Emmanuel Macron on Europe's GAFAM Addiction/Dependence: "There is No Such Thing as Happy Vassalage"
2 days ago we wrote about feedback sent regarding "Digital Sovereignty" through Free software in Europe. I've since then spoken over E-mail to some who sent their feedback. So far it's going well and looking increasingly encouraging. Almost all the feedback is in favour of Software Freedom and I too had some input for people who formally submit feedback. Maybe Techrights too will weigh in (a few days left before the deadline). It started early this month and we see similar discussions online in relation not just to Europe, albeit using similar language/vocabulary, e.g. "The Dependency Layer in Digital Sovereignty" and "The Path to a Sovereign Tech Stack is Via a Commodified Tech Stack". The latter, published by a scholar at UCL (University College London), explains that "[t]here is growing and valid concern among policymakers about tech sovereignty and cloud infrastructure. A handful of American hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud — control the digital substrate on which modern economies run. This concentration is compounded by a US government increasingly willing to wield its digital industries as leverage. As French President Emmanuel Macron quipped: "There is no such thing as happy vassalage.""
This notion of slavery was often covered by us (we didn't say "slavery" or "vassalage"... Macron did). This topic will be covered more and more by us in years to come. It's of growing urgency, not just general importance. GAFAM works for the man lusting for annexation of Europe.
The above links speak of "commodified" stacks. Microsoft has long worked to prevent commodification of them (c.f. the Halloween Documents at gemini://gemini.techrights.org/archive/Halloween_Documents/Halloween_I.gmi). Microsoft even attacks the "commodified" nature of Git; it promotes a proprietary alternative/variation of it. Many public officials and agencies adopt this proprietary alternative/variation, then call it "Open Source". █
Image source: Detail from a photograph of Juneteenth celebrations in Richmond, Virginia