Why the pandemic could help FOSS, but was a win for proprietary software
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Group actionComputer networkBasis <Mathematik>Digital libraryData modelInformation privacySpreadsheetOpen sourceWeb browserSoftwareBoris (given name)Capability Maturity ModelOpen sourceLine (geometry)AreaInformation privacySubject indexingCASE <Informatik>Flow separationArchaeological field surveyThomas BayesSoftwareBusiness modelUniform resource locatorAxiom of choiceAuthorizationPatch (Unix)Local ringComputer animation
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Computing platformTrojanisches Pferd <Informatik>MalwareOffice suiteFile formatEndliche ModelltheorieDiagram
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
01:27
So, the pandemic could help free open source software, but unfortunately it was a win for proprietary software. If we look at the trends over the last 20 years, the amount of code in software,
01:48
the amount of open source code in software has grown, and today we have a majority of open source software in all the applications, and we have a large number of Linux servers.
02:07
We have a very large number of Linux applications in the background. We don't have a lot of open source on the desktop.
02:20
But this was slightly changing when the pandemic started, as you can see from this slide. In early 2020, Linux market share was growing rather quickly for a few months,
02:47
and then it was back again to the current 2.53% of all desktop operating system.
03:03
Why this? Of course, when the pandemic hit, many people started working from home, and many of them didn't have adequate PCs or hardware for the task.
03:24
So, a few ones or a few people switched to Linux, and this is the growth that we have seen probably in the period from April to August 2020.
03:43
But then what happened? It happened that the usual suspect, so the large tech, US tech, have reacted. We should never forget that these companies
04:02
are the largest companies in the stock market. If you look at the capitalization in 2016, it's rather clear all the companies of the, let's call it, old economy have disappeared
04:24
from the top traded companies. Of course, they're still there, but they're fairly smaller than large tech. And if we look at what happened during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021,
04:51
this large technology company grew even further during a period where most of the other companies
05:01
had issues. And this chart gives you an idea of the market dominance from US companies that we have in Europe, because we should never forget that these companies are based in the States,
05:27
but they export their technology to Europe, and most of European government are relying on the technology provided by these companies, even if the guarantees that
05:45
these technologies are protecting European user more than the US government is not sure at all.
06:01
What is incredible is the amount of money that these companies spend in lobby activities. Technology is an industry that has issues like any other industry, but it's not,
06:21
it's definitely not the industry with the heaviest issues in terms of environment or in term of human health. But even if this is not happening, the technology companies are the largest lobby spenders in the world and definitely in Europe.
06:50
These are the lobby expenses in Brussels of the largest technology companies. And they grew their lobby expenditures with the introduction of
07:13
the antitrust activities. Microsoft was already spending quite a large amount of money
07:23
for this reason. And they've developed network of lobbyists in Brussels that are propagating around Europe. And of course, this reflects on the meetings with politicians with the EU
07:43
Commission. If we look at what companies and business association have been able to do in comparison with what with the NGOs and associations and organization representing
08:00
the open source environment, the numbers are amazing. And these, of course, explains why companies have been able to profit from the pandemic instead of then suffering from the pandemic. These budgets have a significant impact, in fact, on EU policymakers. And
08:30
the people that represent these companies spend a huge amount of money and the consequence of
08:45
lobbying, say, according to Shoshana Zuboff, the author of Surveillance Capitalism, she says that lobbying has fortified the business model that violates people's privacy
09:06
and unfairly dominates the market. And this business model is flourishing without being challenged exactly because it is protected by politicians.
09:24
One unfortunate confirmation of this subservience to large tech companies was the story of the human genes being renamed to please Excel instead of the scientific community going to
09:44
Microsoft and not just asking, but imposing them to patch Excel in a way that Excel could import in a proper way the gene names without considering them as dates.
10:07
By the way, LibreOffice has never provided the same issue. They renamed the human genes and this is just unbelievable because it is a community and a strong community,
10:28
because the scientific community is a strong one, that is prone to Microsoft wheels. And, of course, if we look at the European Community Open Source Adoption
10:44
Maturity Index and we look at what happens on the desktop, which is the first line, the situation is really incredibly bad. No open source in 60% of the cases,
11:03
something ad hoc in 20%, and the remaining 10% is local policy or EC policy, but it's really limited. And while, of course, if you go to the data center, open source is a lot more
11:23
used than proprietary software. And if you go to other areas, there is almost a clear majority from open source software because when you go into strategic or
11:47
business critical server-based application, you almost don't have a choice than implementing open source. So while open source is being adopted, but has not been in the adoption,
12:05
has not been increased during the pandemic, where there could be an increase that was on the desktop and that could have been an advantage, could have been represented an advantage for user, especially because the privacy could have been implemented in a better way,
12:31
this has not happened. So, and in fact, when we look for news, we go to the
12:45
usual suspect, we Google, we go to the media, we turn on the TV, and this, what is producing this, this is producing the cycle of
13:05
providing, giving out our information, because if you search for something or you look for something on the web, this is profiled and your profile is increased and
13:23
at the end is digested by machine learning and artificial intelligence to transform into business data. This slide just gives you an idea of what data brokers are providing in term of
13:47
profiles of population. We have profiles with 3000 or even more attributes for each individual. By switching to open source software for desktop productivity, European government would have
14:08
regained control of citizen personal data and managed them according to their confidentiality. In addition, switching to free open source software would have meant moving from proprietary
14:25
to standard document format with a significant advantage in term of interoperability. Proprietary software, in fact, protects the user by obfuscating everything, algorithmic information, and this way they also obfuscate the way they use
14:45
end user data. On the contrary, free open source software protects the user by applying transparency, sharing the source code, and sharing all the information so that the user
15:00
knows all the information to decide by himself what he can give in term of personal information and what he doesn't want to give to the general public.
15:22
Apparently this is a no-brainer, but the issue is that politicians, that the majority of them doesn't understand almost anything about technology, sees the big tech as part of the
15:41
global system and therefore sees the big tech issues as blocker for the entire digital transformation process. Instead of seeing them correctly as an issue for the digital transformation process, they see that as an issue because it's a blocker
16:03
of the digital transformation process. And they don't see free open source software the same way, so instead of seeing free open source software as a potential solution
16:23
to the digital transformation process, they ignore it as a potential solution and trust only the proprietary software, which is widely used by governments, even if
16:50
they are sentenced by the court of justice of the European Union that say that the standard contractual clauses of the proprietary software shouldn't be used and shouldn't be allowed
17:07
in Europe. And these slides give you a feeling of how much these clauses are
17:21
ignored in some cases or even if they are known for their issues, they are adopted. 95% of the companies of small and medium enterprises with 2,000 more employees
17:43
uses standard contractual clauses, which means that they give out their data to big tech and they made them available to the US government instead of keeping them by
18:03
for themselves. And unfortunately the cost of reassessing all these is extremely high and therefore there's not a willingness of tackling the issue. What would happen if
18:26
the code developed with public money was public as well? We would use standards, we would rely on interoperability, we would be able to read the documents, we would
18:48
be able to avoid the lock-in strategies of Microsoft, which has been even capable of publishing a manual on how to lock-in your clients. If you don't find it online I can
19:08
send it a copy to you if you want to learn the strategy to lock-in customers. And the issue is that we keep on using formats that are used by malware to carry
19:31
viruses, trojans. This is a Kaspersky lab research in 2019 that says that 70%
19:41
of global malware is carried by office documents. So by using office documents, by standardizing on office documents, we expose European citizens to this risk instead of using a truly interoperable
20:05
format which would avoid these issues because it would be an open format and being an open format it would be easy for expert people to understand if the format
20:23
is being used to carry information or to carry malware or to carry components that are not supposed to be there. So we still have people that European users
20:40
that are amazed by the fact that online companies, large tech companies seem to know everything about them, knows when they go to sleep, know when they get up, knows everything about their credit card,
21:04
knows everything about their family and are even able to suggest doctors or solutions to their personal issues. All this is called surveillance capitalism
21:23
and this is what has allowed big tech to profit from the pandemic instead of suffering from the pandemic. And by ignoring what is happening, European politicians are
21:50
putting at stake the human expectation of sovereignty over our own life and authorship of
22:02
our own experience as Shoshana Zuboff says in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The risk is that we are losing the control of our life and of our contents of what we produce because that is managed by someone else.
22:24
And the politicians that should protect us are on the contrary protecting the people that are picking the information from our activity and are using it for their business and are using
22:45
it to the advantage of other governments. Thank you for listening, happy to answer your question if you have some on the topic. I understand that this is not a trivial or an easy topic to
23:02
discuss but if we don't face it now we will find ourselves in a terrible situation quite soon. Thank you again. It just goes live but I was asking you about the recommendations.
23:30
You know, I know and so the problem I think we have a general issue in Europe
23:51
which is quite a big one because we, our government are relying too much on US-based
24:03
technology and of course we don't have, I don't think we should be clear that we are not against US technology. We are against US technology which is
24:21
too much closer to the US government objectives. We have different governments, we have decided in in the past to have different privacy laws and there should be a higher level of respect for this.
24:42
Today I see the situation being really bad for Europe and for other continents but not really positive even for the US. We are really surrounded by big tech
25:06
and for instance, my son works as a chef in a restaurant in a skiing resort in the alps. Every month we go and visit him and I usually book my room through booking because it's
25:34
start receiving emails from restaurants which are in the area. Do you want to rent a car?
25:42
Do you want, do you really need health services and why? I mean I booked a room and that should be my task and let's say that what we could find appropriate would be
26:01
the site asking me, would you mind if we share the information that you will be in that area so that you can get some help? Okay, in that case we should decide by ourselves and we should, we would be aware that there is this sharing of information but at the moment there is no
26:24
share, there is no sign of this and last time I'm still but I will soon be be out of the OSI board but the last time I went to an OSI meeting in the States
26:49
I, when I was at the customs in, I think it was San Francisco but the city is not important, the guy said oh you're here for the OSI board meeting, sure but how the hell do you know you
27:09
custom officer in the US and I've just exchanged emails with my fellow board members in the in the US so if I tell you that I'm there for the OSI board meeting okay but why you already in the
27:28
system there is already the fact that I'm there for the OSI board meeting. That's not pleasant especially if you understand why it happens and of course yes this network of lobbies that of
27:46
course then talk to each other, Europe to the States and vice versa, the largest lobby agencies are in contact with them. We really are surrounded by the big tech and of course the big tech
28:07
being all based or mostly based in in the state and in China according to their headquarter will not share and maybe they are unwilling to share the information but the reality is that if you
28:24
are active in a market then the government of that country has some influence on you in any case so I think we should the people should learn that the situation that we have today is
28:45
not a good one that we should be more careful for our privacy and we should education should not be in the in the ends of big techs unfortunately is. So I'm gonna ask you
29:06
the next question but we're about to run out of time so folks who are watching live can come join us in the breakout room which will be listed in the chat but but we'll continue here and say you know someone asks it's it's Bradley asking if there's anywhere in the world that
29:24
doesn't face this corruption seeing how the EU suffers with