…
While [the Beligian] Robert Cailliau and [British citizen] Tim Berners-Lee were busy inventing the World Wide Web in their CERN office in Switzerland, a Swedish-speaking Finnish student started to code an operating system and make it available to everyone under the name “Linux.” Today, Linux is probably the most popular operating system in the world. It runs on any Android smartphone, is used in most data centers, in most of your appliances, in satellites, in watches and is the operating system of choice for many of the programmers who write the code you use to run your business. Its creator, the European Linus Torvalds, is not a billionaire. And he’s very happy about it: he never wanted to become one. He continued coding and wrote the “git” software, which is probably used by 100% of the software developers around the world. Like Linux, Git is part of the common good: you can use it freely, you can modify it, you can redistribute it, you can sell it. The only thing you cannot do? Privatize it. This is called “copyleft.”
In 2017, a decentralized and ethical alternative to Twitter appeared: Mastodon. Its creator? A German student, born in Russia, who had the goal of allowing social network users to leave monopolies to have humane conversations without being spied on and bombarded with advertising or pushed-by-algorithm fake news. Like Linux, like git, Mastodon is copyleft and now part of the common goods.
Allowing human-scale discussion with privacy and without advertising was also the main motivation behind the Gemini protocol (whose name has since been hijacked by Google AI). Gemini is a stripped-down version of the Web which, by design, is considered definitive. Everybody can write Gemini-related software without having to update it in the future. The goal is not to attract billions of users but to be there for those who need it, even in the distant future. The creator of the Gemini protocol wishes to remain anonymous, but we know that the project started while he was living in Finland.
I could continue with the famous VLC media player, probably the most popular media player in the world. Its creator, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Kempf, refused many offers that would have made him a very rich man. But he wanted to keep VLC a copyleft tool part of the common goods.
Don’t forget LibreOffice, the copyleft office suite maintained by hundreds of contributors around the world under the umbrella of the Document Foundation, a German institution.
…
We often hear that Europeans don’t have, like Americans, the “success culture.” Those examples, and there are many more, prove the opposite. Europeans like success. But they often don’t consider “winning against the whole society” as one. Instead, they tend to consider success a collective endeavour. Success is when your work is recognized long after you are gone, when it benefits every citizen. Europeans dream big: they hope that their work will benefit humankind as a whole!
We don’t want a European Google Maps! We want our institutions at all levels to contribute to OpenStreetMap (which was created by a British citizen, by the way).
…
Some are proud because they made a lot of money while cutting down a forest. Others are proud because they are planting trees that will produce the oxygen breathed by their grandchildren. What if success was not privatizing resources but instead contributing to the commons, to make it each day better, richer, stronger?
The choice is ours. We simply need to choose whom we admire. Whom we want to recognize as successful. Whom we aspire to be when we grow up. We need to sing the praises of our true heroes: those who contribute to our commons.
Nokia was the European Google (i.e tech giant) The reason there’s no European Google is due to undercapitalization and market fragmentation. Most of the US doesn’t have these things either. It’s all located in a small part of California
It’s kind of weird on floss platform like Lemmy that some people don’t seem to get the point the author is making which I’d interpret as a rejection of the need to have big business interests against a successful commons.
I’m surprised some seem to miss the idea that success shouldn’t be tied to money, it seems pretty explicit in the blogpost.
There’s been at a certain level a talking up of the USA as a leader in tech and more broadly culture but that’s because they’ve got bigger advertising budgets at the end of the day.
Europeans dream big: they hope that their work will benefit humankind as a whole!
Let’s please not romanticize european business culture. Nestle doesn’t give a shit about mankind as a whole. Neither do Danone or H&M.
I get your point. But any collective myth will overlook a lot reality. Americans actually help each other and organize themselves in their communities, despite the hassle culture. Chinese had many failed attempts at dominating industries. Many Russians actually prefer a calm and good life to the glory of their country.
In a way, a myth is more about what we want to be than what we are. Or, the part of ourselves we are proud of.
The choice is ours. We simply need to choose whom we admire. Whom we want to recognize as successful. Whom we aspire to be when we grow up. We need to sing the praises of our true heroes: those who contribute to our commons.
It could, obviously, just be international. There are people giving away inventions to mankind all around the world, though not equally distributed. But there is a window of opportunity for big part of Europe to embrace these values as our, though not exclusively our. The local aspect is beneficial, since it gives the universal values a sense of belonging and strong institutions.
Maybe we can find a best of both worlds outcome where we contribute to open source and have also competitive payment. Many of the „giants“ also contribute significantly to open source.
We often hear that Europeans don’t have, like Americans, the “success culture.”
What does that even mean? Europe is 44 countries with VAST number of languages and cultures. It includes Russia by the way. This recent trend of comparing “Europe to America” like they were somehow equivalents and talking having “European alternatives” is a strange piece of feudalism. And now this imaginary Europe doesn’t seem to have “success culture”. Of course it doesn’t because Europe where such thing could exist is just a fever dream.
Europe is not EU either. And even if we’re talking about just EU, it’s really not one homogeneous cultural entity either, it’s 27 sovreign countries, each with their own cultures tied very loosely together in a monetary, free-market union, nothing more.
I don’t know why we’re romanticizing USA by comparing some imaginary European equivalent to it?
“success culture” is an euphemism for “grift culture”.
Most articles in this vein use Europe for shorthand for the EU. Chileans and Bolivians feel similarly about America being used as shorthand for the USA.
The EU is obviously more than a common market today, evidenced in law, courts, institutions, schools, banks, telecoms, arts, society, science. It has a definite common identity, albeit one that is typically not predominant by design. It doesn’t detract from national identities.
Maybe Europe should have more integration so it can better stand up against the US, China, and Russia, all three of whom would probably love to tear apart Europe for themselves
Maybe Europe should have more integration so it can better stand up against the US, China, and Russia
Just highlighting that, because it was the point of of message. Russia is part of Europe. “Europe” as a term is about as muddy as “America”.
What is this “Europe” everyone is talking about?
I guess when people talk about Europe they mainly mean the EU and countries allied with it (UK, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, etc). Russia is Eurasian anyway: some territory traditionally considered to be within the historical borders of Europe, and lots of territory within Asia.
Ok, so when we talk about more integration on EU level, in order to establish “success culture” - what kind of integration are we talking about?
Even on EU level, we’re 27 sovereign states, with many different languages, currencies and most importantly cultures. It’s not really even remotely analogous to current day USA.
Yes there are different languages and cultures in Europe; I don’t want to diminish those. Integration between European countries is still possible though. Look at Airbus, which is registered as a “Societas Europaea” (European company), and which has manufacturing facilities in multiple European countries. Airbus is one of the leading global companies in aviation. Maybe one day Europe will have some big tech companies with offices across Europe. Currently there are companies like Spotify and SAP but of course they’re not as big as Google, Microsoft, or Tencent in China, etc.
So let me get this right? In order to “feel European” we need to have huge tech companies that aim to dominate the global market so we can all feel proud when we see their office logotypes in all the cities we visit?
That’s the vibe of the “success culture” we want to build?
Should be easy, just allow monopolies and let companies gobble up their competition without question. Weaken worker power and agency and then fail to regulate interoperability and bang, we have our own tech giants as well.
Let me expand on this a bit:
Monopolies / lack of competition — When platforms dominate markets, they no longer fear losing users or business customers to rivals, which emboldens them to degrade quality.Weak worker power / agency — Tech workers once had leverage to resist harmful design or policy choices; as layoffs and labor fragmentation eroded that leverage, platforms faced fewer internal pressures to restrain “enshittifying” moves.
Erosion of regulation and interoperability — Regulatory bodies have been captured or weakened, and technical constraints (like the ability for third parties to interoperate or fix products) have been removed or outlawed. Without strong regulation or the ability for users and competitors to interoperate, platforms can enforce lock-in and extract more value without consequence.
This is what we’ve come to call “enshittification” and it’s the trademark of all the major platforms you mentioned. If this is what you want from “Europe” then just let me get off this “success train” before it leaves the station.
I don’t want monopolies or enshittification. I think it would be good though to have a European tech sector which can meet Europe’s needs, instead of companies and governments in Europe relying on Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. The (now more unpredictable) US government could compel those companies to give info from European government customers to US authorities, for example. I read a story about this the other day: “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam’s clouds and go EU-native”.
My rule of thumb is to support those politicians that hate their citizens the least.
