this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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BuyFromEU

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I'm curious what your stance on using products and services from non-European foundations is.

The discussion on LibreOffice made me think about your acceptance of open source products or free services from no-European, or even US American, foundations (The Open Document Foundartion is registerd germany, though).

Mozilla data privacy controversy aside my thought would for example apply to

  • Apache Software Foundation (OpenOffice)
  • Mozilla Foundation (Firefox, Thunderbird, ...)
  • Signal foundation (Signal)

to name the biggest.

For me the use of non-commercial or even open-source products and services from different non-European countries is okay, as they are funded by donations.

The whole idea of buyFromEU seems to funnel money into the own economy in order to have a strong market, and also to proudly use European products. The above mentioned foundations help to increase data sovereignty and after all break loose from commercial solutions that aim at deep integrations and walled gardens.

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 12 points 1 day ago

as an aussie, i’m supporting canadian and european products, services, and foundations

i think that globally we get through this by cooperating rather than being protectionist… we’re stronger together, and that cooperation is what we need to beat the bully

[–] alfredon996@feddit.it 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

OpenOffice is dead and nobody should use it. Anyway for me anything that is free software or open source is acceptable

[–] thijsje@social.vivaldi.net 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

@alfredon996 @SrMono Any features you miss or, even better, gained?

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

LibreOffice is just the more actively maintained and developed fork

[–] thijsje@social.vivaldi.net 1 points 8 hours ago

@albert180 Thanks for the info, I will give it a try.

[–] SrMono@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, no, just the meta debate if people are willing to use non-European stuff or are dead serious about everything being European.

[–] thijsje@social.vivaldi.net 2 points 1 day ago

@SrMono Its a Marathon not a Sprint. If there is a viable alternative I take it. But if the choice is between a Lada and a Ford Mustang... I'll be very tempted to take the mustang.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think so, too. We've seen the big tech companies jump forward to lick the new US government's boots. While the nonprofits haven't done the same. So it seems to me they're still with the people. This also doesn't come as a surprise to me, since they want to do good, or at least something else than make record profit by ripping off people. I'm still using their Free Software. But I will cut down on relying on services hosted in the USA. I mean even if they're a benevolent foundation, they might still be forced to cooperate with law enforcement and I don't want to see my private data end up in Elon Musk's AI or something like that. So I'm either hosting services myself or going to choose a provider and datacenter within the EU. (And I'm not using that many cloud services in the first place.)

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

A foundation can do good or bad. I'm not sure generalizations can be made for all of them

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Instead of Signal I would use Matrix, as it's decentralised and the Foundation is based in the UK

[–] SrMono@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Jip. I'm using both, but I just made a case for my colleagues/friends and familiy to quit Whatsapp and go to Signal and even that wasn't received with thunderous applause. I guess it is still a viable option and better than before.

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

or use both of them for different purposes. when it comes to friends and family, or coworkers, I'll be more comfortable sharing my phone number (which also makes it more accessible and discoverable) than my @bussyslayer_uwu:meowtrix.social Matrix handle.

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

As far as I know you can also use your phone number to find accounts on Matrix/Element.

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

depends on the instance. matrix.org doesn't support that.

[–] SrMono@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Good point. On ther other hand you can use signal with a handle of your choice, too. You don't need to distributed your phone number anymore.