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Comment by casey2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two if you mean Europe more generally, as Ubuntu is British.

Of the over 400 distros listed on DistroWatch.com, 79 are based in the United States.

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.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain

[1] https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-sett...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6...

Also, what nationality do you say Elon Musk is, out of curiosity? Let's test your consistency :)

Didn't have "Europe is antisemitic because of the Spanish Inquisition" on my bingo card today. No one expects it, indeed.

I have more evidence of European xenophobia if that isn't sufficient for you

I dont think you travel much, it would help you get more... objective opinions. But yes please show us that mighty evidence

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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.

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.

I agree things have improved but the GP to my first post set context to:

> Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders

You seemed to be picking a rather narrow slice of the scope.

Well, to be fair, GP did use the "Expulsion of Jews from Spain" as the example for that, so I don't think they were trying to say "Some people in Europe have bad thoughts about perceived outsiders" but rather hinting to some larger events still happening today.

That's fair. To continue being fair, there's a lot of rough behavior happening throughout the world these days. We've forgotten how bad we can make things.

I'd suggest that in Europe also there's more than just bad thoughts for outsiders but bad words, bad treatment, and exclusion from thriving. Extreme cases include bodily harm and I'm fairly certain death but these extreme occur at a lower scale.

I'm not defending racism against immigrants to Europe, but let's get this in proportion. It wasn't long ago that the US had _state mandated segregation_ and regular lynchings. All racism is abhorrent, but I really don't see Europe a specifically problematic in this regard.

I didn't make the claim that Europe is specifically problematic. I was noting that between extremes the GP was talking about

> Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders

Who'd've thunk it, people be tribal?

Tbf theres a much more recent example of legitimate antisemitism in europe. One around the same time as us interment of japanese people

A more relevant recent example would be the shameful stripping of British citizenship from a girl who had been trafficked to the Middle East

They got radicalized and went there voluntarly

In a civilised society, we don't typically regard 15 year olds as responsible for their own radicalisation at the hands of adults

There is no civilized society that treats 15 years old not responsible for joining terrorist groups and for actively working with them.

15 year old being radicalised into terrorism is a societal and parental failure, not the moral failure of an individual child. We don’t treat 15 year olds as adults in other legal proceedings, we should not do here either

Civilised societies tend to blame the groomers, not the victims.

I thought the right wing supported that view.

Musk collects citizenships like they’re going out of fashion. He fled South’s Africa due to not wanting to be drafted.

Lieutenant Torvalds on the other hand fulfilled his service duties.

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.

Just Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend:

> Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland

> In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.

No, and no?

...what?

Yeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc.

There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.

Yeah, um…

That might have changed somewhat, recently.

You might want to do a bit more reading on why European intellectuals migrated en masse to the US in the 1930s.

Definitely. And then one could start wondering if the direction might reverse.

to europe? hardly. maybe to east asia ...

https://time.com/7379376/scientist-migration-us-to-europe/

It would take something miraculous for the direction to reverse towards Europe. People have been complaining about European tech, economy, and freedoms (as in free speech) for decades now. Things have become worse on all of these fronts.

I think the AI act is a great example here. The EU came up with regulation for an emerging technology that basically killed the chance for Europe to compete. Lots of people disagreed with this criticism when the act was debated, but it turns out the critics were right. Europe will be buying AI services from elsewhere because Europe wasn't able to compete.

This entire way of thinking in Europe would need to reverse for there to be a chance that the brain drain changes course.

On the flip side, with the US cutting funding for scientific research, and increasing persecution of minorities within the US, I know a whole bunch of qualified scientists/researchers who are either moving to or actively hunting for a position in the EU

Really not many people outside far right proponents of hate speech (and more recently MAGA shills) have been complaining about free speech in Europe. Yes, there are laws against holocaust denial for specific historical reasons. The UK also had regulations on some Irish republican organisations access to TV, but not other forms of expression. And yes most European jurisdictions accept that speech can cause harm and try to balance this against free speech. But there is really no case that nonviolent political speech is -- in practice -- discriminated against in EU and UK.

On the IT and AI services: Europe hasn't really failed to compete in innovation, as much as scale of operation. That might change if we have a security imperative to protect our own markets for these things against an increasingly hostile US.

People have been fined and their apartments searched for insulting politicians online.

The fact that other Europeans aren't complaining about this makes it worse, because it implies that the society condones this behavior.

I'm sorry, but in no sensible society should the police raid someone's home because he called the deputy chancellor (think vice president) a dumbass on Twitter ("dummkopf"). Or more recently: police started investigating a man for calling Merz (the chancellor) Pinocchio:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/german-police-probe-face...

>but not other forms of expression.

France - fined for calling Macron a "scumbag":

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2023/04/23/french...

UK - teenager sentenced for a "hate crime" for posting rap lyrics on Instagram:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

This applies to other European countries too.

When the US is being run by relatively sane people, it's great.

That is not the situation at the moment.

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