At FOSDEM, we discuss this at great length. There has been some movement, and I am optimistic that it is improving year on year.
I think it was last year that there was a good presentation from them about how they were going to use ZKP and it was indeed very trust inspiring. But do you think the latest digital wallet solution from eg Danish government uses ZKP? Of course not!
I have to say that the tune they play at FOSDEM and what we see put into production are just two different things.
Even if the pace is frustrating, there are still pockets of genuine open-source adoption in the European public sector. For example, we're seeing projects like Germany's OpenDesk or various municipalities moving toward Nextcloud and other sovereign cloud solutions.
The EU Open Source Strategy[0] was announced just under a month ago and it specifically mentions the EU Digital Identity ecosystem, including the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) mentioned in the article. I agree with OOP that the requirement of an Apple or Google phone goes against these ambitions, and I will contact my elected representatives.
[0]: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-sourc...
> To ensure that the User can trust the Wallet Solution, Wallet Providers preferably make their certified Wallet Solutions available for installation via the official app store of the relevant operating system (e.g., Android, iOS). This allows the operating system of the device to perform relevant checks regarding the authenticity of the app.
Of course the chances of any important business implementing a side channel option is effectively zero. Maybe some government agencies will offer the option though.
[0] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet
[1] https://eudi.dev/latest/architecture-and-reference-framework...
And, unless the regulatory environment changes., there probably never will be.
EU regulators have stop listening to tech company lobbyists.
The only short-term solution is more regulation and more EU-centralized solutions, but of course this is only ok until the next chat-control drama.
Long term, in practice we need single European stock market and a way to provide funding to European companies from any member state, so to be competitive globally without being constantly restricted by every member state’s bureaucracy.
New York alone has 2 stock exchanges. I don’t think that companies being listed in London, Paris and Frankfurt (they generally are listed on several anyway) is the actual issue.
Especially these days the stock market is the very final stage anyway, most funding for growing tech companies is private funds, vc etc.
When Trump was invading Denmark, a huge % of Danes would've given a shit about sovereignty from the US. And that's the moment to pounce.
There shouldn't need to be. Realistically for something like this an EU backed highly-audited non-profit should be in place for permanent highly controlled services like this that do not rely on any non-EU entities for it to function.
There is no reason to believe that the EU (rather than the market participants in the EU) is in any way capable of that regardless of the amount of political will.
Spending massive amounts of money without knowing what you are trying to do or how will just result in a massive amount of grift and corruption
For this specifically EU could surely (only in theory since statistically the average EU bureaucrat is a pompous idiot to whom the word “accountability” is an entirely inconceivable concept) have something developed for a sane price in a reasonable amount of time.
I hear them complaining but for now, the alternatives are mostly run by hobbyists.
We're starting from so low that even a few dozen millions would help a lot.
Edit: 2000m/7 is 285m, not 466m.
they do.
> 250 million isn't much ...
sigh.
If the EU was trying to decouple they'd mandate at least including a hardware token option as an alternative. This is not new technology, it's existing and has been in use for decades.
They're not trying to decouple, so they haven't mandated it.
Yes? Wake up, it is 2026.
Same goes with the prosecutors in Sweden; a phone call and the US got, not charges (as that would actually be official misconduct in Sweden), but enough of an official statement from a prosecutor to get the words “Assange” and “rape” in headlines together around the world by that evening.
European countries are, by and large, lapdogs of the USA. It’s sad. And then the US president turns around and stabs them in the back by threatening invasion and annexation, or complete disregard for the fundamental obligations of NATO members.
I really don’t know what the fuck the Europeans are thinking by playing the US’s stupid games. As we see time and time again, it won’t be repaid in kind.
Obviously, on both side (and beyond) they are nice people trying to plan good things without being too naive. But bragging all day through and destroy all that is in your power is both easier and more attention grabbing than discrete hard work at building better future for everybody.
I feel like the European relationship with the US can really be summed up by the 30 permanent military bases and 84,000 military personnel stationed in their borders and the underlying faith that it's for their own protection, except we better never ask them to leave just in case. Everything else sort of follows from that point.
Putin has about 700 000 personnel in Ukraine right now and isn't making any progress. Barbarossa took about 3 million personnel to start.
Then Trump threatened to invade Greenland. And now the US is in negotiation with NATO (yeah lol) to build 3 new bases there that would be designated as US territory (bwahaha). One thing I like about Trump he drags all the Europeans through the mud so publicly it makes the contradictions impossible to miss, that's why they all hate him but still have to kiss his feet it's awesome. Like Obama made their groveling seem less suspect.
But yeah people are fucking clueless about everything. At least our media is free and not state controlled propaganda right?
It will take 100 years and an extremely expensive, government-mandated reimplementation of every critical US tech service and company.
No EU country is putting up budget for this, and no private enterprise is going to do it because building a worse version of AWS just so that it is "European" makes no financial sense and would most likely just fail anyway.
Unless it becomes necessary because of EU regulation?
Mine is to a collective people that vote in these people. I get that people can change, grow, evolve etc but I didnt trust a german for 60 years, I wont trust an american for at least a generation.
The Wikipedia page only talks about stored data on (optionally foreign) servers without any sort of regard for the laws of the country where that server is located. It ignores the part of the statute where the feds can basically "turn off" that server. And that is the part that the EU is panicking over.
I don’t see what the problem is. That they actually used it first?
Trump made that whole arrangement cracking a little bit, but I still think it's mostly just the optics of it all they are still loyal servants. Nobody in Europe that matters gives a shit about Karim Khan or Francesca Albanese getting debanked and sanctioned, they would and love to do it themselves.
And even if the bipartisan system make a small turn over, the issue is systemic.
If there is a higher level mandate or incentive to switch, people absolutely will - for example, if a government decides en masse to switch away from one OS or platform. [0]. This will likely be hugely influential, as then everyone who wants to communicate effectively with that government needs to make sure that they are compatible - which will likely drive adoption of the alternate technologies over time.
However, IMO the big challenge is MS Office - as much as people like to mention the FOSS Office alternatives, there's still a huge gap to cross before mainstream companies will adopt them. (To paraphrase, no-one gets fired for choosing Microsoft Office.)
Beyond this, on the more 'personal' level you discuss, the picture is more varied than you describe. Some people's elderly parents absolutely can and do switch to different email clients or browsers. Some groups of friends can and do switch messenger platforms - my personal comms are now split roughly 80:20 between Whatsapp (the default) and Signal. (It just took a determined minority deciding to switch, and the others followed.)
> We already have social media, hosting, email, operating systems, messengers and the likes from European providers.
Yes, but they aren't really competitive, as they currently aren't the easy/free/well-marketed/popular options that everyone defaults to when they first get a computer, or that their friends are already using. It's just network effect and inertia.
This can and will change if the need for a reduced dependence on the US continues to be front and center of people's minds. (Note this is mostly driven by the Trump administration's behaviour; the next president could probably heal many of these wounds and our European politicians will move one to caring about something else.)
[0] https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260417-france-to-remove-windo...