Hacker News Reader

Comment by doczoidberg | Hacker News Reader

I am a German SaaS developer. More and more customers are asking me for not using infrastracture services from US companies.

On the one hand this is bad for me because google and microsoft have top products for my needs. On the other hand this means big opportunities because my customers are heavily searching for alternatives.

The trust in US IT companies was never so bad here. It can become a desaster for their european sales.

View on HN

If only that led to a surge in usage of open source software in Europe, especially in government institutions, as well as for EU services and products that would need to fill the void.

I've already noticed a small increase in interest for using open source in EU governments, but it's still far too small and far less aggressive than I would like it to be. The adoption should be 10x faster than it is now, post-Snowden.

I'm all for open source, but I don't really understand what its relevance is here. I'm pretty sure OP was talking about infrastructure services. I'm guessing (s)he develops all of his software with OSS backend and frontend frameworks, and open source is completely orthogonal to his client's concerns.

You can't trust what you cannot audit. Open Source is auditable software. You can hire non-vested 3rd parties to validate it.

I wonder how much that has to do with CCC and general German culture. The only stories about European customers refusing to use US web infrastructure I hear come from Germany. I live next doors, in Poland, and here it seems like nobody cares.

I'm seeing some of this in NL as well, especially companies that deal with sensitive data.

It's happening quite a bit in the UK as well.

Yes this has also to do with german culture (german angst).

Non-US IT infrastructure companies are guaranteed to have been pwned by US intelligence. That is explicitly what we pay it to do.

It might help "send a message," but it certainly won't make you safer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com