The chain of facts makes me sad:<p>1. The French government announces its digital agency is to write a plan, by the end of the year, so that France could reduce its extra-European dependencies. The communiqué is wrapped up with minor facts (e.g. the digital agency is to switch to Linux on dozens of computers) and big promises from Ministers.<p>2. Various news sites state that "France is ditching Windows", at least in their titles.<p>3. On new aggregators, most people react to the titles. Some do read the articles. Very few realize it's about promises to act toward a vague goal, with an unknown calendar, and many political uncertainties.<p>I would have hoped for more cautious reactions. It's not a leading act, not a reason to be proud, not a example to follow. It's just words.<p>The French government already made similar promises in the past. Sometimes, it did happen, like the Gendarmerie (rural police) switching to a Linux distribution. Sometimes, it didn't, like the pact signed by the Army Ministry with Microsoft in 2022: many clauses are still secret, even the prices.
This is EU, what else do you expect? European officials saying they're ditching Windows has become a ritual:<p><a href="https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-experiment-things-not-going-plan" rel="nofollow">https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-expe...</a>:<p>> The German Foreign Office first moved over to Linux as a server platform in 2001... the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution.<p><a href="https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document/munichs-long-history-open-source-public-administration" rel="nofollow">https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...</a>:<p>> By December 2013, the city concluded the migration, with over 14,800 desktops running on LiMux... In November 2017, nearly four years after the conclusion of the migration, the Munich city council adopted a decision overhauling the move. All equipment was to be refitted with Windows 10 counterparts by 2020 [1]<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux</a>:<p>> WIENUX[2] is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria... until 2008 when the download page was taken offline.<p><a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PN-414/POST-PN-414.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST...</a>:<p>> Birmingham City Council piloted OSS on hundreds of desktops
in its public libraries in 2005-6. It originally planned to install Linux ... but this was over-ambitious for
the time frame of the project and compatibility problems meant that
the open source OpenOffice (office suite) and Firefox (web
browser) were eventually run on Windows XP
Really proud as a French, I think the government has had some success with moving to something matrix based for the public sector too.
<a href="https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr" rel="nofollow">https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr</a><p>I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
Also GendBuntu, a custom version of Ubuntu used by 100 000 stations (almost all) of the national gendarmerie.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu</a>
"As a French" ne veut rien dire en anglais. Il faut rajouter man, person ou quelquechose. Frenchman, French person, French citizen.
Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.
> Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.<p>Ironically most French people I know would be perfectly receptive and happy to receive corrections in grammar, English or otherwise.<p>The French tend to be particularly pedantic about the teaching of their own grammar. Most native French speakers are quite used to being swiftly and firmly corrected on grammar from an early age.
there is a time and place for everything. "Les règles de bienséance" matter more to me than the safekeeping of the exactness of English grammar, which as others have been keen to point out is hardly as strict as you seem to imply.<p>And no, no French person likes to receive corrections in grammar. Giving lectures on proper english grammar/pronounciation is generally a mark of (classist) pedantry since speaking proper english is generally the preserve of those lucky few that have had the opportunity of spending time in the Anglosphere, a tiny minority of the french population in fact, who are always eager to put their one upmanship on display, in a very crude, almost vulgar fashion.<p>I have been travelling through Japan for the past week, the grammatical and orthographical error would likely give you a nosebleed. Meanwhile, I just smile and move on, I got the meaning, it is what matters. Same for the OP.
I'm not sure how happy they actually are about it though.
I think most people have a bit of Stockholm-syndrome relationship with it, the highest tier of argument refutation in France might honestly be grammar-based :P<p>(And it did motivate me to go abroad.)
The demonym for France is "French," so it's not wrong (even if it doesn't sound right.)
It's not <i>completely</i> wrong, it will be understood, but it is ungrammatical and a clear marker that the speaker is not native, similar to getting adjectives in the 'wrong' order ('a big tasty sandwich' sounds more natural to a native speaker than 'a tasty big sandwich', even though the latter makes sense and will be understood).<p>Demonyms for historical neighbours of England have irregular forms when speaking of a particular person from there. Scotland has 'Scot' and 'Scotsman'; Wales has 'Welshman'; Spain has 'Spaniard'. Other countries indeed need a second word, such as 'person' or 'citizen' ('a Chinese' sounds offensive to me; I would say 'a Chinese person' in all cases). The only country I can think of where using a bare demonym is grammatical when speaking of a single person from there is Germany with 'a German' - probably because it has the suffix -man.<p>Edit: A sibling comment pointed out that 'an American' is grammatical, and thinking about it, I think the suffix -an is what makes bare demonyms grammatical - you can say 'an Angolan', 'a Laotian', 'a Peruvian', 'a Moroccan', etc, but wouldn't say 'a Thai', 'a Swedish', 'a Sudanese', etc.
> but wouldn't say 'a Thai', 'a Swedish', 'a Sudanese'<p>You also don't say 'a Japanese' but that is an extremely common error with Japanese English speakers when they are first learning.<p>I am looking for a citation, but I seem to recall the casual rule of thumb is something to do with the ending of the nationality (so '-ish', '-ese','-ch' etc. you can't put 'a' in front). I think the more formal explanation likely centers around rules relating to indefinite articles.
> but it is ungrammatical and a clear marker that the speaker is not native<p>You mean a native speaker might be ungrammatical when using their non-native language? That makes sense to me.<p>> Spain has 'Spaniard'.<p>Even so, you'll hear a ton of native Spanish people saying "As a Spanish person" or "As person from Spain" instead of simply "As a Spaniard", I'm not sure this is very surprising. If anything, that mistake makes it more likely they're a native than not, in the case of Spain, as the level of English outside of metropolitan areas is lacking at best, compared to other European countries.
I'm using the words 'grammatical' and 'ungrammatical' in a linguistic sense; human languages are subtle and fluid, and one doesn't have to be far along the sliding scale between 'doesn't speak a word' and 'well-educated native speaker' to be understood. We speak of 'broken' English when somebody is able to be understood but hasn't fully grasped the language yet; using demonyms incorrectly is a subtler flavor of the same thing. For example 'no come here' -> 'no entering' -> 'no entry'
When speaking English, the French side of my family refers to themselves like that often, however, they're from Bretagne, so exactly how French they are is up for debate.
As a Welshman, I’d say North/South Walian are more common among the populace!
No.<p>"French" is adjective or a collective noun, but don't use it as a countable noun.<p>Trying to say "as a French" makes about as much sense as thinking "as a American" is correct.<p>As has already been said ... "a French (wo)man","a French person","a French citizen" is the correct way to go.<p>The reason you can say "<i>an</i> American" is because America starts with a vowel.<p>Same reason why you would not say "a British" but you could say "a Brit".
Demonyms don’t use the same rules as countable nouns. Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms, they’re just not particularly idiomatic in American English (which likes to overcorrect with “person” like you’ve noted).<p>(There’s no particularly consistency with this, it’s just what sounds “good” to American ears. We’re perfectly fine with “as a German” or “as a Lithuanian.”)
> Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms<p>No they are not.<p>The Oxford English Dictionary, for example makes it quite clear re. 'French':<p><pre><code> "With plural agreement, and frequently with 'the' French people regarded collectively ..."
</code></pre>
I draw your attention to the first three words ... "with plural agreement".<p>It is explicitly telling you that "French" is a collective plural noun and hence cannot be used as a singular countable noun.
a French; an American; a Brit, or a British<p>sounds casual but correct to me
> sounds casual but correct to me<p>I don't care if it "sounds ok to me".<p>If you're going to make statements like that to go against what I've written then at least come up with some viable citations to grammar literature.<p>Honestly, in all my years on this earth I have never, ever heard anybody in any English speaking country I've spent time in say "a French" "a American" "a British".<p>And that amounts to a lot of time surrounded by people speaking <i>VERY</i> "casual" English.<p>P.S. I said "an American" was ok if you re-read.. an <i>NOT</i> a
The reason you can say "an American" has nothing to do with a vowel or not, there are just some demonyms that for some reason can be used like this, and some that can't.<p>For example:<p>* German is countable: <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/german_2" rel="nofollow">https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...</a>
* French is uncountable: <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/french_2" rel="nofollow">https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...</a>
* American is countable: <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/american_1?q=American" rel="nofollow">https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...</a>
* Spanish is uncountable: <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/spanish_2" rel="nofollow">https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...</a><p>But your explanation about why it is correct is bullshit, has nothing to do with "an" vs "a", the English language is just inconsistent as fuck and some demonyms can be used like this and some can't.
Technically yes the demonym is "French", but "I'm a French" just doesn't work in English. The word 'French' is almost exclusively used in English as an adjective or the name of the language. It is never used as a noun for anything else. So in context, it reads as an adjective without a paired noun.<p>In English, you have to disambiguate be adding a noun: French person, French citizen, or Frenchman if you're old and inconsiderate.<p>Similarly, we don't call people "a Chinese". That construction is considered derogatory, if not outright racist. Demonyms typically cannot be used as nouns alone without a suffix. "A Brazilian" or "a Spaniard" are acceptable.<p>As usual for English, the rules are vague and inconsistent.
> "A Brazilian" or "a Spaniard" are acceptable.<p>Well, context is important on the Brazilian front. ;)<p>"I had a brazilian at my house" could have other connotations.
> or Frenchman if you're old and inconsiderate.<p>Or talking about a man that is French.
Neither of which would be considered 'old', or 'inconsiderate".
Nor "Frenchie" while we're on the topic. It sounds really weird. It's also commonly used to refer to a french bulldog !
I would think of using 'Frenchie' to refer to a person as being affectionate banter. Like 'Yank' for Americans or 'Canuck' for Canadians. It's not incorrect, but would be inappropriate outside of an informal context.<p>French people have 'rosbif' to refer to the English and Australians have 'pom' or 'pommie'. You wouldn't call the prime minister that at a diplomatic event, but it's not offensive to call your friends that.
The difference between this and Munich's attempt is that France has been building up gradually. They already run Tchap (Matrix-based) for government messaging, and the gendarmerie switched to Linux years ago with over 70k desktops. Munich tried a big-bang migration without enough internal expertise and caved under political pressure when MS moved their HQ there. Schleswig-Holstein in Germany is taking the same incremental approach now and seeing better results. The pattern is pretty clear: governments that treat it as a multi-year capability build succeed, those that treat it as a licensing swap don't.
AI finding vulnerabilities in open source software is going to make it super unpleasant for a time. I expect there to be a shift back to closed source until we get through that period.
Microsoft is a strategic risk for the US, too
They’re still going the almost certainly end up running this on US designed chips, with US designed networking equipment and a bunch of other assets tied back to US companies. They should do what they want, but it’s “sovereignty theater” at best.
I wouldn't say that. I think it's a proportional response to US tarriffs/changes in foreign policy under the current administration, just like the cancellation of defence contracts/orders.<p>It's unrealistic for any nation to do everything themselves, but they can make some changes in response to the US starting trade wars, ditching foreign policy/climate objectives, etc...
You always have to start somewhere. Whether this will succeed or not is not known, but you do have to start somewhere.
Dupe: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47719486">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47719486</a>
This sounds interesting on paper but I wonder how likely it is they actually pull it off. Even putting aside the logistics of installing new oses across a bunch of workstations, migrating from legacy Active Directory domains is something even small enterprises struggle with.
Finally Europe grew a spine
still growing, you mean. France is, however significant, just one country. and then there is broader push to FOSS inside Europe, as well as Europe's own sovereign solutions. some attempts were failed, some were successful, but everything is still in progress<p>EDIT: on a second read, this sounded too diminishing of this achievement than I intended. the point is that it's not fully done yet, although it is remarkable that there is, finally, a political will for such actions
Less so against China or Iran, presumably Europe will find itself on the "right side of history" yet again soon enough
At least so against Israel and other countries actively engaging in open warfare against sovereign nations, as a European I'm very happy we're not getting pulled into those senseless conflicts.
Europe does not need to join war of the Trumps whim just because king demands it.
[dead]
I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.
Why wouldnt linux and FOSS benefit from usage? At the least it result in social validation, if not bug reports
> I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.<p>yup, at this point, nothing but cobwebs and IOU's left in the coffers over there and every little bit of saving helps.
Glad that France takes the lead, that Germany fumbled. Allez Les Blues!
Nice! Now moving from Windows to Linux is the "easy", visible part. Replacing US cloud + US AI dependence end to end is much harder, and that’s the real deal today.
Even the US government should be considering this.
should be done at EU level and make it mandatory for all members
But Linux is US tech? Isn't the main guy American?
Linus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK.<p>Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive.<p>The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.
It is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.
Funnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed.<p>So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.
Europe has a major distro in the form of SUSE, so that’s not too worrying.<p>Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.
The “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts-to-denaturalization-what-protections-do-foreign-born-americans-have" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...</a>
If Japanese internment worried you, you should see Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders [0] and get reallyyyy worried about the ongoing attacks [1] and rhetoric [2]. I would urge extreme caution to anyone in Europe that is at risk.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-settled-status-individuals-who-have-clearly-ceased-maintain" rel="nofollow">https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-sett...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6d39?syn-25a6b1a6=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6...</a><p>Also, what nationality do you say Elon Musk is, out of curiosity? Let's test your consistency :)
> Expulsion of Jews from Spain [...] On 31 March 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering all unconverted Jews to leave their kingdoms and territories by the end of July that year, unless they converted to Christianity<p>Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but we (I live in Spain) have come a long way since 1492 (534 years ago) and if that's the most recent example you can find of "Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders" I think you yourself know that stuff like that doesn't happen today, in Europe.
In the UK two decades ago (admittedly not the shortest time) I heard plenty of terrible words and treatment of Pakistanis (which seemed to be used as a good enough bucket for all brown skinned people) and people with red hair. A general disdain for Continentals was a little more subdued. When I was younger France was famous for it's poor treatment of foreigners and non-francophiles. Consider all the politics and anger towards those that continue to try to cross the Mediterranean on makeshift boats or the constant complaints about "benefit thieves" who emigrate from the Eastern bloc. There are many examples and some of them are not without basis but while things have gotten less stabby-stabby there's some fairly brutal attitudes and behaviors.
> There are many examples and some of them are not without basis but while things have gotten less stabby-stabby there's some fairly brutal attitudes and behaviors.<p>Yeah, I won't claim that everyone is treated equally or even fairly in Europe, and some places are absolutely worse than others, in many different ways.<p>I'd still claim we no longer do "expulsions" of entire ethnoreligious groups anymore in the 21st century though, which was the initial example of why Europe today is terrible.
A more relevant recent example would be the shameful stripping of British citizenship from a girl who had been trafficked to the Middle East
Tbf theres a much more recent example of legitimate antisemitism in europe. One around the same time as us interment of japanese people
Musk collects citizenships like they’re going out of fashion. He fled South’s Africa due to not wanting to be drafted.<p>Lieutenant Torvalds on the other hand fulfilled his service duties.<p>Should the US and South Africa go to war it seems clear where musks loyalties would lie. Should the US and Finland go to war I suspect that Torvalds wouldn’t be as clear cut.
Didn't have "Europe is antisemitic because of the Spanish Inquisition" on my bingo card today. No one expects it, indeed.
The other two are ok-ish (though notably Reform is not in government and the elections are 4 years away) but yeah leading with a source from the 15th century really doesn’t support the argument.
The UK Home Office decision about settled status is the fault of the UK, not the EU.<p>The FT piece is paywalled. But two prominent members of Reform are currently in jail - one for domestic abuse, and one for treason (!) - so the party is not famous for a steely dedication to the moral high ground.
I have more evidence of European xenophobia if that isn't sufficient for you
How will we cope when all of your precious knife-wielding savages are deported?<p>Oh, the terror.
Just Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend:<p>> Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland<p>> In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.
?
No, and no?<p>...what?
Yeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc.<p>There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.
You might want to do a bit more reading on why European intellectuals migrated en masse to the US in the 1930s.
Yeah, um…<p>That might have changed somewhat, recently.
When the US is being run by relatively sane people, it's great.<p>That is not the situation at the moment.
Is this the daily thread on this topic?<p>Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.<p>It's perfectly possible for people to be passionate about the subject.
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.<p>Nah, linux and "$curreant_year is the year of the linux desktop" is just something the hacker / maker / nerd scene is passionate about.
I remember similar articles being posted 20+ years ago on Slashdot. And as we’ve seen, it’s often less of a “use Linux” and more of a “we have an alternate vendor” and there’s often suspicious lock-in (see the case in the EU or some similar country where the vendor was <i>reading emails</i>).
At least in some cases, it's actually using Linux and open document format, e.g.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu</a>
It is a step into the right direction.<p>Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.<p>To do *that* locally, you need GPUs and LLMs.<p>How will Europe solve these two?
Not all AI uses LLM, and for some common LLM applications like summarization and translation you can already use CPU only models. The government, or even your average employer, is not going to need a lot of AI video generation or other really GPU intensive tasks. Prompt processing is currently more GPU oriented, but I don't see it as an impossible challenge given, say, 10-15 years.<p>Also, CPU-only doesn't necessarily mean "on your own computer". You can easily have 100 TB RAM in a couple of racks.
The EU chips act is subsidizing new fab construction in Europe.<p>Meanwhile the french Mistral is partnering with Nvidia to build an AI data center near Paris on which their LLMs will run.<p>But I agree this is not enough to make the EU a contender in the race with the US and China. The EU still has not seriously considered decoupling from American big tech.
Do you people have to squeeze a comment about AI into <i>every</i> post?
I think it depends on how strong the compression advancements are going to be, such that much can be done locally in the future. I'd be interested in experiences of others here in using Gemma4, which is at the forefront of "intelligence per gigabyte" atm. (according to benches).
No-one needs LLMs.<p>AI has no value.
Im skeptical of the AGI claims but this is a bit too far in the toher direction. I use it to turn designs to code all the time
At this point in the broader dialogue your position is roughly as interesting as flat earth. Only bored people are going to bother replying and no one is taking you seriously. Don't do yourself a disservice by clinging to this.
The chariot was superior! Who needs them darn cars