Comment by SideburnsOfDoom
18 days ago
This comment misses the point and argues against something unrelated. It's fundamentally a data sovereignty and security move, not a commercial one.
It's neither pro or anti business. This or "creating a more business friendly environment" policies is a false dichotomy. That could be done too via other means. It is unrelated. Speaking about this "business friendly" only is either misdirection or myopic.
You seem to be arguing for the sake of argument while avoiding the substance of my point by discarding it as "unrelated" while it is fundamentally on point.
If the aim is indeed sovereignty, data and software (and this is software not data), and in general, then they need an effective and comprehensive plan. I think taxpayer-funded state-developed open-source software brings very little at a high cost and can even be counter-productive. Frankly I think it is apolitical move internal to the French state to keep the gavy train coming to government agencies.
Rather I think the US, and also China that does it even more, are much more effective at this by throwing money at the marketplace to develop a whole ecosystem competitively that can also compete globally. An important thing to note here is that EU rules prevent a lot of state action (for instance they would not be allowed to buy only French cars or do things seen as direct subsidies, etc)
France will continue to fall further behind unless it really gets it act together, which is unlikely TBH.
You're just repeating your assumptions - "taxpayer-funded state-developed is bad", but "marketplace competitively" good. I'm not convinced.
You're not engaging with the sovereignty aspect - "compete globally" isn't the main goal at all as I said above, you're just restating you misconception. And so this part comes across as pure projection:
> You seem to be arguing for the sake of argument while avoiding the substance of my point
How does this help sovereignty?
Yes in the most basic sense it does since they build their own tool instead of getting a foreign one. To be a little bit provocative I could say that Warsaw Pact countries used to do the same and built plenty of uncompetitive products themselves...
But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not help competitiveness, and it is a huge cost for very little. Again, the sovereignty aspect means all of this must be addressed otherwise it is just a stunt and waste of taxpayers' money.
You've got to have a competitive industry to achieve and maintain 'sovereignty' in a broader and positive sense otherwise you end up like the Warsaw Pact or China before it realised that. You might survive but look more and more like North Korea (poor and obsolete but, yes, sovereign).
So yes, taxpayer-funded and state-developed internally in isolation for the sake of it is pretty much universally bad.
Taxpayer-funded is not bad per se, as already said in my previous comment, but here it is indeed more than that, it's the government building random stuff internally for frankly no good reason. Maybe next the government will manufacture its own 'sovereign' pencils as well?
They could have spent the same amount of money supporting small companies to develop similar products and that would have helped creating a competitive 'sovereign' ecosystem and commercial products to sell to everyone at home and also abroad. Much more bang for their buck and long term virtuous circle.
So, again have you got a point to discuss beyond just wanting to argue against me?
Edit:
An example of why competitiveness is important: Arianespace. It's great, Europe has the 'sovereign' ability to launch satelittes. That's useful for government agencies, a niche use-case. But everyone else in Europe who wants to launch a satelitte uses SpaceX because Arianespace is not competitive and is obsolete at this point.
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