PieFedTariffs Spark Shift to Open Source
banazirnews.opensuse.org/2025/04/07/fariffs-spark-shif…
The European Commission sees open-source software as more than an IT tool. Policy makers are encouraging open-source ecosystems to drive innovation, autonomy and collaboration in a world where global trade is being redrawn.
This trade dispute highlights something most open-source advocates have known for years: open source is freedom. It’s freedom from monopolies, freedom from arbitrary pricing, and freedom from foreign influence.
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I wish they actually for serious about it and said "@EUCommission\@ec.social-network.europa.eu is aiming to be 100% opensource by 2030". That would be quite the statement. It would need teeth/legs, but it would be cool none the less.
RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️You know, I was actually considering earlier this evening to buy https://en.opensuse.org/Buy_openSUSE but unfortunately there's only a German version of 15.3. Would be cool to have a physical version even if it was just for show. But hey, maybe they'll release a version for 15.5.
Kissakia ~400 pages manual
🤌 🤘
Gotta love a good manual. I still have a DOS 6.0 manual lying around, even though I can use kcharselect to look up ANSI characters now.
GolfNovemberUniformCan't you upgrade it yourself after installing?
Only after Installieren... seriously though, I don't know if you can select other installation languages (I think so?), but if not, it can be a non-starter for most. I couldn't check as the actual purchase site didn't load at all for me.
To be honest, it'd mostly be to have it on the shelf. I don't even have an optical disc drive in my current pc, I was just thinking, it'd be a neat way to support the cause while getting something to show for it. So I guess the version doesn't matter too much, I'd just prefer the language to not being German.
Open-source hardware is still usually made in China....
This article is about open source software though. Hardware is a whole different beast that would require much time and money to switch to open source.
Open source software is free and can be switched to today, as little as putting Linux on an old laptop to self host some services to replace proprietary and also American services.
I guess I'm coming from the likely place where consumers would feel the effects of the tarrifs. They'd feel it on the hardware first and you need hardware to run software. Sorry I was taking the conversation away front the intent. I wonder if we will see this happen largely outside the USA (moving to more open source) or will software companies just sell from local regions?
True, just not opensuse.
Honest question: why not?
Mind you, I have not used it in (checks notes) 15 years, but I have relatively good memories if it, it was one of the better mainstream distros for those using KDE.
I use Arch BTW.
It's not the distro that's the problem, it's the company that controls it.
I think the model of an open source version of a proprietary/commercial distro is broken at a business model level.
How many times over the years have we seen the commercial entity make the open source product worse on purpose.
Red Hat, Canonical and SUSE all have mixed histories with their communities.
Personally, I think a debian, arch or KDE style project, funded by donations, is much more sustainable and responsive to its communities.
Good.
But... This is a good thing.
I will take it. More FOSS awareness is great news.
As long as it sticks.
It's not going to, though. As soon as the tariffs disapper they'll be impersonating Dory, again.
Not just software, but hardware too.
When each country can manufacturer everything they need because the hardware is all licensed openly, tarrifs aren't so devastating
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Fortunately most applications of semiconductors dont need to be super small and fast. Getting some old tech that's 10 times the size and 10 times slower than Intel's bleeding edge is fine for most applications.
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Cars are a great example where it really doesn't matter
SEE!!! Trump is doing some good! It's about time the power was taken from these arrogant, invasive, Silicon Valley companies.
Isn't that what the tariffs and general idiocracy of the Republicans are for?
I'm working for the government, and most projects that were about switching to MS Teams and other US-based software suites appear to have crashed to a complete halt (which I feel no remorse over).
This is what I'm excited about. My parents are in the market for new laptops, I'm going to see if they will take a framework running popOS and make the switch to Linux. It's incredible that this option is now so approachable.
Check NovaCustom too
Mine are liking Mint quite a lot. They say they feel its easier to find stuff than windows.
Throw something like Mint on their old laptops and they may not need new ones at all!
Unless they don’t have current ones, then ignore me, lol.
Hey, that's a good point!
I think they're keen to buy something new, so my main excitement is hey look a shop where you can start with Linux in the first place.
But I could also end up showing them how to repurpose their current laptops as media servers or something, which would be cool!
Here comes Europe, Fuck Yeah. Here to save the motherfucking day yeah.
Several EU countries already have fascists or borderline fascists in the government (Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary) or have a raising fascist force grabbing for power (e.g. Germany, Sweden).
Don't expect too much from the EU. We might very well overtake you on the road to open fascist total control.
As long as it's an OSI approved open fascist, then I'm on board
Freude, schöner Götterfunken!
(Joy, thou shining spark of God)
Tochter aus Elyyyysium
Meanwhile the EU probably pushes for the 100th time to backdoor all communication encryption backed by fascists and Spain trying to put down the Catalans...
And the UK doing the same thing and also a big surveillance state...
Sadly nowhere is great right now.
Can I say that the issue is much deeper than just tariffs, and that Europe should not be using anything cloud or AI based? Ideally not even from EU if not fully open-source or open-data.
If only every open source software didn’t lock enterprise features behind licenses….
Companies still have to fork 90% of useful Foss projects and not upstream changes because they need to reimplement HA features and SSO etc every time
Lemmy seems to be anti-AI, at least from my impression, but I am hopeful that AI will help invigorate the open source software world. If people can code better, faster, cheaper, safer (more secure) that will surely apply to open source as well. AI coding tools could bring on the Linux mainstream revolution. Imagine thousands of autonomous agents refining software for Linux. There could be a glut of driver support, apps coming to Linux, and so much more. I am hopeful about it.
I won't hold my breath on it.
Up until this minute, AI has produced plentiful examples of how it can produce anything but good code.
I'd rather have a developer writing software, slowly, because they have an intelectual itch and want to try and see the outcome of their idea than the proverbial army of monkeys furiously typing away.
The other problem is unlike stack overflow, a helpful answer by an AI isn't visible and indexed therefore someone else has to do another prompt for the potential answer.
It's pretty useful replacing stack overflow that could also generate code specific to your project. It's also useful for testing.
Like any tool, it has its use cases.
I sometimes float the idea in my brain to learn how to code. If I ever come to it, I want to debate and discuss my work with another human. Not a machine.
Personal preference.
That's a great way to do it, but human attention on your code is a scarce and valuable resource. LLMs are great for the sort of lazy stupid questions where you benefit from a quick answer, but also don't want to waste someone else's time on. When you are learning nearly all the questions you'll have will be like this, your progress is gated on finding the answers, and even if you are taking a class and it's someone's job to look at your code and help you understand what's wrong with it, you have to wait your turn for that and only get so much help.
and there are so many cases in programming where you can save hours asking a really simple question that should be easy to figure out on your own but actually isn't.
I'm not European, but I understand that there's an old European (German?) saying that basically goes: "If I had wheels, I'd be a trolley." I understand that it's been pretty well-established that AI coding tools routinely underperform compare to humans in terms of "better" and "safer", which indirectly would also lead to it failing at "cheaper" too.
On top of that, there is another major issue with using AI for open-source code: copyright. First, you don't know if the code that you're adding through AI may be copying license-incompatible code verbatim. Because everyone has access to open-source code, it would be trivial for anyone to search and find copyright-infringing code to attack projects with. Second, the code that AI produces is also not-copyrightable, so that is another line of attack that this would make open-source projects vulnerable to. These could be used in combination as a one-two punch combination to knock out an open-source project.
I think that using AI-generated code in open-source projects is a uniquely ill-advised idea.
I strongly support the tariffs but if this gets more people to use software that respects their freedom, then hey, that's even better.
Are you Russian?
I mean, I have to assume they meant "oppose" and just mistyped.
Something like sixth or seventh generation American. How dare I desire a setup where other nations exploit us less?!
This is what we're dealing with here in the States, folks.
Gawd help us.
Exploit the US less? How is the US being exploited exactly?
A trade deficit is never exploitation. Lets pretend it is!
All of the stats Trump put up weren't tariffs, they were a percentage of much less they would have to import in Goods* from a certain country to make for the trade deficit with said country *in Goods.
Not a single stat on that sheet looked at the trade in services. America always had a service trade surplus.
If we combine the two, a lot of countries that seem to """"exploit""" the US are suddenly exploited by the US.
But lets go even further: The countries receiving the highest tariffs are Vietnam and Lesotho, becuase the US has the highest deficit in Goods with these countries. Because both countries are too fucking poor to buy american products.
A worker in Lesotho, providing diamonds for the US market, would have to invest about 20 years of wagest to buy the cheapest american import car. How the fuck should these countries reduce their deficit?
Okay, but still, we assume that a deficit is somehow exploitation. Trump has said that the tariffs are going to do two things, namely bringing back American Industry* and *forcing trade partner to drop "barriers and tariffs" (i.e. safety regulations).
For a tariff to do the former, it has to stay until the relevant factories have been built in America and have also paid themselves off. For a tariff to the latter, the possibility of it being removed once the partner comploes has to be on the table. A tariff can't do both.
But hey, don't believe me. Read the paper the White House cited in their Announcement of the Tariffs.
Welcome to Lemmy. It sounds like you either come from a place of extreme privilege or you're not actually sure how the tariffs will affect the people.
The idea behind the tariffs is fine. They want to drive union Members (fun fact, did you know that that's how the founding fathers referred to citizens?) to buy and trade locally. However, many of the products we use in our day to day life come from industries that don't exist in the US yet, and it will take years to create the required infrastructure and factories and farm land in order to create those industries.
Effectively, the tariffs would have been fine. If the US had actually been prepared to take care of itself. But it's not, and it won't be for a long time. So, the tariffs only exist as an extra tax right now.
Dead broke son of a low middle class family. There's no privilege here. I'm not here for political debates. Ultimately, I'm here for gaming (particularly of the retro variety), open source software, Linux, that kind of stuff. That being said, I am going to say this much.
Unlike other comments here, I actually do somewhat agree with what you're saying in the sense that it's gonna be a little harder because we don't have those industries here at home. The problem is, if we didn't take drastic action, we were just gonna continue on the current path. Countless properties, companies, and assets are owned by foreign companies. If we don't put tariffs on the countries that are already tarriffing us hard, then we would just continue the cycle of economic failure.
Moreover, we're seeing plenty of foreign countries already caving to these tariffs. Sure, you might see bigger ones like China resisting for a while, but it's not going to last very long. They don't have enough economic power to be completely self-sufficient, especially considering the fact that the majority of their wealth has been made on our expense. Without America buying up all the cheap crap that their corporations peddle, their economy will fall apart. What they need to realize is that if they want to be economic partners with our country, they're going to have to pay their fair share.
Honestly, that whole concept just seems like common sense to me. If another country is going to do business with us, they should have to be conducting fair business and not taking advantage of us at every turn.
At the end of the day, much like a majority of political discourse on the Fediverse, I'm pretty certain it just boils down to a shared hatred of our current president. And honestly, I just find that very sad. It's one thing to have an objective perspective or to at least try to have an objective perspective. That's why, of all of these comments, yours is the one I'm replying to. But in general, the main reason I'm not replying to the others (other than the fact that I don't want to waste time on politics) is that they are already showing their colors and I know for a fact that I could not have a proper adult discussion with them even if I tried.
You previously totally supported the policy of Tariffs. Is there now anger at Trump for the recent reversal in strategy?
What reversal? It's still in play. The idea is to use them to force other nations to play fair with us.
Yeah, that IS inherited privilege. You realize, that a low middle class american family is still in the uper ~ 10 % of currently living humans?
This is exactly why y'all lost, but that's the last I'll be contributing to this thread. As I've said, I'm not here for politics.
It's not about "hating". It is because you (and the current administration) have no idea what you are talking about and are trying to pass it off as fact.
People really do not like imposters, larpers, and pretenders - and when in positions of power they get people killed. This is not a video game, nor a simulation, educate yourself before you speak.
There are many many expert peer-reviewed studies that show tariffs do not work - especially in the way Trump is using them. Also the U.S. had no "economic failure", they've been the richest country to ever exist. BlackRock and Vanguard also manage a significant amount of U.S. property assets and they are American companies.
The problem was the wealth-gap and no amount of tariffs is going to fix this; people need to pay their taxes. Companies need to be paying the 91% rate they paid in the past, and people need the minimum wage to rise with inflation.
There is more than enough money to do this, but you vote for Trump who actively makes the situation worse. This is not to say Dems would've made it better - but Republicans will always make the problem worse, since that is their whole policy platform.
Just Zimbabwe at the moment.
I think you're bringing up good points about important issues. However, what the current US administration is doing doesn't seem to solve any of those problems in any capacity. In fact, the previous administration did a lot more on that front, without collapsing the entire global economy at the same time.
Also, as some other comments pointed out, almost nobody on the planet is 'caving in' to the tariffs. The vast majority of the world is simply cutting trade with the US wherever possible, resulting in Americans paying several times more for various goods, for no apparent reason or benefit.
Free trade isn't exploitation.
In fact tariffs are just costing you more.
There is zero chance the USA will have anything to replace the amount you import in the term trump serves let alone a decade from now.
The USA will never compete with child slave labour in China and Mexico etc either.
I get what the founders were talking about now. A lot of people really shouldn't be able to vote if you want a functioning society. They just chose the wrong metric.
If you run a market and take a cut of every sale, you will make infinitely more profit than selling items yourself. This is exactly the position the U.S. was in - which is why it became the richest country in human history.
You also argue that the U.S. is getting "exploited" because they aren't the ones doing the selling. But who cares? I'll tell you who, people who don't know wtf they are talking about.
In your infinite wisdom, the better choice is saddling yourself with more risk and less rewards because "the vibe" feels better.
Just noticed insane typos in the original comment, wow. Serves me right for using voice-to-text without proofreading.
*Serves you right for using your brain without proof-thinking.
Gotta love all the triggered rage replies over a simple comment. If I didn't know I was in the Fediverse before, these replies would remove any doubt.