Open Source Hardware is borderline impossible atm when thinking in a reasonable time frame, especially as this would also mandate EU manufacturing.
As a long term goal? Yes. You are right.
But you cannot talk about rebuilding the house when the fire is already in your garden.
At the moment I am happy when I can persuade customers to not buy HP and Dell just because they know them and instead at least consider Schenker, Tuxedo or Wortmann. (Or Mikrotik, Allnet& Nokia/Nokia Networks for network equipment; Thomas-Krenn for Servers,etc.)
Open Source software? A goal that can be obtained atm and that can be obtained much faster.
And while I totally agree we should lobby for governments to spend more money on supporting open source (Exhibit A below) and the end goal should absolutely be a fully open source structure. This is especially valid as a lot of applications could be standardized that way and a lot of expenditure could be reduced as now often different countries (or even states within those countries) maintain their own projects without much cooperation, doing the same work countless times.
BUT: Again, the garden is already burning and we need to save the house first. At the moment the urgency is so massive that I don’t give a fuck if, when the only reasonable choice is non-open source but European is taken instead of a non-EU product or a open source project that is production ready in 4 years.
I literally had to recommend that a client should choose SAP recently. I hated myself for it - every fiber in my body hates SAP. But they offered the only solution to the customers problem that was not an American product.
So… Better SAP than nothing.
(And no, sadly there was zero open source alternative available and getting a company to develop one would have taken to long)
Open Source Hardware is borderline impossible atm when thinking in a reasonable time frame, especially as this would also mandate EU manufacturing. As a long term goal? Yes. You are right. But you cannot talk about rebuilding the house when the fire is already in your garden. At the moment I am happy when I can persuade customers to not buy HP and Dell just because they know them and instead at least consider Schenker, Tuxedo or Wortmann. (Or Mikrotik, Allnet& Nokia/Nokia Networks for network equipment; Thomas-Krenn for Servers,etc.)
Open Source software? A goal that can be obtained atm and that can be obtained much faster. And while I totally agree we should lobby for governments to spend more money on supporting open source (Exhibit A below) and the end goal should absolutely be a fully open source structure. This is especially valid as a lot of applications could be standardized that way and a lot of expenditure could be reduced as now often different countries (or even states within those countries) maintain their own projects without much cooperation, doing the same work countless times.
BUT: Again, the garden is already burning and we need to save the house first. At the moment the urgency is so massive that I don’t give a fuck if, when the only reasonable choice is non-open source but European is taken instead of a non-EU product or a open source project that is production ready in 4 years.
I literally had to recommend that a client should choose SAP recently. I hated myself for it - every fiber in my body hates SAP. But they offered the only solution to the customers problem that was not an American product. So… Better SAP than nothing. (And no, sadly there was zero open source alternative available and getting a company to develop one would have taken to long)