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Comment by quadcore | Hacker News Reader

I think we (Europe) need a Shenzhen-like zone (probably between France and Germany). That is a tax-free (15%) english speaking tech zone.

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Afaik both countries have tax incentives for R&D already. What the EU needs is :

- a proper vision

- the balls to implement it, even if that means booting lobbyists off and annoying the US

We have OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak, Proton, Nextcloud, and plenty of smaller companies, some heavily invested in open source. There's also a mechanism to fund flagship projects with billions.

I agree. I'd love to see European institutions to begin using European software and infrastructure. I feel like we have lots of puzzle pieces already, I'd add ONLYOFFICE to the mix, which would be very important to replace Google Drive / Docs / Sheets or Microsoft 365. They even have a free personal tier to test the waters.

You might be interested in the "Public Money, Public Code" campaign of the Free Software Foundation in Europe (FSFE).

https://publiccode.eu/

In my experience with government organizations, the argument that public tax money should be used for public/free re-usable software instead of funding proprietary development (essentially subsidizing R&D of foreign corporations), really strikes a nerve on all administrative levels.

I fully agree with the campaign. I even donated to them some time ago and got a nice package of promotion material in return.

You mean "Schengen" not the Chinese city Shenzhen right? The agreement allowing free travel/work between EU countries and Switzerland as well as some others signed in Schengen, Luxembourg.

I meant Shenzhen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen#Special_Economic_Zone...

Why would they mean "Europe needs something like Schengen" when Europe already has Schengen?

We should do Strasbourg. 2 hours from Paris by train, a few from Berlin and Bruxelle. European name and international notoriety. Great place, climate, used to be fought for by both France and Germany and I think its sounding like a place eastern EU would like as well.

Isn't that already Ireland?

Yeah. I dont know. I guess Ireland is irish's. Also it is managed by Irish government. We need a place that will grow into a federal europe. Something like that.

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