[jshen]

It's not clear that anything will be kneecapped. You need more than a desire to not use these products, you also need a viable alternative. Using products from China or Russia probably isn't deemed viable if the concern is politics, which leads to a need for Europe or Canada to build alternatives. They have not been good at this for a long time, maybe that will change, but it's not clear that it will.

[Imustaskforhelp]

India.

Today India invited President of EU commission on its republic day & I feel like there are discussions on signing free trade agreement.

I was in my car watching it live when I recognized the President of EU commissioner and I was like hey!!

I feel like friendly relations of EU and India are definitely on the rise & I have said this previously as well and talked to my other cousins/family who works in Coding and most agree that a deeper India-EU ties are possible.

One thing we were discussing is if EU could directly invest funds in Indian companies instead of going through 10 layers of councils/commissioning companies but to people who want to either build private solutions (Preferably open source?)

I do feel like that's inevitable too. EU's financing is something which I have heard is tricky within EU itself but there are some recent initiatives to stream line it and perhaps India can even integrate into it if its actually net positive for India.

Overall I feel like I am pretty optimistic about India EU relations (though I feel like I have bias but what do people from EU think respectfully?,I'd be more than happy to answer as I talked to my developer cousin about it for almost 2 days on how EU India integration especially in tech feels so good and inevitable haha :>)

[jshen]

Good call out, India is likely the most viable option.

[LunaSea]

India's position on Russia means it's a non-starter as a serious trade partner.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

I can't wait to see how many indians we are going to be forced to import due to that "free trade deal". They must have looked at how well it went in canada and said among themselves "now that's how you destroy a country we gotta get some of that". [EDIT] Hopefully national politicians get balls, more balls, and tell their MEPs to vote against it like the mercosur deal.

[tensor]

There are plenty of viable alternatives. Perhaps not all are as polished as some of the mainstay US companies, but the funtionality is there. It's no surprise that people in the US are ignorant of the existence of the many excellent EU software companies and services.

[jshen]

Then why aren't Europeans using them?

[TulliusCicero]

Not sure why you're being downvoted, Europe has been mostly bad at software and services for a long time now. There's a reason Linus lives in Oregon.

There's always this occasional chatter about being more competitive, and certainly some good ideas -- for example, the Draghi Report -- but then nothing happens, or you get a few half measures at most.

I guess the one upside of Trump being such an aggressive jackass is that it might finally provide enough impetus for European countries to take further integration more seriously.

[albuic]

Europe has good software companies. It's just that the US has bigger VC funding which makes European companies unable to compete when US/EU companies are "fighting".

[einr]

There's a reason Linus lives in Oregon.

What is the reason Linus lives in Oregon? By his own admission, 90% of his workday is reading and answering email. We have email in Europe, so that can’t be it.