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473 points edent | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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constantcrying ◴[] No.43769695[source]
The EU and member states are currently putting in quite a bit of money trying to limit their exposure to US tech companies.

Looking at the list of projects you can see that they support a huge variety of projects, with all kind of different scopes and intentions.

While I think that the overarching goal is good and I would like to see them succeed, I also think that they fail to address the single most important issue. Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft.

The funding goes to many, but small projects, but this means the single biggest issue, actually deploying an open source system over an entire organization remains unaddressed.

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pickledoyster ◴[] No.43769766[source]
> Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft.

This is just a thought that ignores all the economies of scale etc., but what if monopolistic tech conglomerates were seen as a negative vs interoperable, modular systems? If that were the case, simply repeating US tech's blunders wouldn't be a true alternative, just more of the same with garden walls made of a different material.

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constantcrying ◴[] No.43769785[source]
I think that is a question of architecture.

What is important that there is one company you can go to who does all of that for you. Running a government institution and having 20 different vendors to make your basic IT system work is a nightmare. That you can get all in one from Microsoft is one of their biggest strengths in the market and you must compete with that.

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sam_lowry_ ◴[] No.43769874[source]
I work for a government institution and I assure you that we have more than 20 vendors for IT.
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constantcrying ◴[] No.43770002[source]
Of course. But your basic IT system, presumably, is a Microsoft system. On top of that you are deploying many more systems, for all the kinds of different use cases.

If you replaced that Microsoft system right now you would have to find individual vendors for each of the parts that Microsoft provides. Getting them together would be a huge nightmare, because even the basics do not work.

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1. omnimus ◴[] No.43771775[source]
This doesn’t seem right. What is Microsoft supplying? Windows which is used almost exclusively to access some web service CRUD form. All of these services are made by third party vendors. Any number of OSes could do that from linux based or ChromeOS or MacOS… probably even iOS. There are some legacy win desktop apps that are slowly getting replaced or they are run in VMs.

The Microsoft servers are most likely azure running linux. Thats quite possible to replace by any number of vendors.

The main MOAT microsoft has are the contacts and the lobby. There always is some politician around fighting for Microsoft because they like Outlook more than Thunderbird.

It’s also reason why i think they will keep their dominant position. Even though the idea they provide something rare is increasingly more untrue.