Comment by O1111OOO | Hacker News Reader

Comment by O1111OOO | Hacker News Reader

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In my small bubble of tech news, France has popped up a few times. Found out recently that they are officially[0] using the privacy-respecting Qwant search engine. Several weeks ago, I learned that they have planned obsolescence laws[1] which makes them a pioneer in this area (from what I understand).

There's also an active non-profit organization using FOSS to create alternative, privacy-respecting, solutions to Google products (framasoft[2]). I mention this last one because I haven't come across a similar major undertaking (or similar mindset) in too many other countries.

Now they are evaluating Matrix for their communications needs. I can understand the importance of countries, nowadays, not relying too much on the services of companies tied to a specific country (namely the US) but I wonder what else is different about France? What else are they engaged in re: FOSS, privacy?

Or am I reading too much into this?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378

[2] https://framasoft.org/en/

French citizen here. For as long as I can remember, there's been a strong will in the French FLOSS communities to develop local alternatives to the ever-expanding reach of the FAANG/GAFAM, for many reasons. The obvious one being the export of data outside actionable jurisdiction, but it could also be explained by differences in ideology.

As for what else we're doing, there's La Quadrature du Net (LQDN)[1] which took part in the recent Google €50m fine, some projects by concerned citizens to keep a watch on politicians[2] and tracking in mobile apps[3], but one of my favourite things comes from the increasing will to release "OpenData" (public data sets from various sources)[4] to let collectivities, regions and smaller units build tools to solve their local problems.

[1] https://www.laquadrature.net/en

[2] https://projetarcadie.com/ (in French)

[3] https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

[4] https://www.data.gouv.fr/en/

I would also add that there's a rich ecosystem of extremely well-trained engineers coming from the Grandes Écoles system.

The result is a lot of top-notch contributors who get involved in FOSS projects in their 20s.

France's position on this is essentially nationalist; local surveillance of the internet is strong following various terrorists attacks, and there isn't quite German levels of distrust of state security apparatus. But on the other hand they are outside the five eyes, run an aerospace and tech industry that has to deal with US industrial espionage, and are aware of the cultural hegemony of English language media.

(People seem to think that France doesn't have a tech industry; it very much does but little of it is consumer facing)

Protecting one's interest is not nationalist, as long as it's not to the detriment of other nations.

>Nationalism is a political, social, and economic ideology and movement characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation,[1] especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

>a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationalism

Oh, that makes more sense. The first definition seems nearly self-evident; what nation state doesn't want to protect its own interest? But there's certainly a distinction in promoting oneself above others.

The very concept of a national interest is somewhat nationalist, but then I don't believe that "nationalist" always implies "to the detriment of other nations". It often does, due to zero-sum thinking, but it's not intrinsically necessary to the concept of nationalism.

(also, exercising nationalism against a colonial power may be to its detriment but also be morally good. This obviously does not apply in the case of France, which itself is a colonial power)

I was looking up nationalism on Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but didn't find it (probably too sensitive a subject at the time), so here's its definition of politics:

> POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

This is hardly relevant, but I'm using the occasion to share the great piece of satire that's Devil's Dictionary. Here's a few others:

> OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.

> POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

> PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state or quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.

Edit:

> PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

Nationalism was definitely not considered a sensitive subject in Bierce's time. It was considered the default.

You might be right, I wouldn't know. I guessed that because I found that a satirical dictionary not having an entry for words nationalism or nation more difficult to believe.

Here's my suggestion:

NATIONALISM,n. Discrimination which is based on geography and thus obviously superior to RACISM and SEXISM which are based on biology. Can be further refined to NEPOTISM and ultimately SELFISM.

I work in a French public lab, and the policy here (and in many if not most other public labs) is to produce FOSS based on our research. It has always been more or less a fact, but this is becoming an official policy, AFAIK: make it FOSS unless you have a good reason not to.

Regarding privacy: not my field of expertise, but France is far from paradise here, thanks to the terrorist attacks a few years ago.

Also last October ANSSI, the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, released the sources of CLIP OS, a Gentoo-based hardened, multi-level operating system. https://clip-os.org/en/

They also have recently opened a public discussion on how to build secure apps in Rust: https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/rust-guide

My first use case of FOSS was with Framasoft. Back in 2009. I had my first USB key, and downloaded all the needed softwares on my key[0] , notably SumatraPdf, OpenOfice and Mozzilla.

[0] https://framakey.org/

I also used it a lot in high school, just for escaping the pre-installed Internet Explorer it was worth it.

I agree. Check this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

I think other European countries had their own minitel, UK had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext for example

We had a big teletext offering in France too at some point. Minitel is not it. Minitel was a modem+terminal in your house. So, it was bidirectional, secure, and had incorporated billing. You were able to do all kinds of things with it: enter chatrooms, order stuff (like train tickets), register/check the results for some exams, etc.

The British counterpart to Minitel was not Teletext (a one-way system that was present throughout Europe anyway), but Prestel. It wasn't hugely popular, not on the scale of Minitel, but it did have the UK's first highly publicised hacking case leading to changes in the law: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36306419

France also wants to break Internet and culture sharing (and code). There is a new law project in EU that will give the power to big companies to control what we have the right to publish, and that makes the host platform legally responsible of what users post.

https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/

There is lot of private initiatives to make great things, but no state vision to make things right. The only value they see is economical, but not for the people.

The gendarmes have also switched to linux. IIRC, the main reason was that is is cheaper.

Outside of costs, an army / police using a foreign-develop proprietary operating system for their everyday internal need is insane.

I always wonder why foreign countries by the French Rafale. Same problem: What can we trust from a foreign entity?

I always wonder if the Mitterand / Thatcher / Exocet story is true: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/22/books.france

I don't think it was, she was playing Mitterand on emotions, which most french guys have way too many and are easily controlled by them (I see it every single effin' day around me in many ways).

If she would go nuclear on Argentina due to that skirmish and few marines dying in regular acts of war (however sad it is, this is business-as-usual during war), she would have alienated UK to every single country in the world, destroying it on many levels. And also go down in history as one of the most horrible rulers in history of mankind.

Not something any power-and-approval-hungry sociopath (sorry, 'leader of the nation') wants to leave behind.

> emotions, which most french guys have way too many

Gross generalization.

Oh, the nuclear threat was in retrospect almost certainly a bluff, what I was more questioning was whether the conversation happened, and whether Mitterand did in fact hand over any kind of remote disarm codes for Exocet missiles.

> she would have alienated UK to every single country in the world, destroying it on many levels.

That really isn't realistic. Some allies might have been unhappy with Thatcher for normalising the use of nuclear weapons, and might even have openly criticised the UK. But France, the US, the Commonwealth nations would not just desert an important ally: how would that benefit them? They would have retconned the story and we'd all believe now that Galtieri was the next Hitler and would have subjugated the whole hemisphere if not for Thatcher's brave initiative.

They can't, but they also can't afford to have a fighter that's significantly inferior to their adversaries. So they find the country that can offer what they need, which they can trust most (or don't trust least, depending on your perspective).

It's not like every country has the capacities to produce fighter aircrafts on its own.

Also, having intertwined economies is supposed to help maintain peace and foster prosperity.

depends on how the intertwining is done, a lot of international instability is due to foreign companies taking a bit too much advantage of other places

Dassault already won the trust of half the world with the Mirage.

It's a slightly different problem as those countries that buy the Rafale do so because they don't have (or aren't willing to develop) the means to build their own planes.

So to them it's mostly a matter of choosing which foreign entity to trust and at which cost, between the US, Russia, China, France, and a handful of other states with lower performing but cheaper equipment.

Arguably it is easier to check a few jets you buy once than software used by many thousand persons on different machines with differnt versions and monthly updates.

I am pretty sure that especially in weapon systems it is quite common for customers to demand special changes, services and insight.

There's also big economic incentive for many countries to just go to FOSS solutions for their needs. It alleviates the need for self-sufficient local private corporations or huge public programs. Nothing speaks louder to a politician than saving on their budget. Or making administration easier (which is likely to be incredibly important in a country with a bureaucracy as Byzantine as France).

Now that the big hacker/open source FUD is mostly done for, I think you'll see a lot more countries deploying FOSS tech as a matter of fact an not as an ideological statement or an avant-garde trial.

France also recruits hackers as part of their beta.gouv.fr community, they are pushing things forward to more open source from the inside of the government. Many of them are not only at betagouv, but also at laquadrature or framasoft and the like.

slight counter point, I think I recall education having a recent contract with Microsoft which wasn't super OSS to say the least.

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