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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Great move. I really believe in the "free software, free society" idea of the FSF. After this batch, I'm sure there will still be a lot left to open source, but it's definitely a big step! If we're fortunate, others will follow suit.

Germany is a great country for stuff like this. They have a relatively high share of Linux users, OpenStreetMap usage, etc. I feel like they're very critical towards their own country and don't take things for granted (not the "we're so proud of our country" idea). As a Dutchman, I like Germany.

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As a related note, the FSF has a sister organization here in Europe, the FSFE: https://fsfe.org/

And to underline your point - its main office is in Germany :)

> Germany is a great country for stuff like this. They have a relatively high share of Linux users, OpenStreetMap usage, etc. I feel like they're very critical towards their own country and don't take things for granted (not the "we're so proud of our country" idea).

This is especially also the case, because of the post-WWII history of East Germany. The Stasi managed to subdue the entire population, mainly with surveillance methods.

And this was before the internet. When they still had to actually go out and infiltrate people's homes in order to place down bugs (microphones).

The worst part about this for me, is that this is not just an unfortunate fate that Germans in particular have to be worrisome about. The only reason other nations are less worried, is because they're collectively less aware of this having happened, of it being entirely possible for this to happen, again.

> When they still had to actually go out and infiltrate people's homes in order to place down bugs (microphones).

Actually it was far easier than that: 1 in every 6 Eastern Germans was knowingly or not, voluntarily or not, a Stasi informant.

tbh i think that germany is lagging in digital, its a shift that if they dont take right now could cost them long term. something that event merkel commented recently.

mobile internet is very expensive, 20 eur for 5gb, there is almost no street view, blocking content on youtube. high percentage of german startups are just copying ( famous rocket internet ). that are just some examples, that are not so great starting point to become leader in digital.

I have to agree. Add a lot of stock listed large companies which have not invested in IT and infrastructure for the past two decades apart from compliance enforced maintenance and Germany is basically 3rd world... startups also are lacking value. Looking at Berlin you kind of say „oh this is a copy of ...“ most of the time.

And this is why Germany is the only country where, due to privacy reasons, people still use Firefox as the most used desktop browser.

But considering that Firefox now also spies on your entire browsing history with CliqZ, not even they are trustworthy anymore. StaSiFox, ffs.

I don't understand what exactly this code is about but I have problems imagining the Deutsche Bank as a company that acts "for the greater good".

As a german I envy you for your drug laws.

This seems to tie into bolstering the Symphony platform.

It seems to be about standardising communication between desktop applications using an RPC broker server (Plexus Interop). It’s aimed at traders, who often use multiple desktop applications (for trading, news, comms) in various runtimes (Java, C#, Python, etc). This tool is some at creating a standard platform enabling those other tools to communicate with each other. I guess like a sort of cross-runtime service bus with service discovery.

(I don’t work in FS, this is just what I can gather from reading the docs).

DB just like every bank in EU actually is legally forced to make some compliance changes for interoperability.

Thus releasing this and possibly pushing workload and costs onto other banks from business side makes sense.

AFAIK it's also the only first-world country where Firefox has the (slight) majority market share over Chrome on desktop.

According to this map (2017) Chrome is the majority practically everywhere, besides some Central African countries. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/StatCoun...

That map probably includes all platforms. If you restrict it to desktop(as I mentioned in my comment) Firefox comes out ahead: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germa....

That's going to change in the next days, when the media's gonna publish the news that Firefox now partnered with Burda Media Group to track your browsing history in Germany.

See the HN thread from friday, where Mozilla employees even defend it as a good thing that Firefox by default now sends everything you type into the URL bar to CliqZ.

Not involved with Mozilla... But.. Was this not the case with Google for years? Also that's always been configurable. It's not a hidden config setting either. Mozilla can do whatever defaults they want they'll just get overriden when I login to my Sync account unlike Chrome though my data is encrypted and mine not theirs.

> It's not a hidden config setting either.

Yes it is now

> they'll just get overriden when I login to my Sync account

They explicitly won’t, the new feature overrides all your synced settings and explicitly defaults to sending all your URLs to the ad and tracking company Burda Media Group.

Germans also are very conscious of online privacy, which is very important in this post-Snowden world we live in.

Do you also believe that the Banks really believe in the "free software, free society" idea of the FSF?

I believe not.

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