Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc).

It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech behemoths. If this realization happened ~20 years ago, they might have stopped FB, Goog, Amazon, MSFT, etc. much earlier, and wouldn't be hand-wringing now trying to stop or delay the evil effects of social media.

I am pleased that AUS has banned social media for teens < 16yrs, and perhaps Finland is thinking the same route.

Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.

> Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.

As a European, I agree. Zooming out a little, though, this whole decoupling process of entire economies (which has been well underway for a while) is going to increase the probability of armed conflict as the repercussions of military engagement will be lower.

Germany has https://www.opendesk.eu/de and https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund. both mentioned on HN

I agree with this totally. But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this.

To me a really significant signal that they’re serious will be when there’s an official Linux version of Solidworks.

It’s remarkable to me that France has control over one of the premiere CAD suites but theyre entirely dependent on an American OS to use it.

Well I would definitely prefer to use globally popular established solutions like Zoom and Teams and the English language and America as a reliable democracy.

Weather or not they get Greenland, Trump and his supporters in the US administration have changed the world. Guy should definitely get Nobel prize for pushing decentralization.