Petition Summary: The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
" Number of supporters: 141" and 375 upvotes, something doesn’t add up.
I’ve said this a million times, but it’s definitely about time we stop spending taxes on a rogue entity across the ocean who definitely does not have our best interests in mind. I’m not convinced it’s even legal and I don’t understand why the legal prospects have never been brought up about this fucking situation. R&D money should not go to a foreign corporation. In addition, I (and pretty much everyone else on the planet) already paid for microsofts products and services so my government can use it (against my will), so why the fuck do they get away with setting a public price at all? It should legally be free or the governments shouldn’t need to pay for it in the first place, and it should legally be open source because it’s publicly funded. There are just so many problems with the entire idea of our government using Windows, Office, and their services.
Linux is still mostly US-dependent as a project.
If the Linux project and all its developers and maintainers disappeared tomorrow, the kernel would still exist, be useful, and be forkable.
Especially since many Linux related organizations like SUSE and KDE are based in the EU.
They could call it Eunux!
Oh…
Eubuntu.
Or Keubuntu, the KDEU spin.
Someone mentioned that M365 is properly not legal. Guess what, it isn’t.
The EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) investgated the EU-Commissions’ use of M365 and found it to be illegal in march 2024. EPDS gave the Commission until December 2024 to, among other things, stop transfers of Personal Information to third countries in M365 outside the EU. Which of course made the Commission sue the EDPS. And MS to do the same…
So M365 is NOT legal to use for any Public Institution in the EU. Unless the Controller make Microsoft change their DPA, contract etc. Kinda like MS did for the Dutch government after the dutch firm Privacy Company made an in depth analysis of M365 and found numerous illegal processing etc.
Fun how Microsoft was made aware of how they acted illegal, and changed it - only for the Dutch Government…!! The rest of their Customers still have the illegal DPA, terms etc… Also fun how it is Common knowledge and IT-departments still choose to use M365, and move as much as possible there from more privacy and security oriented services.
EDPS investigation into the Commissions use of M365: 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
My point? EU-Linux is a fantastic idea! 🙂
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance so i can open a
.docxwith any program and be usable anywhere.Then focus on enforcing FOSS software in public services but don’t bother with a “european linux distro”, that’s just a waste of resources. There are already a great deal of distros around. Considering geopolitics i’d go with SuSe or some other EU-based distro.
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance so i can open a
.docxwith any program and be usable anywhere.That’s an impossible task. Not even Microsoft manages that. Do not want to count how often i used libreOffice to repair or convert an older MSOffice file so it can be opend with modern Versions of MSOffice.
Once there was a 500MB Excel Sheet with lime 500-1000 used Cells, opened and saved it to.a xlsx file using libreOffice and reduced it to a few MB while still being fully functional.
@ShortN0te @0x0 I mean the real problem here is that MS office is a mess but somehow still standardized, so “enforcing standards” would be as easy as showing MS the middle finger and using libre office. They’d save a lot of money and time, it’s a clear win-win scenario imho
Open standards are the first step of a functional transition to an open government. From there Open Source Software can compete against commercial software, once the ppl see that the FOSS offers the same features then the proprietary paid software they can easily switch to it. With open standards they only need to train the users, no data to migrate etc.
Focus instead on enforcing standards’ compliance
For sure, but ¿por qué no los dos?
Completely agree with your other prioritisations.
OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format it itself doesn’t implement consistently.
Either you meant OpenDocument or you meant that you want a magic wand.
Yes MS intentionally implements it inconsistently and yes that’s why i meant whichever format is open.
While I like the idea, it’ll be incredibly tough to overcome Microsofts lobbying, one just needs to look on the history of the LiMux project.
As long as the EU doesn’t reinvent the wheel, why not? I mean if they are going to fork Linux and rewrite a EU-based linux OS, this would further divide the community and make issues and security a lot more wacky… Not sure this is a good idea.
Pretty sure they’re talking about making a distro, not forking the Linux kernel. I don’t see any reason why they would need to fork it anyway.
One reason could be possible US restrictions and sanctions.
Fucking over microsoft is always good
It’s not fucking over Microsoft, it’s prevent Microsoft from fucking us over. Microsoft is not the victim in this.
Especially in light of Microsoft CoPilot. You do not want obvious spyware on any computer.
Don’t forget Recall, aka literal spyware, taking screenshots of your device regardless of whether you’re entering passwords, making private searches, using TOR, opening sensitive documents, looking at private pictures. It’s all exposed.
This is dumb. Hand over development to bureaucrats? create a set of guidelines and requirements, and allow distros to be certified, and fund development of distros that are being used.
It would make so much more sense to fund existing Linux development than making a new distro, tbh.
If the EU changed to Linux systems and donated the same amount back to open source development as they currently pay for Microsoft licenses, that would make a hell of a difference.
I don’t know how it works with a frequently updating OS. In my mind beaurocrats can become asses about certifying one exact version they inspected and then making users afraid that open source community can inject the next version with viruses and they can’t be sure it’s okay too. Ah, and making each certification a paid service and somehow fucking it up.
In Russia there are like two projects of local Linux with custom wine that you can buy just like other software, certified by FSB for sensitive business (I believe them being the first pieces of software to get it except specific cryptographic stuff), but I feel the reason it’s getting adopted and certified is because there are some nepotism and illegal connections with money not really changing pockets.
100% I can imagine they don’t want to rely on third parties to develop their distribution, but, realistically, all the software that keeps the system going will be developed by “randos on the internet” still, so might as well hand over all the development effort to who has the knowledge already, while providing funds/grants
just an idea, it could be based on #NixOS , if I remember well the project was partially funded by European Research or Opensource funds.
Please correct me if I am wrong on the fundings, I say this from distant memory.
EDIT: it was just an idea, as it is not the most user-friendly distro out there…
Or they could use a distro that’s already been created by a European vendor, maybe even create a competitive tender. There’s no point in creating a new distro, add a new repository if you must.
Well, what better way to embrace FOSS than dismissing the efforts of all the existing distro maintainers? Welcome to the community, guys. Good luck building your cathedral next to the bazaar!
How about they instead work together with the distros and create a way of certifying a distro as gov-ready?
They say nothing about their distro having no upstream. If they make a distro based of Debian/Arch/Fedora I don’t see that as dismissing their efforts anymore than Nobara/SteamOS/Ubuntu/Mint does.
I rather they enforce their requirements on their own spin then try to force existing distros to implement said reqs. They should obviously donate to the foss community when using the technology the community maintain though!
Does Ubuntu “dismiss” Debian? Or Manjaro “disregard” Arch?
An EU-backed and funded distro released under the GNU license would mean that the government can now fund developers and maintainers to have a distribution that will comply with privacy and security requirements.
How much of Ubuntu’s funding goes to supporting debian? I actually don’t know.
I don’t, for example, see Ubuntu listed here: https://www.debian.org/partners/
So an EU-backed distro could be the same. Yes, they would fund maintainers, but their own maintainers, not maintainers of upstream distros.
I imagine this would work out to be something similar to redhat enterprise linux, but with the EU funding it’s development instead of the US
Just use Debian, it has old root, stable, still being developed, it’s the base of various others distro that “enhance” it (sometimes badly).
Debian.
I’m using MX Linus AHS, based on Debian, BTW.
