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Will New European Commission Leaders Welcome Open Source and Open Standards?
First time accepted submitter jenwike writes As Neelie Kroes leaves the office of the European Commission's VP of the Digital Agenda, we need to take a look the new, incoming leadership and ask where they stand on open source software and open standards. The Public Policy Director for Red Hat, Paul Brownell, gives thoughts on the two politicians that President-Elect Junker has named to lead on ICT for the new Commission: former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has been named as Vice President for Digital Single Market; and incumbent European Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger (a German politician and lawyer) has been named as Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society.
He has no clue about the subject. I'm worried.
Dear submitter: Why do we care about a vendor's take on two obscure commissioners on a "Digital Agenda" committee no one here has ever heard of?
(For example, are these two people blocking some huge Red Hat support contract, and that's why we get a Red Hat PR flack whining on Slashdot? Context, please!)
Protip: Redhat and IBM are both largish businesses that support open source and have a good chance of getting contracts should the EU be more open source friendly.
It is more likely that Microsoft will remain the default because people generally fear change. Especially when someone's job (usually their own) is on the line. I've worked on showing everyone I can how friendly and useable GNU/Linux is. The only people that enjoy it are my wife and kids. My parents, siblings, and in-laws think its kinda cool, but absolutely refuse to switch. It isn't just that they don't think it's worth their time to try something new. They seem to be genuinely afraid to try anything other than Windows.
They would rather buy new computers than deal with trying Linux. I already told them I am no longer fixing viruses with Windows--they will get Linux if they bug me about software again. So if the virus scanner doesn't take care of it, they just buy a new system.
There in no religion higher than truth.
two obscure commissioners on a "Digital Agenda" committee no one here has ever heard of?
European Pirate Party is certainly pro-open source and has made some comments:
Oettinger and Ansip are like night and day,” said Julia Reda, an MEP with the European Pirate Party, which focuses on internet regulation. “I am very pleasantly surprised by [Ansip's] level of understanding. He didn’t say anything outrageous in any case, which is a huge improvement over Oettinger.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0... (if this appears paywalled, try via Google).
I'd be wary of our very own ACTA-supporting troll. I'm fairly suspicious of his level of understanding increasing THAT much between the time he was prime minister and trolled in support of ACTA and now.
Its not always the case that the car companies (German or otherwise) get what they want from the EU.
Take the case of refrigerant gasses for car air conditioners. Until recently, cars in the EU were using a refrigerant called r134a which is bad for the environment. The EU introduced regulations requiring a switch for new cars to a refrigerant called r1234yf which is a lot less damaging to the environment.
Mercedes however refuses to use r1234yf because they claim that its it a lot less safe than r134a if there is a leak or a fire. Mercedes instead says it wants to use carbon dioxide as a refrigerant going forward (since it doesn't have the fire risk of r1234yf and is actually less harmful to the environment than both r1234yf and r134a) and continue using r134a until it can switch over to carbon dioxide.
There is a big fight going on right now over the issue with Mercedes saying r1234yf is unsafe because of the fire risk and various bodies (including the EU and French authorities) arguing that the fire risk isn't as great as Mercedes says it is and the environmental risk of continuing to use r134a outweighs it.