Digital liberation: EU Parliament calls for detachment from US tech giants

Here is a way to use open data law to take individual action:

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48016373

IT guy here, since more and more services have moved to be web based services rather than being local programs means that we need less policy management for local machines, this finally loosen the grip that Microsoft has had on the market through Active Directory and 365.

It is still needed, but to a lesser extent, which opens the door for competitors, and new concepts.

As an IT guy who started just before the big cloud shift I miss on-prem hardware, but the cloud has definately opened new concepts that Europe can use to take back our infrastructure from the claws of the US tech sector and bring it home.

I see a future where European governments and companies will host their own cloud services on a combination of their own hardware and a distributed platform.

Does that mean that decoupling is finally in sight? How long before the legislation is adopted?

In the Netherlands someone made a nice (or maybe I should say: depressing) dashboard (still beta) for the US dependency of government agencies, schools, healthcare and companies: zijnwealautonoom.nl (‘are we autonomous yet’).
Red button highlights the enormous extent to which most Dutch organisations behave like a digital colony of the US, for example screenshot shows education.

Good to see. Europe can reduce its reliance on Windows and start using European software like SUSE Linux, KDE, and Ubuntu. Also the article mentions AI: Europe has its own AI expertise, like Mistral AI, the French company.

I’m literally working on a project integrating a major European bank into a major US cloud (not my fault).

Maybe we build a new Twitter or Facebook, but we are still heavily using US cloud

As an American, this excites me. This will promote alternatives worldwide.

Yet 58% of MEPs are still on X.

https://leavex.eu/ is a useful resource for those who want to call them out on it - find the representatives from your country and parties you care for still on X, let them know what exactly they are supporting by staying there, and maybe nudge them towards something like https://eupolicy.social as a more reasonable alternative.

Remember to be polite - many of them/(the ones we care to convince) are good people who are just doing what they have been told they need to do in order to communicate with their base. They just need to realize the world has changed.

So important.
But who was against a bolder agreement, with default EU (or open source, I hope) and option to opt out for special reasons, and why?

In terms of content, the report focuses on a strategic reorientation of public procurement and infrastructure. The compromise line adopted stipulates that member states can favor European tech providers in strategic sectors to systematically strengthen the technological capacity of the Community. The Greens even called for a stricter regulation here, where the use of products “Made in EU” should become the rule and exceptions would have to be explicitly justified. They also pushed for a definition for cloud infrastructure that provides for full EU jurisdiction without dependencies on third countries.

This is indeed an important point. We’re making us controllable by the US through the media platforms. Basically whoever controls the recommendation algorithm can sway public opinion one way or another, and that’s very dangerous if europe ever enters an armed conflict with the US.

Any admistration that is not on Linux is failing their citizens.

The faster, the better.