France starts moving government systems from Windows to Linux

[Cyclotron]

I think you are living in the past.
If you listen to recent talks of J.D. Vance, he is bluntly announcing the destruction of the European union by the US. The situation has changed completely after the Greenland threats and after the actions of the US military in Ukraine and near east.
Europe will cut relations to the US, but everybody is afraid of more terrorist attacks from the US. So they won't attack the US government, but they can reduce/cut economic and technological dependencies. Recently a trade union between Brasil and EU was signed. There can be fair relations, but not with the US. Turning off light for US military installations in Frankfurt may happen much later.

Regards, Dieter

I like living in the past; they know me, and they seem saner.

I have to admit, you've got one heck of a list of conspiracy theories. You must spend a lot of time on social media soaking up disinformation, or are you the source?

• The claim that US hackers changed EU political documents overnight. As far as I can tell, this never happened. Unfortunately, politicians and lobbyists aren't hackers we can lock up. Wish they were.
• Claim that JD Vance has bluntly announced the US would destroy the European Union. I'm assuming you made this up, too, since you didn't provide a source, and I'm tired of looking for such. Vance certainly criticized the EU, but that's not even on the same planet as your accusation
• The US military hasn't had any actions in Ukraine other than to supply arms and money to fight against Russia. Maybe you think Russia and the US are the same.
• More terrorist attacks from the US? I suppose you can call anything you want a terrorist attack, that's like calling people NAZIs and demeaning the insult near every time it's done.

I'm sure France will be fine with whatever they choose to do. France and the US have long had strong trade ties; those may be changing, and France may blame the US and vice versa.
But none of these false accusations you've made will be of impact because everyone knows they are false.

[Cyclotron]

I'm much more worried about the unelected EU leadership, the commission, myself.

Conversely, I believe local and small to medium scale open source development for bespoke tooling could help a lot of cities, municipalities, counties, states, and countries.  Adapt the tools to the culture, instead of trying to unify culture to hide differences.  I like the richness and variety of human cultures, not the impersonal "international city" non-culture; and although we can leverage scale to reduce costs, there is a point where it leads to less innovation and more stagnation.

For the last twenty to twenty-five years I've been surprised that it hasn't picked up, even though the solutions I've made have shown it to be superior approach (to COTS fit-for-all but nobody in particular software solutions).  They are just tools, but then again, with better tools you can get much better results.  I've described most of my suspicions and reasoning why it hasn't picked up in earlier messages.

We also live in an era where governments fear people, and want to control people quite tightly.  Not just actions, but also speech and even thoughts.  The politicians are much closer to billionaires and huge corporations and lobbying organizations than the people, so the world they believe we have is different to the one most people live in.  This adds huge pressure to unify and standardize and limit.

You know, I have 30 years of IT behind me, and I spent so much of my career complaining about customization. I was driven by issues with upgrades, maintenance, and so on.

I have come to be more aligned with your view.  Standardization is key in the architecture, but the solutions should be more custom the closer to the user you get. I believe this has long been a problem due to the high demand for developers and a shortage of them.
But it would appear that AI is changing that dynamic.

I can't agree with your last view enough. I also believe that it is in the best interests of governments, those in power, and the wealthy to keep people at odds with one another. If we look at the rise of algorithms that drive anger and misinformation (look at dierter1's post, which most likely propagates such), we see a constant effort to keep people upset with each other.  Power and money are all fake and illusions. Keeping people "believing" and not talking and working together is in the best interest of those who benefit from the illusion.

[Nominal Animal]

Standardization is key in the architecture, but the solutions should be more custom the closer to the user you get.

Exactly; well put.

I also believe that it is in the best interests of governments, those in power, and the wealthy to keep people at odds with one another. If we look at the rise of algorithms that drive anger and misinformation (look at dierter1's post, which most likely propagates such), we see a constant effort to keep people upset with each other.  Power and money are all fake and illusions. Keeping people "believing" and not talking and working together is in the best interest of those who benefit from the illusion.

Fully agreed.
 _ _ _ _ _

One funny aspect of this is that many of the forces here emerge from second-order effects of past decisions, rather than by design.  Like keeping people upset with each other: to those in power, it looks very much like engagement, which makes them more malleable to manipulation by those who make a profit of the upset — and let's face it, even our newspapers now do, what with all headlines having become clickbait and so on.  No need for conspiracy crap; we manage to build our own dystopias voluntarily.

That is what I fear about these grand transition plans: if they fail somehow, people will blame Linux, and not the project.  The second-order effects of that could be scary.  And if they succeed by making another Android locking it down, it will at best add only maintenance burden without benefits to the open source projects; and at worst, if they standardize on a particular Linux distribution, may reduce choice among those of us already using Linux.  (Like before widespread adoption of https, there were all sorts of Internet Exploder -only e-banking widgets, for example in South Korea; locking out Linux users.)

There is lots to lose here for those already using Linux, even though I believe everyone involved has only the best of intentions.

[dietert1]

@cyclotron
Nobody cares whether you denounce facts as conspiration.

- The US tech industry has been manipulating EU politics by manipulating documents to be voted upon. We don't know exactly how it happened.

- The talk of of J.D. Vance about the destruction of EU happened during his visit to Hungary in the context of the recent elections there.

- In the context of the Ukraine conflict we remember the insane "Fuck the EU" by special envoy Newland.
We also remember that the Cuba crisis happened after the US intended to install nuclear weapons in Turkey. In order to avoid nuclear war the final deal was the removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Cuba and dropping the plans for Turkey.
Ukraine is much closer. Ukraine is suffering a terrible war for years now and Cuba is suffering a US embargo.

- I remember very well ancient times when the US would back up military action by diplomatic preparations, e.g. with the United Nations. What we see now and what i called terrorist attacks is completely different. The current US president talked about "cleaning up Gaza" and making it a nice beach with hotels. And on the first day of the current Iran adventure CIA published that the US was under no current threat from Iran. Israel is one of the US? Since when? So Washington is also responsible for the killing spree in South Lebanon?

Even the pope is speaking clear language now. The catholic church represents a lot of people - among them about 53 million voters inside the US and the Italian president, a former best friend of Trump. Worldwide the church is much bigger than the US. Today the front page article in "Die Zeit", a respected german newspaper, is about how to boycott US products.

This thread is about how to boycott US products (Microsoft).

Regards, Dieter

[Nominal Animal]

This thread is about how to boycott US products (Microsoft).

No, it is not.  It is about not relying on US products for critical software infrastructure in EU.  It is a completely different thing.

[Cyclotron]

This thread is about how to boycott US products (Microsoft).

No, it is not.  It is about not relying on US products for critical software infrastructure in EU.  It is a completely different thing.

I think it can be expanded to say that everyone, companies, nations, our moms, all need to consider where they spend their money, store their data, and what is being done in their names.

Proper security should be used by all, and we, the people, should demand it and demand much more.   I hope the French people hold their government responsible for the delivery of their claims.

It's going to be a technical roller coaster ride and will likely cost a fortune.  Wonder what wealthy people are going to make the most on this effort.

[Cyclotron]

@cyclotron
Nobody cares whether you denounce facts as conspiration.

- The US tech industry has been manipulating EU politics by manipulating documents to be voted upon. We don't know exactly how it happened.

- The talk of of J.D. Vance about the destruction of EU happened during his visit to Hungary in the context of the recent elections there.

- In the context of the Ukraine conflict we remember the insane "Fuck the EU" by special envoy Newland.
We also remember that the Cuba crisis happened after the US intended to install nuclear weapons in Turkey. In order to avoid nuclear war the final deal was the removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Cuba and dropping the plans for Turkey.
Ukraine is much closer. Ukraine is suffering a terrible war for years now and Cuba is suffering a US embargo.

- I remember very well ancient times when the US would back up military action by diplomatic preparations, e.g. with the United Nations. What we see now and what i called terrorist attacks is completely different. The current US president talked about "cleaning up Gaza" and making it a nice beach with hotels. And on the first day of the current Iran adventure CIA published that the US was under no current threat from Iran. Israel is one of the US? Since when? So Washington is also responsible for the killing spree in South Lebanon?

Even the pope is speaking clear language now. The catholic church represents a lot of people - among them about 53 million voters inside the US and the Italian president, a former best friend of Trump. Worldwide the church is much bigger than the US. Today the front page article in "Die Zeit", a respected german newspaper, is about how to boycott US products.

This thread is about how to boycott US products (Microsoft).

Regards, Dieter

@dieter1
It is surreal that you have made the claims I pointed out earlier without any supporting evidence. Are you trying to be humorous?
I have called your ridiculous accusations a conspiracy theory to be polite. I have much harsher views of what you are doing if you are actually serious.

You have not addressed any of the falsehoods I've pointed out. Instead, you go on spouting off. Love hearing yourself?
I've wasted time trying to find some sort of thread around the world that might be related, and there's nothing.

If you have a problem with companies being able to lobby and politicians listening too much to them and wealthy people, then we agree, and that might be a bit related to this thread. But to claim all this other crap is just over-the-top nonsense.
Please try to refrain from posting inflammatory political views for my benefit.  I know politics are against the rules on the forum, and I'm sure there's always a line. I feel you're over it.

At least I can add you to the internet ignore list. Suffice it to say, I won't have to suffer the waste of time with more of this garbage.

[dietert1]

I think i am representing recent political developments in a fairly objective way. No surprise that appears difficult for some in the US.
Remember Huawei? I assume exactly the same will happen to US companies in Europe. I always bought iphones, but the next one will certainly be a different brand.
We have also seen legal action against the use of (mainly US based) internet platforms and of cellular phones in several countries for youngsters, like in Australia and Brasil.

Regards, Dieter

[Doctorandus_P]

I'm thinking (and also hoping really hard) that this time it's "different". A while ago several judges from the ICC ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court ) got their credit cards blocked by the usa and some more childish petty behavior, and we here in Europe are fed up with that clownish behavior and overall dependence on the usa. One of the goals now is to replace mastercard and visa for Wero, (an european system). And along the way credit card transaction fees will drop from the current 3% to about 0.2%. The goal is not to make profit from the transactions, but to keep that money in the economy to make it move smoother.

https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/europes-24-trillion-breakup-with-visa-and-mastercard/

[Cyclotron]

I'm thinking (and also hoping really hard) that this time it's "different". A while ago several judges from the ICC ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court ) got their credit cards blocked by the usa and some more childish petty behavior, and we here in Europe are fed up with that clownish behavior and overall dependence on the usa. One of the goals now is to replace mastercard and visa for Wero, (an european system). And along the way credit card transaction fees will drop from the current 3% to about 0.2%. The goal is not to make profit from the transactions, but to keep that money in the economy to make it move smoother.

https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/europes-24-trillion-breakup-with-visa-and-mastercard/

Great. But I think you've read something wrong, or more likely, the media you've read is intentionally twisting facts.

Here are some facts as best I can find them from proper reports:
1. The EU doesn't put 24 trillion through VISA and Mastercard. 24 trillion was Visa and Mastercard's global number a couple of years ago.
2. VISA and Mastercard only handle about 60% of the transactions in Europe. So there are other options already.
3. Wero isn't replacing anything; it's an additional service being hyped up and sold to citizens by corporations' intent to leverage the current geopolitical topics to make money.
4. VISA and Mastercard will remain in the EU.  No one in their right mind would want to jeopardize the 1 trillion in tourist dollars spent through those networks by US tourists alone, let alone the total.
5. Wero is planned for 13 countries and not all of the EU at this time.  That leaves another 14 EU nations out of the network, and of course, no one visiting the UK would be able to use it.

The US has several account-to-account systems, and many countries do. Wero is just another one, being pushed by banks intent on making money. There are more ways to make money than the transaction fees.

I would think that if the EU were serious, it could put a payment card system in place that would provide true parity. But I suspect that's not the goal.

Why do you think the media outlets like the one you posted intentionally twist the facts?  It's right there in the URL itself. The implication that the breakup is over 24 trillion.

I had to go back and look at what the ICC did. As you allege, the ICC opened investigations into two states over which it has no direct jurisdiction.  It appears those states objected to that and used their independent authority to counter the overreach. I agree that there is childish and petty behavior there on all counts, including the ICC.

The ICC was petty and childish to waste money and resources in cases where it well knew it held no jurisdiction.  The states that objected and took their own actions in counter were petty and childish because they knew the ICC's childish and petty actions had no impact on them due to lack of jurisdiction. But, of course, the arrest warrants issued might be a problem if those whom the ICC targeted visited a state under the ICC jurisdiction, so I guess someone felt tit-for-tat was warranted.

I still don't know what this has to do directly with France moving government systems off of Windows to Linux.  Maybe just a chance to bring politics more into focus in this thread?

[madires]

Wero is meant to become a competitor to Paypal and the other payment services.

[iMo]

..Wero..something like Wirecard??? 

[nctnico]

Wero is meant to become a competitor to Paypal and the other payment services.

Not really. It is a lower cost replacement. In the Netherlands we have had a similar online payment system for 20+ years already (under a different brand name) and most online stores use it even if they are not located in the EU (for example the likes of Mouser, Amazon, Aliexpress). It allows to pay for goods in a webshop directly from your bankaccount using the bank's own app (or online environment) to approve the payment. It is much cheaper and much more convenient. Wero is an EU wide adoption of the local online payment systems used in Belgium and the Netherlands.

[SiliconWizard]

Contrary to Paypal, when I checked, Wero had zero fee for single-person businesses and the fees for merchant accounts were pretty low. The service is linked to many banks directly, so that's convenient. Strictly european, though.

[Karel]

Wero is a European mobile payment system that replaced Giropay in Germany, Paylib  in France, Payconiq in Belgium and Luxembourg, and iDEAL in the Netherlands.
The service was launched on 2 July 2024 by the European Payments Initiative. The service competes with PayPal, credit cards and similar services.
It started as a real-time payment system in 2024. From late 2025, extended online payment functions were added on a step-by-step basis.
Point-of-sale payments (paying at the physical checkout) are planned to start in 2026.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)?useskin=vector

[Doctorandus_P]

Indeed, from what I understand Wero is going to be extended to have all the functionality that Visa and Mastercard has, and for the whole of the EU.

At the moment there is a 2% to 3% commission for the use of visa/mastercard, and those companies are forcing the sellers to eat up the difference, if they don't, then they get kicked out of the visa/mastercard system.

Once Wero has gained enough traction (and with around 0.2% commission rate) then the shops get enough power to say: Well, we're willing to keep on Visa/Mastercard, but we're going to charge the customers who do so with this extra commission. And this will be a gradual process, probably starting with shops that are not very much dependent on tourism, but it will spread. And it will force those creditcard companies to either accept this much lower commission, or get ousted completely. The current situation that american companies are making money from payments here in Europe is quite absurd.

Excessive politics removed

[Karel]

Once Wero has gained enough traction (and with around 0.2% commission rate) then...

...  Wero will start to increase their commission rate to 2 or 3% like Visa and Mastercard.

But that's just my guess.
I believe the real goal is to have something "European", not necessarily something better or cheaper than the competition...

[Cyclotron]

Once Wero has gained enough traction (and with around 0.2% commission rate) then...

...  Wero will start to increase their commission rate to 2 or 3% like Visa and Mastercard.

But that's just my guess.
I believe the real goal is to have something "European", not necessarily something better or cheaper than the competition...

Agreed. That's the typical method of companies. There are already 40% of transactions in the EU that don't go through Visa or Mastercard, so there's competition in payments. I wouldn't expect cash to be that prevalent.

Anyway, I'm not sure this is relevant to the thread's topic other than tangentially. Greed and power are the universal corruptions all nations suffer. I certainly see a value in taking some interest in your nation's sovereignty. Something European is good in my view.

France will purchase Linux from someone, and that competition is good. If it works, you might see some changes in other products on the market.
Wero is going to add competition to the market, which is good.

[Nominal Animal]

Here in Finland, people pay online using standard SEPA transfers integrated into web carts.  At payment time, it means I choose my own bank, log in with my own personal details, and am shown the payment details and amount; I choose my account (at that bank) and accept the payment.  The confirmation of the payment is provided instantly to the online shop.  There are only a few different banks here in Finland, and all the cart providers support all banks (including the biggest ones, associated with the largest two banks).

The security of this scheme depends on the human seeing and verifying the exact URL (or at least exact fully qualified domain name) for their own bank, because the main danger is browser-based man-in-the-middle redirection/fake website attacks.  It becomes fragile when browsers mangle the URL, especially domain name part, and especially so for non-technical people.

[m k]

Once a tourist wondered how bad it must be in Finland, even pocket change level is paid with a credit card.

[Simon]

meanwhile our local carpark machines have not taken credit cards for 3 years. We have had to pay with change which is inconvenient or an app that charges a £0.20 fee on as little as £1.20 so quite extortionate. It's like lower income households can't afford to even park in the local town.

[Nominal Animal]

Once a tourist wondered how bad it must be in Finland, even pocket change level is paid with a credit card.

Heh!  Although technically, I do believe a lot of the bank cards used here are actually debit and not credit cards.  For example, I mainly use my MasterCard Debit card.  For purchases under 50€, I often use the contactless RFID in it, too.  I admit, it was a bit annoying to switch to RF-shielded wallet/credit card holder.. but nowadays, I do find it easier/nicer/faster to use than coins or cash, definitely.

For some strange reason, I do still somehow slowly accumulate 5¢ coins.

[themadhippy]

meanwhile our local carpark machines have not taken credit cards for 3 years. We have had to pay with change which is inconvenient or an app that charges a £0.20 fee on as little as £1.20

Dont worry  they'll remove the cash option soon  so you'll have  no choice but pay the additional fee.

[Simon]

meanwhile our local carpark machines have not taken credit cards for 3 years. We have had to pay with change which is inconvenient or an app that charges a £0.20 fee on as little as £1.20

Dont worry  they'll remove the cash option soon  so you'll have  no choice but pay the additional fee.

Well they did a survey, they were offering to get rid of cash and put card payments back, the options were clearly about the cost of card transactions and collecting the cash. But this is an expensive car park.

What I do hate is when companies plead with you to pay cash because of all these nasty fees on cards. When they do this I just make sure I pay by card because I know it means that either they are unhinged or they are dodging tax. For me card payment fees are 1.5-2%, less than paypal!!! if I were to take cash to the bank I would be charged at least as much and it would cost my time. If I were employing someone to do it their time would definitely already make it costly. So cash businesses are tax evaders as far as I am concerned like our local chippy. Notices all over the place about these nasty banks taking our money. Hm, let me see, what are the chips made of? Hm, where do they come from? oh yes a farmer. Farmers in the UK are always claiming poverty, so the potatoes are bought cash, so another load of dax evasion.

I always pay by card, because I want taxes owed to be paid, that is how we pay for society.

[Cyclotron]

Well, as the topic has drifted, I do see it as related in that France's move has at least been framed as giving it more control over who has access to French data.

I'm sure the French government doesn't mind collecting information about its citizens' digital transactions and payments. The US government loves to collect that data. The fees and data collections are everywhere. The grocery store will charge you a fee if you don't let them collect your information by presenting a loyalty card.

I know VISA claims to sell only anonymized and aggregated information. They also collect those fees from merchants and require them to not pass that charge on. In essence, if a merchant sells you a product for cash at a lower price than CC, they would be in breach. It's like forcing the merchant to make more money on cash transactions. Of course, the products all have fees incorporated into the prices, as well as the taxes that governments impose on the OEM, the wholesaler, and the merchant.

As long as any merchant continues to agree to Visa or MC's use, they can't make deals on how you pay. So, with WERO or others that may charge the merchant less, the merchant will happily pocket that extra money. DEBIT is also welcome because there's no merchant fee, but they get to use the CC system and keep the additional markup on products.  Win Win.

In the US, there are exceptions. Costco accepts only one CC system and DEBIT cards. In the US, they accept only Visa, and in Canada, they accept only MasterCard. Because they charge a customer a membership fee and take all these extra steps to avoid signing the agreements on transactions, they feel they can be profitable with razor-thin margins, and the customer gets a deal.