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Comment by badsectoracula | Hacker News Reader

FWIW Free Pascal and Lazarus communities and developers are largely European and there isn't a single company behind them. Though at the same time there are also several devs from outside EU so i do not think it can be called a "EU alternative" - which is the case for most FLOSS projects actually.

Some projects, especially high profile ones, do have US companies behind them (e.g. Google, etc) so you could claim they are US-centric, but at this point it becomes a question of why you are looking for an EU alternative. If it is to help EU businesses (like others mentioned), then unless you financially support these US companies (either directly or indirectly via, e.g., your data) it doesn't matter if the FLOSS project you are using is made by them or not.

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> why you are looking for an EU alternative

I think recently it has been made obvious by the US that relying on US technology is a risk, because it can be used to bully entire countries.

So I think there is a movement right now of "non-US alternatives", but of course if you are in the EU and got burned by relying too much on the US, maybe it is wise to try to fix that by having some kind of digital sovereignty in the EU.

But I'm pretty sure many companies would switch to a Canada-based product if it allowed them to reduce their dependency on the US.

Yeah i understand why one would do that, i wrote that not to make the question itself, but to indicate that whoever thinks to look for EU alternatives should ask that question to themselves. This way they can figure out how to choose their next steps, like judging if a FLOSS project makes sense to use or avoid - e.g. if it is tied in a US company.

For the same reason people on the wrong countries aren't allowed to contribute to US projects.

The way things are going it becomes a national security issue where those PR are coming from.

So, to be clear, your reasons for looking for EU alternatives (i.e. that "same reason" you refer to) is that some countries are not allowed to contribute to US projects?

Yes, as it stands we should remove our independence on US, given current geopolitics, when technology can be weaponised.

Ok, but in that case the only FLOSS projects from US that can be considered "dangerous" would be those which are both tied to specific US companies and do not have much of a EU presence to be forked in case of such weaponization (with ease of forking being taken into account as well).

And TBH IMO such projects should be avoided in the first place regardless of what US is doing because they tend to use FLOSS as a marketing method than for practical development. Choosing projects which have multiple shareholders, so to speak, is much healthier in the long term.

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