Comment by StopDisinfo910
19 hours ago
> So it is, indeed, true.
Office is a fairly unsignificant part of our cloud usage. I'm fairly sure we could come to an agreement with Microsoft if we needed to self-host.
> there is an alternative to MS Office, which is LibreOffice
People don't use Office like it's the 90s anymore. Everything which doesn't have seemless collaboration and document sharing is dead on arrival.
> No, I really don't. It's not "awesome" to have access to that data. This is public information. Citizens don't have to be grateful of what the state does. THE STATE WORKS FOR US, not the other way around.
The state doesn't owe you anything apart from safety and law enforment. Of course, you should be grateful that people fought for, put in place and maintain all the services you receive on top. They don't come by magic. That's actual people working.
The fact that you can easily and freely access this database is something to be celebrated. In most places, people who don't work for the state have to pay to access this or go through a public library and that's honestly perfectly fine.
It's baffling to me how the French seemingly fail to realise how incredible the breadth of services their government provides is and somehow manage to make themselves miserable rather than actually doing something of what they are gifted with.
> The state doesn't owe you anything apart from safety and law enforment.
The parent was a bit whiny, but this is most definitely not true. The people are not entities subject to the state, it is a democratic and social republic, not a soviet. The people are the state and as such, the role of the state is to do whatever the people want it to do. In France, the state is supposed to guarantee the rights of Man, which is more fundamental than the constitution and also broader than safety and law enforcement.
> It's baffling to me how the French seemingly fail to realise how incredible the breadth of services their government provides is and somehow manage to make themselves miserable rather than actually doing something of what they are gifted with.
This I can agree with :) These threads are baffling, particularly considering what the people at INRIA are doing about trusted and transparent administration, and the massive effort put into sovereign software. It’s like everything is bad because they saw people using Windows at their city hall.
> It’s like everything is bad because they saw people using Windows at their city hall.
No. French state companies (including military schools! and the Department of Education!!) use Windows, MS Office, and US-based cloud providers en masse. Good for them, I guess. I don't really care.
But pretending to do the opposite is what gets me.
Or when the Head of the BPI (Banque Publique d'Investissement) goes on TV to say that France should only buy French tech, and you learn that the same BPI that he leads, just signed a huge contract with AWS, then that's upsetting. (He's also very concerned with China because the Chinese State finances some of its private industry; never mind that it's the whole purpose and mission of the BPI.)
> The state doesn't owe you anything apart from safety and law enforment.
We should recognize this sentiment as actively fascist. Safety from who? Law enforcement targeting who?
There is nothing fascist there.
That's the core regalian powers at the heart of the state. Basically, a state is there to ensure laws can be voted, that they are fairly enforced and that things can stay that way. This notably means that people are safe in the broadest sense. They are not going to be mugged, murdered or dispossessed. That also means that the state has the mean to stay a state without becoming part of the next door state, which is to say, has an army to defend itself. A state which can't guarantee that is a failed state (or a former state if it was invaded).
Anything else is the cherry on the cake. Most states do a lot more because their citizen decided through laws this was a good thing - things like social security or education. If your state does these things for you, well, you should be grateful because they are in no way owed to you. You get them through the good will of the citizen who preceded you, the care of the civil servants that provide them to you and the continuously renewed commitment of your fellow citizen. If the French felt a bit less entitled and a bit more grateful, the country wouldn't be in the sorry state it's currently in.
You're only outing yourself more and more.
> If the French felt a bit less entitled and a bit more grateful, the country wouldn't be in the sorry state it's currently in.
Oh please. The French are doing far better than we (the US) are. Precisely because their electorate has made their aristocracy rightly fearful of them. Chopping off their heads tends to do that.