This is an EU initiative, Ubuntu probably isn't included.
If we talk about OS being independent from US, the culprit is where does control(both in terms of technology and legislation) comes from. Main contributors are US companies(technological control) while Linus is obligated to comply to US laws and decisions as US citizen.
Your suggestion that the US government would lean on the citizenship of Torvalds in order to exert control over the kernel should be laughable but I concede that anything is possible these days.
[1] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/navigating-global-regul...
Linus is the BDFL and lead maintainer and if he wanted to move the kernel development anywhere else he could do so, but Linus Torvalds has stated that he personally agrees with them.
That is not the US controlling him, it is his own decision. Moreover he has dual citizenship and could renounce his US citizenship if he chose. When Greg takes over maintainership things may be different.
This is my main point here - not much things connecting Linus and Linux to EU. In question of US and EU tensions I am not really sure US citizen BDFL will party with EU, also because companies who spend money and contribute to kernel are located in US mainly.
That you are trying to strip him of his own identity speaks volumes.
Anyway, clearly you have some misguided patriotic agenda here. You can thump your chest if it makes you feel better, but theres little point in continuing this discussion.
Linus Torvalds, imo, is the reason we have open source, through Linux & Git. He’s the open source philosopher king.
I think he’s put enough in to know where his allegiance lies, over a 2010 US citizenship - a very different world.
There is also 0 chance, US/MS government hasn’t put a lot of pressure on him over the last 34 years of creating and spreading, at least the OS form of socialism
Also you're forgetting all the "US" companies with headquarters in Luxembourg or Ireland.
For example: https://map.debian.net/
When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but I am skeptical, so I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
Hence my comparison to North Korea's Linux distro
But despite that, they exist today, successfully so, and continue being funded by the very people you claim they should stay away from.
I'm not sure if you looked into how this whole "funding FOSS" thing works like, but governments are not opening a fund, letting any FOSS developer expense stuff to it and calling it a day. Usually they contract a company to work on things, that then end up FOSS.
Even if the end result is FOSS or not, they have the same people they can blame if they want to, the people they paid for certain results. The license of the finished thing doesn't change who's responsible for doing the job they've been paid to do.
I think until you actually understanding how the funding works, it would be fair to avoid doing flippant comments who basically only try to add some fuel to some fire, with some completely out of place comparison to a NK Linux distribution.
Sure, the EU contracts developers to build features they want, but when those requirements start coming from regulatory mandates rather than user needs, you're not just adding features to Ubuntu anymore.
You're forking it into something fundamentally different.
"EUbuntu"? :)
Look at how the EU handles tech regulations:
- GDPR a good thing on paper; with some terrible side effects - cookie banners, data bureacracy, walled gardens between US-EU websites.
- AI legislation; lets wait and see
- Digital sovereignty; fundamentally trying to gain access control for EU citizens data from Google and Apple.
Anyways, let's see what happens. Maybe I'm being too cynical and they'll just become savvy end-users of existing distros. But given the pattern, I'm not holding my breath.
I was gonna reply to your comment in good faith, but I realize right here that you don't actually understand what you're talking about. Cookie banners have nothing to do with GDPR, at all, and thinking they're somehow connected, grossly misunderstands regulation in the EU. How am I supposed to take anything else you say about these topics with a straight face?
So with that said, I hope you have a continued nice day :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS
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When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but
As someone who has watched on the sidelines how Opensource governance turns projects into hydra monsters (Redhat, Jakarta EE). I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
But who knows, maybe they will just become end users of a popular distro and other opensource software.