Thread

US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS

388 points · 396 comments · mywacaday

PorciiVorbesc · 1790684329 · focus · HN ↗
I still don't get why EU governments and agencies don't standardize around an already existing industry proven OS the EU already has domestically, which is SUSE, and need to each go reinventing the wheel their own way, which leads to higher costs and more fragmentation across the EU.
I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems. You can just do things when you want to. You literally have that power. Exercise it for once FFS.
1. p_l · 1790684382 · focus · HN ↗
  Might be related to NixOS being strongly related to Netherlands and them picking local
  1. PorciiVorbesc · 1790684628 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah well that's why the EU federal idea is and will be a failure. It wishes to be the challenger to the US and China hegemony in theory, but then every individual country wants to be its own special mini-boss in its own playground hoping they'll be at the top of the helm, that develops and uses its own separate things that will hopefully get adopted by the other EU members.
    nutjob2 · 1790685505 · focus · HN ↗
    You have it in reverse. A federal EU enables EU countries to pool sovereignty and strength to protect itself from the US and China. It neither needs to or wants to challenge anyone. A federal system allows EU wide decisions to be made quickly and without petty parochial concerns.
    Constituent states rightly can choose to make their own decisions in matters like this, it hardly effects anyone else, and they can choose to collaborate.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790695842 · focus · HN ↗
    >You have it in reverse. A federal EU enables EU countries to pool sovereignty and strength to protect itself from the US and China.
    How is that in reverse to what I said? I said the same thing, and explained why this isn't actually happening.
    cgio · 1790685567 · focus · HN ↗
    Is that why US failed while building CP/m, Unix a few, Dos, Windows, MacOs, OS/2,…? A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790685709 · focus · HN ↗
    > A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier.
    Yeah but when it comes to national sovereignty you can't let your own products get steamrolled by the entrenched monopolies of your adversaries (Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc) just because you're gullible and still think you can play by the rules of idealistic 'free market' and come out on top, while your adversaries protect their monopolies to weaponize them against you on the "free market", suppressing or destroying your domestic industry and making you indefinitely dependent on them (US big-tech, Chinese EV industry, etc).
    China has achieved a SW industry superior to the EU with much less money, simply because it has banned US big-tech from its market, preventing its own small domestic players from being crushed by US giants. It's also how countries like Italy, Japan and Korea built strong car industries post-WW2, as they banned superior import cars (often US ones) from their markets, till their own industry could catch up and be competitive internationally. India does the same.
    toyg · 1790686204 · focus · HN ↗
    Cooperation and competition can be partial. Google and Microsoft compete internally and then cooperate when fighting external forces. There is no reason why this cannot work for European companies too.
    The problem has more to do with the weak sense of belonging to a supranational identity. Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still. Change is slow.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790689864 · focus · HN ↗
    >Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still.
    You don't need to completely erase and crush ethnic and national identities in order to standardize on technical platform for the common market.
    toyg · 1790693465 · focus · HN ↗
    No, but there has to be a sense of belonging strong enough to make it clear that, on any given problem, the approach should be "what is convenient to us as Europeans vs American companies" rather than "what is convenient to us as <state X> vs American companies". And Americans (and not just them) ruthlessly exploit this state through basic divide et impera.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790700072 · focus · HN ↗
    >No, but there has to be a sense of belonging strong enough to make it clear that, on any given problem, the approach should be "what is convenient to us as Europeans vs American companies"
    No you don't need that, that's why we have the EU & EC that just demands all members follow a fixed set of rules and regulation in order to solve a common problem. Operating systems could also be part of that problem to solve (amongst million other sovereignty problems we have to solve but will never get to).
    You didn't need a shared sense of belonging for the EU to mandate USB-C on all gadgets sold in the EU. So you don't need a shared sense of belonging to demand all EU government systems transition to SUSE or compatible forks in the next 10 years, and each state can fork and modify it to its own liking by local companies and service providers to support its domestic market/industry if they wish.
    If EU countries can build Airbus planes together, then they definitely can standardize on an OS, you just need to want to do it, but unfortunately, the politicians and policy makers who helped put Airbus together, were cut from a different cloth than the self serving useless rejects we have today at the EU helm.
    mike_hearn · 1790693961 · focus · HN ↗
    It didn't ban US tech except in very targeted ways, when they already had a competent local competitor. There are, for example, iPhones and Androids everywhere in China.
    azan_ · 1790686788 · focus · HN ↗
    When the market is as huge as US, there's lots of space for competition. Sadly in how EU is currently structured it would most likely be just german "Microsoft", spanish "Microsoft", french "Microsoft" etc.
  2. muvlon · 1790693931 · focus · HN ↗
    I think NixOS is also just much better suited for this particular job than SUSE. We use NixOS for everybody at work even though we're a German company.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790708518 · focus · HN ↗
    That's odd. Can I ask what you do for work that NixOS was the idea choice?
2. dtech · 1790684885 · focus · HN ↗
  > I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies
  The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.
  1. PorciiVorbesc · 1790684923 · focus · HN ↗
    I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU.
    graemep · 1790685087 · focus · HN ↗
    Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software?
    Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790685225 · focus · HN ↗
    >Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds?
    Not on defense and national security, that's up to individual EU member states, but the EU does veto corporate mergers and acquisitions on Competition Law (Antitrust). So just find a loophole in that and use it to prevent SUSE be taken over by non-EU nations.
    toyg · 1790685854 · focus · HN ↗
    The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. If your law is written decently and you have a functioning judiciary, chances of a loopholes surviving scrutiny will be very low.
    The European Commission could definitely ask governments (the European Council) to agree a new treaty or protocol that grants them veto powers on "federal security grounds", for sure. The European Parliament would likely rubber-stamp it too. Considering the current (and increasing) right-wing majorities across the continent, though, I find such scenario very unlikely.
    ElevenLathe · 1790687528 · focus · HN ↗
    As an American, EU politics is such a fascinating bizarro world. Imagine the right wingers being a bulwark against unhinged expansion of executive authority on grounds of national security! It would be like statehouse Republicans blocking the Patriot Act. Unthinkable.
    toyg · 1790688738 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, the same in the other direction: imagine the free marketeers by definition, installing an autocrat big on isolationist policies, the dismantling of judiciary separation, and on picking winners in the market... Absurd! And still, here we are. Humans are funny and inconsistent like that.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790712051 · focus · HN ↗
    >Well, the same in the other direction
    Right back at you: Imagine being a European getting fined/arrested for memes(UK), or that you called a politician a dick on facebook(Germany).
    How are those rape gangs in the UK this time of year? Did the UK government ever get in trouble for covering that up that scandal and calling the whistleblowers pointing it out "racist white supremacists"?
    toyg · 1790755728 · focus · HN ↗
    No rape gangs in sight here, thank you very much. Not that it had anything to do with what was being discussed.
    Politics really makes people rabid.
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790776548 · focus · HN ↗
    >No rape gangs in sight here, thank you very much.
    What do you call this then? <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/grooming-gangs-scandal-timeline-what-happened-what-inquiries-there-were-and-how-starmer-was-involved-after-elon-musks-accusations-13285021" rel="nofollow">https://news.sky.com/story/grooming-gangs-scandal-timeline-w...
    >Not that it had anything to do with what was being
    What did your comment have to do with "what was being discussed"?
    >Politics really makes people rabid.
    "Shit, I'm losing the argument to my political opposition, better call them rabbid, *fobes, nazis, etc. "
    toyg · 1790836786 · focus · HN ↗
    Those are all historical offences, dude. For all the disproportionate attention it gets, it's not really been a problem for some time.
    And anyway, this has nothing to do with the item being discussed, which was about the mismatch between declared party orthodoxies and actual everyday practice.
    But sure, stay angry.
    nottorp · 1790688988 · focus · HN ↗
    By the way liberals in EU are center right to right :)
    iamnothere · 1790692419 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, they are neoliberals, which are hardly left by international standards. European social-democratic parties, which are the traditional Euro center-left, are generally on the back foot right now.
    nottorp · 1790700779 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh, I just looked the naming up. Apparently the US is still in the 18xx calling left wing liberals?
    ElevenLathe · 1790704739 · focus · HN ↗
    TBH this whole left-right thing is pretty new in the US. The political science term is "ideological alignment" (we didn't really have it for a long time due to our weird party system) if you want to read about it. This is changing now to an extent, but there was also a taboo for a long time against identifying as being a leftist, what with McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, etc.
    graemep · 1790690793 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it demonstrates the extent to which left and right are artificial groupings that owe more to tribalism than anything rational.
    In the UK it was the right wing Conservative party which introduced same sex marriage. I am pretty sure the Republicans are unlikely to do that.
    Of course some things are clear. Privatisation is right wing, nationalisation is left wing, but you never really had the latter in the US!
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790699867 · focus · HN ↗
    >but you never really had the latter in the US!
    US postal service
    Amtrak
    State Lotteries
    Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
    Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790688538 · focus · HN ↗
    >The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under.
    You can always "just do things" whenever you want by interpreting or changing the laws first to fit your desired goal. And so there, now it's legal, because I just changed the rules to make it so.
    Same how the "we'll now have to accept all those migrants illegally crossing our border without asking our voters if its what they want" was done, they decided overnight that its legal. Or how they can just block the right wing from winning elections in order to "just protect democracy".
    We're already under tyrannical rule, except the system abuse just acts on the wrong topics.
    [deleted] · 1790685869 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    Danox · 1790692754 · focus · HN ↗
    They better learn. the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans do not sell anything close and dear and probably never will.
    eterm · 1790685120 · focus · HN ↗
    The EU level doesn't have enforcement mechanisms, EU law is applied through member states changing their laws.
  2. Alexander-Barth · 1790687420 · focus · HN ↗
    For context, the US once prevented that a German company AIXTRON was sold to a Chinese investor in 2016 (perhaps for good reasons). To me it would sound like a good deal for the Netherlands and Luxembourg/Germany if Netherlands would uses SUSE and the Luxembourg/Germany would step in to keep in in the EU.
    <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chinas-fujian-buying-aixtron/94833072/" rel="nofollow">https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chi...
    PorciiVorbesc · 1790708773 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't it odd how Germany needed the US to stop them from committing a(nother) suicidal mistake regarding their industry sovereignty?
    I wonder, is anyone left in the German government now (that isn't a paid lobbyist) that is even remotely interested on covering their industry sovereignty?
    Every so often I hear about new footguns Germany used on itself.
3. graemep · 1790684949 · focus · HN ↗
  > but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems
  Last time I looked it was a Swedish owned German company. The government of the Netherlands has limited power there. Given its history and performance its quite likely to get sold and might end up in American or Chinese hands or anything really.
  1. [deleted] · 1790685157 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.