I think the key point is this;<p>>> (By the way, all new software without accompanying support & guidance is doomed to fail. And if that software comes from a dominant player, you’ll just have to deal with that by the way.)<p>There's a temptation to conflate the software license with the software business. This is natural, but places <i>software</i> as the primary value in the chain.<p>From a business perspective the software though is a cheap part of the chain. And the least interesting part.<p>I don't pick say accounting software based on price. Or access to the source code. I base it on effectiveness. And a big part of that effectiveness is that staff can run it. And when it all goes wrong there's someone to call. I'm buying a -relationship-, not software.<p>Thats why RedHat is a business. They're not selling Linux, they're selling the reliability, longevity, services, support etc.<p>In truth the license <i>doesn't matter</i>. My accounting software might be open or closed. My supplier doesn't sell me based on the license. They sell me by convincing me that everything just works, and when it doesn't they'll be there to fix it.
I think the author is not learned in the technology economics.<p>IBM to save it's business had to merge with Red hat almost 50% 50% in 2018.<p>Microsoft it's security and cloud offering had to, open source it's .net framework, aquire GitHub, ditch Visual Studio fot Visual Studio Code,<p>ARM is eating the world, it over hauled the x86_x64 architecture, and became the Defacto architecture.<p>We can go on and on and on and on,that the Open Source business model, became necessary to survive in tech, not just to exist.<p>If you don't open it, they will eat you up.
I work in the health sector at a company with nearly 1,000 employees. In our IT department, we rely on a wide range of proprietary software and spend substantial amounts on Oracle, MS SQL, and other licenses. I’ve been trying to convince management that PostgreSQL could be a solid alternative for many of our use cases, but it’s consistently dismissed as “not an option.”<p>Meanwhile, we continue to pour money into Oracle licenses, not just for basic access but for additional features—like enabling data reading and analysis on the Oracle-embedded database in our main app. And, if we need to allocate more CPU cores on our VMs, we face yet another round of licensing fees.<p>Sometimes you don’t need much support. Yet pay tons of money.
> The regular IT environment in the European Parliament is managed by whole teams of professionals, it comes with training, and is supported by Microsoft partners and ultimately by Microsoft itself. There are also large amounts of computing power available to make things work well.<p>> An Open Source experiment meanwhile is typically operated by an enthusiastic hobbyist with borrowed equipment. Rolled out without training and without professional support, by someone who likely did this for the first time, it’s no wonder things often don’t work out well.<p>> After the experiment, the faction was disappointed and concluded that Nextcloud was no good. And that was also their lived experience. “Let’s not do that again!”<p>This is a rhetorical trick known as implication or insinuation. By presenting information indirectly, the author prompts readers to make a connection themselves without explicitly stating it.<p>The author implies that the European Parliament's failed experiment with Nextcloud was due to a lack of professional resources and expertise, suggesting it was handled similarly to typical open-source projects led by hobbyists without proper support. However, he doesn’t provide any factual evidence that the Parliament’s Nextcloud experiment actually lacked professional resources, training, or adequate equipment. Instead, he hints at this by describing common issues with open-source setups, leaving readers to assume the experiment suffered from similar shortcomings.<p>I would have appreciated some facts, or even sources for his claims, but there are none. And I couldn't find any information about the Nextcloud deployment having failed.
I always hear people say things like there needs to be support for the thing I'm using or, it costs time to implement open source.<p>I hate to break it to you but it takes time to implement closed source solutions as well. They also always have terrible documentation, because they make money on support.<p>Purely open source stuff lives and dies on how easy it is to start up.<p>Closed source paid stuff doesn't need to be easy. Often a decision has been made before implementation, and there are people to help you through it.<p>It's also easier to get approval for open source most of the time because there isnt a new bill, just my time.<p>I usually reach for open source first.
You are mentioning that an experiment with nextcloud has failed? I cannot find any evidence regarding that, even more I see it highly used among governments and municipalities in the EU.
Another elephant in the room is that many of the popular open source projects are funded by big tech.<p>Hard to be an alternative when you serve the same master.
It was a pipe dream, because at the end of the day not everything can be a side job, to compete against those that spend at least 8h day producing code.<p>Then the whole issue with non-copyleft licenses, that are nothing other than the old Whateverware or Public Domain licenses from the 16 bit home computer days.<p>We already had access to source code back then.<p>And for a large crowd this is already good enough, they aren't into it for religious definitions.
IDK about 'open source', but 'libre software' is what fueled tons of propietary software from the 80's
until today. Without that software tons of propietary software (even console games) woudn't even exist.<p>I remind you all Emacs powered some German airline's ATC in the early 90's, and it used to be used under Amazon for tons of stuff thanks to its easy widget UI to achieve tasks with very little Elisp.
Thw problem is big tech can offer free as in beer hosted services.<p>You can use Google docs for free so it takes some dedication to self host that and pay for the server.<p>Now if big tech charged for everything things would be more like the old days where you might use small tech, such as a local hosting provider that does open source installs.
Been ranting about this for years, did a keynote about it, actually did two notes at several venues, including an open culture festival, and all I got was a silent dis.<p>every now and then open source is suggested as superior, because being free. Zero comment on code quality, who wrote it, why it came to be in the first place.<p>Even the argument that a host running open source makes delivery more trustworthy is super biased - major cognitive dissonance is that services based on open tech are very often not open, neither auditable.<p>There’s a lot of open source being controlled by same large corporations and the part that is not, does not constitute a service on its own.<p>Then we must admit it takes a lot of care taking care of services nobody else cares about (by means of support).<p>While open source is important for academia, I think open results are more important for government. Like I don’t care what somebody used to cater to this geospatial data, or that image. I care about the data that went in and went out.
Open data is much more important in the era of open weights and closed sources training sets.<p>The general public is often misled to equate open source to free beer. Well that is also not entirely correct given plethora of not so free licenses. Asp not correct as costs are greater when you put the personnel running that service in the equation. I can see how this argument does not fly well with socialist ideologies, but that’s problem of ideology, not of costs or technology.<p>Even if we consider only those open projects which are also free - these come with less guaranties than a pair of second hand shoes bought from random store.<p>Don’t get me wrong - open source is great and we use it daily, but comparing means of distribution with quality of service is really like comparing ябълки и круши (apples and pears in Bulgarian). So it’s indeed time to stop blindly waving the open source flag, but actually try to understand the benefits and challenges it comes with.
> Experimenting is useful, but know that Open Source is the underdog, and there are many people waiting for an opportunity to enthusiastically declare that it has failed.<p>almost the entire world and industry is literally running on open source.
Countries have run nationalise infrastructure before, and successfully. The problem is if they did not view it as nationalised infrastructure and instead viewed it as some sort of mana that would fall from open source heaven.<p>Open source software is the building blocks used by large rent (service fee) seeking corporations. They will extract large profits from any of these contracts and that is a demonstrable fact, they are also nearly all from the USA and so those profits will flow in one particular direction. It is also a historical fact that governments have run successful large scale infrastructure. Make your choice.
The problem is that docker compose starts 20 containers and the fans go full bore just because you wanted to try a new wiki or notes app. The complexity of relatively simple software is getting insane.
I was sincerely wondering what the EU institutions use as a productivity suite but it seems they are on Microsoft 365 ! [0]<p>I would be very curious to know if the data are stored on their own data center or Microsoft's.<p>- [0] <a href="https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/european-commissions-use-microsoft-365-infringes-data-protection-law-eu-institutions-and-bodies_en" rel="nofollow">https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/pre...</a>
“Open Source” is an alternative to Big Tech in the same way that “open standards” is a preferable alternative to proprietary technology. In fact, it is largely the same issue.
Let's simplify: FLOSS domain is the internet domain, where anyone own a desktop, a homeserver, a company machine room etc. The big tech model is the old mainframe model, or the modern web where only few own anything.<p>Try to mimicking them is a waste of time and can't work, pushing the society toward ownership and freedom might work, because in a way or another we will end up there being technically the sole solution.
A sales position I was working in 2017 was the first time I'd used Windows 10. I had a very urgent issue with a customer who needed our small business to confirm a change they were requesting. I needed to go through the technical details of the customer's request by reviewing their documents over the phone on my computer.<p>As I was on the phone and going through their documents, Windows 10 decided to install updates. I'd experienced this before and had done everything I could to try and configure Windows 10 to require my permission to run updates, but it doesn't work that way at least when you are a small business without an I.T. team.<p>After a few minutes I told the customer I would call them back when my computer completed its updates. The update ended up taking over 40 minutes to complete. What really bothered me the most is that Microsoft is setting the priorities of our organization - software update instead of resolving a critical customer issue.<p>I've never had a Linux update require so much time and definitely I've never been spontaneously and without requesting my permission locked out of my computer so Linux could run an update.<p>"Big Tech", as discussed in the article, appears to me to be no longer concerned with small customers and operating in such a way as to assume we are all just their guaranteed customers so they are free to do with us as they please.
They are missing something major here and getting bogged down in some technicalities. Open source has no alternative to big tech because big tech commoditised stuff that's useful whereas open source commoditised stuff that is interesting to the developers.<p>When I sit down at my mac, I have a working and very polished calendar, mail client, todo list, contacts, note taking app, music player, browser, photo editing and library management tools, video call and conferencing software etc. And all of it syncs with my phone and my tablet out of the box.<p>When I sit down at a Linux machine, I have a calendar that breaks every 5 minutes and I can't share anything with anyone without futzing with iCal feeds and hiring another provider, a mail client that is ugly as sin and doesn't integrate with the calendaring or contact management stuff at all, a job and a half to find a note taking app that actually works properly, a todo list app that syncs with nothing, a spreadsheet package that crashes whenever I try and print something and oh hell I give up by then. And the answer to this? Roll out nextcloud on a VPS. Kill me, with a spoon. This is not freedom, it's just slavery of another kind.<p>I just want to get shit done. Big tech covers that. Please take this as a recommendation to tidy up all this hell and just help people to get shit done and then it will be an alternative to big tech.
As much as it pains me to say it, it's true. I use predominantly open source software on all my computers with some small exceptions. I used to rely on some cloud services because of the convenience and nothing else. But leaks started becoming way too common and what I can say about all places that I've worked at, data is handled really badly. If you pair that with some OSINT skills, you can learn pretty much anything about anyone from a single leak. So over the past few years I've been slowly cutting down my dependency on cloud services. Nextcloud was the first big step, a zfs pool for backups, a few custom protocols for alerting and kill switches and that's it.<p>On paper this sounds really good but there's a lot of overhead when it comes to maintenance. "Yeah, it's just one more docker-compose.yml, big whoop"(yes kubernetes is pointless overkill if you are the sole user). I've said that too many times and it's not true cause it only takes one small thing that you overlooked and you have to spend a day or two to put everything back up together.<p>Another thing worth mentioning is that open source can be a good alternative but open source does not mean free or cheap. For instance, I've gotten really into drones and radio communications lately. Take hackrf and the baby brother that is flipper zero - they are both completely open source but neither of them is cheap. In fact, they are really expensive - they are effectively open source ASIC's. I'm willing to bet that north of 80% of the cost is down to the software and not the hardware - because polishing a piece of software to the point where you can pick up a product and use it without effort or a steep learning curve, involves a ton of work on behalf of developers and UX/I people.<p>And you can't really cut off all big tech - open source phones are BAD, you don't really have a good alternative to google maps and waze, you still heavily rely on search engines and a few dozen services if you start digging deeper. There are also a number of services which do not have an even half-decent open source alternative. Also not everyone has the skills to set up and run these things.<p>I think the big case in favor of self-hosting whatever you can is that while open source is far from immune to leaks, if it resides in your private network(which it should) without access to the rest of the world, those holes will eventually be patched and you can take action in the meantime - stop the service, block a few ports, etc. The odds of you personally getting affected are pretty low. Now if a leak happens in big tech, there's nothing you can do about it and by the time you learn about it, it's often too late. Honestly, this is the number one reason I'm doing this to myself.
The alternative to "big tech" is not "open source". The alternative to big tech is a healthy "small and medium" tech economy, or at least a more sane distribution of market power.<p>Imagine if you had to compete producing widgets in a market landscape where some hyper-conglomerate would source and distribute all power, define and install all plug standards <i>and</i>, in addition, produce and rent any widgets that saw consumer traction. For decades this is what has come to pass as normal in this domain.<p>Openness (of varying degrees), standards-adherence, interoperability and competitive markets are connected attributes. In this context open source is an extreme productivity multiplier. Maybe the most potent such development in modern human history. Entities that adopt open source would <i>collectively</i> out-compete in innovation and usefulness any proprietary offering. But for this mechanism of sharing knowledge to thrive and reach its full potential there has to be a real market for digital technology.
I don't buy this argument. It's simplistic and IMO wrong on multiple accounts.<p>Big tech can totally sell "FOSS services" and provide ground works for it, like some of it do - you don't have to lock people with proprietary stuff.<p>Even more, big IT tech couldn't exist without FOSS in this form and shape, while the opposite is not true.
Do we need big tech? The only thing I need is a search engine.<p>I prefer privately hosted web and mail servers. Before "the cloud", the economy worked just fine and companies had enough money for in-house IT.<p>By using the nextcloud example, the author of the article is asking the wrong question.
But European businesses should utilise open source to more easily compete with big tech. Big tech is definitely using it to kill European businesses.<p>Yet they dont.<p>The problem is not big tech. Not open source. It's that the European tech economy crippled itself and cries wolf about it all day.
I think the article should have started off different considering that it actually concludes with a semi-positive stance on how open source “is” an alternative to big tech. It’s an area we take rather serious here in Denmark. Now, I won’t get into the irony of everyone wanting to replace Chromebooks in our school systems because Google is evil when the replacement is very likely to be Microsoft who is as much of a snoop these days since Google actually sells similar forms of privacy to our education. What we do have as a real working alternative to both is locally developed education solutions which will work as well, if not better? Than Google’s Educational tools on Chromebooks. What we lack is a political leadership that will commit to this. Part of this is because we’ve only recently gotten a digitalisation minister, even though people spend far more time on computers than they do on their daily commute and we’ve had a transportation minister since basically forever. Another part is that many of the top advisors in public service tend to “job hop” between our leading industry companies and public service, leaving to many contracts heading toward closed software.<p>What our educational alternatives show, and they have been implemented in some places and in Greenland I believe. Is very much in line with what the article recommends at the end, as far as small incremental useful changes with clear and cut goals. What would you achieve with Nextcloud? Replacing everything you have in Azure AWS in one big step? Obviously that is going to go horribly. That’s not even how we migrated into Azure from on prem. What you can do, is to start by slowly moving your applications and services into moveable parts, by container rising them. Writing your run-books in Python rather than Powershell and so on.<p>Then there is the change management, which the article touches on, and which is always forgotten by decision makers. Partly because decision makers don’t know what IT is, well… I guess that is it really. Where in the past (and I’ve written about this a lot) SysAdmins and supporters were unlikely to want to leave their Microsoft training, I think we’re at a point in IT history where that is less of a case because so much is now done on Linux even if you’re deep into the Microsoft ecosystem. Similarity the Office365 platform is not in as much ownership of your employee base because many people under 30 will not have “grown up” with it. Where it would have been inconceivable to not use Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook 5-10 years ago we’ve entered a world where we actively have to train employees in Office products because they are used to iOS, Android and MacOS and not “PCs”.<p>Again, you should start by doing things in small steps. Our Libraries have switched to Ubuntu on every public PC, and it has been a non-issue because many library users are equally unfamiliar with Ubuntu and Windows, and since most things happen in a browser anyway, the underlying OS isn’t an issue.<p>That is how you do it. Slowly with small steps, and yes, some of those steps don’t need to be open source. If you want to replace Azure or AWS then it’s much better to head to Hetzner (or similar) rather than to try and do it with NextCloud or similar. Because then your SysAdmins will not really need much retraining as that is not very different from what they already do in many cases where moving into the cloud has really just been moving a bunch of VMs.
Just migrated from GitHub to Gitlab, also finally made the move away from macOS towards Ubuntu as my primary machine. Ive been using Macs since almost 15 years, enjoyed it all the way but FOSS comms snd tech is the future.
This is excellent. It's also worth noting we don't need to fund services via supporting private enterprise, either—many services should arguably be operated by zero-profit entities. For the most part, after paying infrastructure bills and salaries, the profit motive is contrary to providing quality service over time (see: enshittification)