Not even the GDPR?

That reminds me of a quote I heard once. Probably from Cory Doctorow but I cannot remember now.

"Everyone wants you to have privacy... just not from them."

Yeah? Because Chat Control is still a thing. And age verification as well, but the EU won't outsource that to 3rd parties (we have EIDAS for that).

Companies that have had their whole data on Google/MS servers for 20 years certainly don't care for privacy the way you and I do. But they are certainly realizing that US providers are not the way to go. Baby steps I guess.

It'll help when governments stop accepting or just blocking links to onedrive and sharepoint, and file formats that are not open. Then companies are forced into using alternatives instead of just blindly using microsoft, or don't work for any government project again.

Just have companies get tax reductions if they use EU only software. Voila, it’s done within months - to the shock of every it- admin out there.

Convincing CEOs is not our job. In general they have neither the obligation nor the habbit to take anything else other than their KPIs into consideration. Convincing elected polititians to legistlate is our job.

Some know already, some will bow to reason, many will do whatever keeps them elected. People will need to re-learn to play the long game.

If they put all the effort they use to change things in favor of ai to migrate to software alternatives, it would be a perfectly viable project

Excel is the biggest hurdle to overcome. No other spreadsheet software comes close to providing the same amount of features and functionality.

This is the main problem, changing the infrastructure in companies which use Windows, Certainly Microsoft EU is way more privacy focused (forced by law) than Microsoft US which use even keyloggers and sharing data with Towerdata and a lot of others. But this, even so, companies and administrations use more and more alternatives to Windows apps and services The EU has tons of good and even better alternatives to those from US corps, it's not a tecnical problem, but an political and burocratic one for companies and administrations to change, not so for the normal user, who can easily change his setup to his like from a huge catalogue of EU soft and services.

in that article (which i had to use the Bypass Paywalls Clean extension to comfortably read) Proton states "we do not comply with US subpoenas from either party." which of course is because they comply fully with Swiss subpoenas LOL

No.

Merz and von der Leyen are extremely competent, they just don't pursue the goals they say they do. They may even belief that they are pursuing other goals than they really do.

They believe in trickle down economics despite all evidence pointing to it making everything worse. In their pursuit of economic growth, they do the exact thing that in their model should boost, but in reality stifles growth. They increase the wealth redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich.

And they are so damn good at it. That's the reason money has put them in their current positions.

They are extremely competent in doing the wrong thing.

Sure it is. It's the US that's not ready for what it will cost...

France is switching from Microsoft Office to Libre Office right now for government employees, and it's saving them money in licensing fees.

Once the transition is finished, they're projected to save millions each year from just that switch

Europe is not ready for what that will cost.

Not true. We've seen the U.S. leverage big tech against its perceived enemies by shutting them down remotely. Unless Europe bends over backwards to serve the U.S. fascists' every whim, this form of blackmail-by-proxy is going to continue, and it's only going to get worse.

So the calculation is not: "cost of switching" vs. "cost of continuing the existing vendor lock-in".

It is: "cost of switching" vs. "cost of shutting down operations for good".

It's really easy maths if you break it down to its core. It's maths that even the most bone-headed of our leaders and business "experts" can do.

Meanwhile, my employer decided to switch from a self made Linux platform (with it's pitfalls due to the usual "it's free, why should we put so much money into maintenance" reasoning) to Microslop. I and multiple other people warned them, again and again.

Given they broke their own procurement laws to choose US tech companies for their cloud infrastructure its definitely silly.

I think you misread it. "Private", as in "privacy".

Proton is leaving Switzerland afaik, to operate in the EU. You’re not wrong about the shit the EU is trying to pull with mass surveillance and de-anonymization. Yeae fornyear it geta struck down by courts, but the fuckers try and try.