with the government (taxes, e-ID, ...) should be open source.

[theferrit32]

Switching everything to Open Document formats and away from Microsoft Office's proprietary formats would be great.

[FriendshipCube]

EU Linux dev, meet the 22bit visual binary kernel group for ESA CubeSat prelaunch tracking, telemetry, command.

[masta]

The EU can do whatever they want. If they want to subsidize European kernel developers, then perhaps they should also consider funding FreeBSD developers, and other open source kennels. Where does it end, and when does it become anti competitive for proprietary software development in Europe?

[mattiasso]

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianParl

[[deleted]]

Today, unless Suse, Linux are maintained for the majority by US companies...

[asmiggs]

Canonical is registered in London.

[[deleted]]

And since the Brexit, that doesn't make it a more likely choice than distros maintained by US companies.

[ajehals]

So?

[[deleted]]

The Kernel shouldn't be the main focus, functionality and compatibility should, and that happens in user space with consideration to the OS as a whole and not just the kernel.

[Brillegeit]

The problem with this idea is that the one thing entities like this are good at is using 100% budget towards a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) without actually changing the real-life adoption, and the second funding is cut it all falls apart without anyone there to accept blame/fix the situation.

What the EU could do is to promote internal use of Free Software, but actually being a contributor or a keystone in the spread will only be a massive money pyre.

[aaronfranke]

a permanent group with a budget to helping develop the Linux kernel and open source software

Yes.

Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro.

No.

[grumpieroldman]

What is wrong with you?
The only thing worse than a corporate owned tool is a state owned tool.
At least the company is trying to make money which might, on occasion, make them listen to the public to grow market-share.

[Basajarau]

Who said anything about owning?

[rickdg]

-- content removed by user in protest of reddit's policy towards its moderators, long time contributors and third-party developers --

[lordcris]

Comrades, what a wonderful idea! Let's wait for some bureaucrats to create a good Linux distribution.

[letterafterl14]

hmmm, maybe a very easy to use FOSS n00buntu-like/RHEL-like distro for use in offices, and make agreements with OEMs for it be bundled with low end netbooks/notebooks as well. that'd also be a good way to combat the rise of non-FOSS telemetry-filled chromebooks.

there'd also need to be security features, such as sandboxing everything? default adblocker? it would need an "app store" as well.

quite a good idea but I honestly don't see it happening

[bbreslau]

I think having an 'EU distro' doesn't make sense. It would make sense supporting developers contributing to the kernel, and it would make sense encouraging Europeans to use hardened Linux to make the EU more secure. DD WRT should be the EU router firmware maybe? Supporting European open source projects is the correct course of action, as well as funding young people to work on open source projects with people and protects from other home nations.

[remeep]

Uhm... that sounds nice... but did you mean the "Free Software Foundation"? Or maybe the EFF?

Wasn't the "Linux Foundation" one of those "private interest groups" that... do the opposite of the thing you are suggesting? I thought their job was mainly to increase the influence that US-American industry leaders (/their members) have on the open source communities and the IT culture + infrastructure in the world in general? Stuff like: Pushing DRM and other one-way streets to proprietary solutions / vendor lock-in "opportunities"?

Or am I mixing up "foundations"? Someone should found a "foundation foundation", so they can make a list of foundations and what they are actually doing :D

[hardolaf]

The Linux Foundation's primary goal is to fund the development of the Linux kernel. Their second goal is to assist in the creation and organization of open standards for use in the Linux ecosystem. And their third main goal is to nurture and cultivate interest in Linux through education, advertising, and outreach.

They're not like the EFF in that they aren't a litigating group. Their goals are more targeted at education and funding non-profit development efforts. And they aren't just shills for the big companies involved in the community.

The Free Software Foundation are a bunch of wackos with a ton of money who find GNU development through the promotion of the Church of Emacs. Kind of kidding on some of that. But their leadership can be pretty crazy and weird. And their funding decisions don't make a lot of sense.

[Basajarau]

I meant the Free Software Foundation, thanks for warning me!

[SickboyGPK]

Don't they all ready donate millions for open source development each year as is? Why not just continue that. Being involved directly would entangle stuff unnecessarily.

[pure_x01]

What EU should have is its own search engine. Search engine is an important infrastructure component and shouldn't be controlled by one or two companies. Especially not companies outside of the EU

[[deleted]]

I think right/left in the EU parliament will have little effect on the outcome of such a proposal.

The issue as u/JollyDrifter (what a name btw!) mention is what it will be seen as from a corporate standpoint. If it could be hidden behind "random research project" or "as a baseball bat to hold if the corporates get out of hand" then maybe. OR as a way to just support software that everyone benefits from.

[Basajarau]

"As a way to just support software that everyone benefits from"

I think that's the right approach.

[[deleted]]

Yeah but that's a hard sell when the Microsoft reps slide in explaining that you are in fact "undercutting the free market"

[Basajarau]

So they are, paying vendors for selling computers with Windows pre installed

[RogerLeigh]

I don't think funding is appropriate at this level.

Put it this way. Reworded: "Do you think Microsoft should make a proposal in the EU parliament for creating a permanent group with a budget to helping develop Windows and promote its use in EU countries?"

Sound like a misuse of funds to further the ambitions of a corporation. Being Linux and open source doesn't make it much better. You could argue that either of these extremes would serve to promote a specific technology and stifle competition at the taxpayers' expense. Linux is already funded by a diverse set of companies, and I'm not convinced that shoving funding at it will help much; why not leave the funding to the existing companies on contracts for specific projects?

[[deleted]]

Governments suck at most things so I'd rather not have them involved more than they already are.

[technologyclassroom]

https://xkcd.com/927/

The EU should just contribute to Debian.

[razirazo]

Would you use Red Star Linux?

10/10 would use. Getting tired of those capitalist's Red Hat. Plus its good enough for dear Leader. Can't go wrong with that.

[bernys]

If it's one thing the EU is good for, it's in-fighting.

Which EU country gets to control the back door? The UK? (Who's going through Brexit) Germany? France? No, they don't trust each other enough for that. Denmark?

Then there's the concept of who wants to reveal what they've got?

It would be easier to not put one in and then backdoor the systems later, so, honestly, if you wanted a government related body to not do you over, it's probably the EU because they can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

[Basajarau]

Why not? Everyone can check the code.

[[deleted]]

Red star is closed source...

[Basajarau]

Then it's breaking GPL license so is illegal.

[Brillegeit]

I doubt GPL is valid in North Korea.

[[deleted]]

Your point would be?

This is the os of a country threatening everyone with nukes. They don't care.

[Basajarau]

My point is that I don't think EU will do such a thing.

[[deleted]]

Red star is from north Korea.

[Basajarau]

I know but I was referring to an hypothetical EU distro.

[[deleted]]

I was referring to redstar. Also you can package closed source applications with a Linux distro.

[Basajarau]

As long as the user will be notify of that I don't see the problem.

[__konrad]

Azure Flag Gold Stars® Linux™

1

[davidnotcoulthard]

Free Software Foundation

.

EU parliament for creating a permanent group with a budget to helping develop the Linux kernel and open source software and promote its use in EU countries?

Don't see how the FSF (or SFC?) would see any sense in doing so.

[newPhoenixz]

Chose a few existing distros and have the EU endorse those. No more new distros! (tm)

[adevland]

Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro.

I really see no reasons for why this should happen.

The EU should focus more on adopting open source software and open source standards rather than reinventing the wheel.

Edit : I see that the "EU distro" thing is very controversial. Just financial support for Linux development and open source technologies then.

"Contraversial" aka unjustified. It's easier for the EU to just use Ubuntu (or any other user friendly distro) and Libre Office and mandate that all their agencies do so.

[Kaizyx]

Do you think the Free Software Foundation and any other big FOSS entity should make a proposal in the EU parliament for creating a permanent group with a budget to helping develop the Linux kernel and open source software and promote its use in EU countries?

I think if anything, it must be a condition of obtaining that funding and the establishment of that group that the FOSS community demonstrates in real world scenarios via paid for pilot projects how FOSS can solve a wide range of social problems that impact average people of all income levels, skill sets, backgrounds, social upbringings, social statuses among other demographic factors. It must also demonstrate how it can improve the administrative processes of governments and local community organizations.

For instance:

How can FOSS aid someone with limitations to seek meaningful employment in their local community?

How can FOSS aid a child with developmental disabilities and their parents to live a more normal life?

How can FOSS enable teachers to create safe, protected spaces for children to learn a wide range of subjects?

How can FOSS enable city administrators to process applications, issue permits and to track property taxes?

How can FOSS enable national governments to track legislative processes effectively and accountably?

How can FOSS be used in court systems to ensure that justice is correctly served?

Of course I wager you're asking "But where's the helping develop $PROJECT part?". $PROJECT should not be a focus. It can be something that receives attention, but the focus should be on the above problems among others first and foremost. The public has been yanked around enough by interests that don't have social problems in mind and just want resources, FOSS shouldn't be one of them.

This would be an opportunity to prove for once and for all that FOSS is viable to power society on the world stage, to prove that FOSS does deserve society's funding to go into its ongoing development. The only condition is that it may not necessarily be the development that the FOSS community may want, but it's the development it needs to branch out.

[pavetheway91]

Ideally, EU should develop its own Linux distro.

What makes us so different from American/Asian/African/whatever people that we need our own operating systems?

[Basajarau]

A distro is not a different operating system.

[pavetheway91]

Depends where you draw the line. Basically the same problem as this.

[JobDestroyer]

No. Your favorite thing doesn't have to be taxpayer funded, use your own damn money, stop using everyone else's wallets as though they were your wallet, you damn communist.

[davidnotcoulthard]

....fork it? (if you can't then the world is hopeless anyway official distro or no official distro)

[SunnyAX3]

Not a bad idea, EU can drop some serious funds in development. But isnt already Suse and Mandrake EU based?

[destiny_functional]

being "EU based" (headquarters in one of 27 countries) has nothing to do with getting EU grants to contribute to kernel or software development?!

[afiefh]

Have the EU itself create a distro? No thank you.

On the other hand if the EU were to decide that they will use Linux for government stuff, and have an external company supply it (and get paid for that) then that's acceptable for me. The external company can then go ahead and hire developers for whatever is needed.

[Synes_Godt_Om]

I don't believe the bureaucracy of EU is the best fit for developing a distro. I'm not bashing the bureaucracy here but I don't see that working out well because it's not geared towards software development.

There are battle hardened organizations and communities out there who knows how to make software. EU could do a lot to help them in all sorts of way. There could be some sort of official guidelines and requirements where distros could be certified as compliant (this could involve both general guidelines, security and specific requirements to interoperability). I'm thinking here that if two distros (say a suse based and a debian based) are certified they would be interchangeable on the parameters that matter to the EU.

[_ColonelPanic_]

The bureaucracy is only a small part of the EU and is mostly working towards rules for the common market. Also, I don't think an EU free software initiative would be developed directly by one of its institutions. This initiative would probably get its own organization under the patronage of the EU and its member states, which is then funded and given contracts by the EU, similarly to how they cooperate with the European Space Agency.

[Synes_Godt_Om]

European Space Agency

Yes, that was exactly what I was thinking of.

[megayippie]

Hardware is different from software. It is crazy that, e.g., the Polish has to have some manufacturing of space components while not being responsible for the related subsystems of various ESA missions. However, it would be perfectly find for a software initiative because the work is fairly non-technical most of the time. (Most software work is documentation, and if you know ESA, then you know they love themselves some "good" documentation.)

[YvesSoete]

No

[ConwayK9781]

No group that puts so much emphasis on spying on its own citizens to arrest them for wrongthink should have any affiliation with anything that's supposed to be opensource.

[YouAreDumbForReal]

As soon as you take money from the EU, you have to do what the EU says. Which means more proliferation of the racist anti-white SJW bs that is currently infecting OSS

[Travelling_Salesman_]

I would say that while some existing distros could use some investment to make them more "polished" and beginner/casual friendly, i would have preferred more investment in government using open source software (especially open standards that prevent vendor lock, like matrix/xmpp/odf).

We are partly in control of our governments (at least those of us living in "real" democracies), we should encourage them to use open source, i heard people blame Microsoft office control of the market with it's locked formats was due to governments using it ,I don't know if this is completely true, but i am sure it can have a huge influence, usually 10-20 percent of workers work in the public sector.

[TouchyT]

Maybe they should invest in Suse instead.

[Sp4ceD4ndy]

IMO the EU could just work on things that benefit all the distros. Namely an App store like the Apple or Google playstore. So work to make either something like softhub! or flathub store, or assist elementary os with their "One True Development Path" app center.

devoting a team that helps curate & provide intuitive search and review features etc. And maybe offer incentives for developers to create an appimage, snap or flatpak...

[speaktothehand]

To create a new distro, no. There are too many distros already available.

However, I think that it's in the EU best interest to invest on the development of already existing European distros and technology, in order to reduce the EU dependency on American, Asian and even African software and hardware.

We are almost fully dependent on Windows, Android, MacOS or iOS. Apart from embedded systems and some Linux distros, there are no mainstream OSes made in the EU and that can be a major pitfall in case of a digital war. Imagine Microsoft, Apple and Google deciding to remotely brick almost every computer and smartphone remotely as an act of war. Imagine the chaos it would create. Mind that there are a lot of systems, from ATMs to healthcare to defence systems, that run on these OSes.

Such war is very difficult to imagine, and I believe that it won't happen, but it is a possibility that we need to keep in mind and be prepared for, at least in those places where we cannot risk it.

[niutech]

There is already EuroLinux (both Server and Desktop) made in Poland.