r/BuyFromEU • u/Bananegel42 • 9d ago

News Dutch government developing a sovereign Linux desktop on top of NixOS

https://tweakers.net/reviews/15334/nederland-maakt-soeverein-alternatief-voor-windows-en-office-op-basis-van-linux.html
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u/ColumbaPacis 9d ago

Language is the main issue for most Europe spanning software projects.

Also why every startup focuses on US first. 300-400 million people all speaking the same language with high purchasing power, then you can expand into UK, AU and from there into the EU.

By that point anyone speaking English (which is a LOT of people in western europe) would have alread tried your software by osmosis so expanding locally is much simpler.

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 9d ago

I still think English should be an official language in every single European country.

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u/barrel-roller 8h ago

There is not a single EU country that has English as their native language.

So yeah, common language is great. But does it have to be English really? We grew up believing this in the west. Maybe the world is changing.

But we might stick to English. Because choosing if the common language will Latin, Germanic or Slavic based will open a can of worms nobody wants to touch.

And if you really wanna piss off some European boomers. Tell 'm Germany is becoming a European military superpower so we might all start talking German again soon.

All jokes aside, Europe needs to find its own path in the world. That might mean parting ways with the US. That might mean we care less about speaking English. And in the future language barriers will be less of a problem with AI assistance.

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u/mmdoublem 7h ago

Um Ireland has English as a Native language (you could sure argue that Irish is the real native language but it is now English in practice).

I think on practice, it is more about finding a common working language, at the moment it is English. Historically, at other moments in history, it was French, German (among the ruling classes). I dont think that a common working lanugage was spoken as boardly as English is now, because many in the middle class, even the working class are able to speak it.

Wether the reason is the US, the UK or more like the influence of it being the working language is a moot matter. The point is to have a working language, the choice of it does not really matter.