Edit: It is a joint open source initiative between Germany, France, Italy, & Netherlands to make Cybersecurity, AI, Cloud, & Social Media Network alternatives

Maybe we can finally get a Facebook open source alternative with mobile apps /s

Spotted this on Mastodon so I decided to inform you all. What you think?

all 28 comments

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 67 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

EU OpenSource alternatives already exist since a lot of years, often even superior as the ones from the US. It's not the lack of EU alternatives, it's only the lack of their use by corporations and goverments, eg. Blink and WebKit are forks from the German KHTML (killed by Apple) by KDE, In the AI, there exist, among others, the Swiss Apertus (FLOSS) by the Swiss Supercomputer Center (CSCS) used also by the CERN. Proton, Nextcloud, Murena, Mastodon, Fairphone......It would be easy for the EU to have total sovereignty in Soft and Services, it just lacks the political will to have it, while Trump is occupied with his Ballroom scam, paid by Google, M$, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Cryptocompanies & cia.

https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to

https://european-alternatives.eu/categories

https://eu-os.eu/

On the other hand, it isn't so important the country of community driven OpenSource, more important in those made by the mencioned Ballroom spomsores which are to avoid, also in commercial proprietary apps, there are also preferable those from EU companies.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Sure Blink is a fork of WebKit which is a fork of KHTML. But that was 1000 years ago. The biggest contributors by leagues are Google and Apple. Those are US projects. Trying to say they are European is nuts.

LibreOffice is German though and while OpenOffice was from Oracle, it was based on StarOffice which was German. So, the EU can claim that one.

NextCloud is a solid example too.

And, of course, there is SUSE.

Igalia (Spain) brings Servo (web browser) and Chimera Linux too.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Not 1000 years ago, KHTML is still used by Konqueror, last release 25.08.2 2025-10-09 (Linux only). But yes, it got very marginal, some more development by KDE would be desirable to be an real alternative.

https://apps.kde.org/konqueror/

....WebKit started as a fork of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE, and has since been further developed by KDE contributors (KWebKit), Apple, Google, Nokia, Bitstream, BlackBerry, Sony, Igalia, and others. WebKit supports macOS, Windows, Linux, and various other Unix-like operating systems. On April 3, 2013, Google announced that it had forked WebCore, a component of WebKit, to be used in future versions of Google Chrome under the name Blink.

Certainly Spain is pretty active in software developement (OpenSource and also proprietary), eg. Panda Security with the first cloud based AV which retrieved Malware definition in realtime from the cloud. Nowadays most other AV, even the Windows Defender, use this system.

https://www.f6s.com/companies/software/spain/co

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My point is that Apple dominates that list of developers (and them and Google before that). How much do you think BlackBerry is contributing these days?

Since we are talking history though, one of the original KHTML devs was Andreas Kling who went on to work on WebKit at Apple and who now leads the Ladybird browser project. He lives in Sweden so I guess Ladybird is European though the newly formed Ladybird Foundation is US based (I am sure to make it easier to raise money by offering US tax deductions).

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

We'll see, at the moment in the US isn't a good country for devs or cientifics, less for foreigners. They even cut the money to the NASA, shutting down climate sats, investigation centers and universities, not even police and military get paid (only ICE). Better if he tried it in Canada, the US is currently the worst and most crappy country to immigrate for everyone.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

Are you talking about Ladybird?

The US government is a mess but US companies still have all the money. Most Canadian companies have US revenues and will benefit from US deductions.

The first big Ladybird sponsor was Shopify. They are a Canadian company that recently moved their headquarters to the US.

Agree with your last sentence.

[–] mat@jlai.lu 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Something that should not be forgotten is that hardware matters to. If Nvidia, Intel or AMD has an interdiction to sell to a country, you can have all the FLOSS software (Fair, Libre and Open), if you have no hardware then tough shit. China is getting good GPU with a shiton of investments, so Europe needs to do the same. Using RiscV for this would allow to have an instruction set that already have nice support (I even heard it can be used for GPU) to bring nice or newer stuff to the table. For manufacturing, a Netherland company is producing the tools of TSMC so there is that, at least.

Edit: added links

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The EU is also going away from trades with the US (not only because tariffs) and prefering to trade with China as a more trustworth client and provider.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Imagine how fast the US turned to shit, that China is now more trustworthy. Or at least, much more stable.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

In trading stability is that what count. Apart that China offers way more in tecnology than the US, whose tecnology is only centred in weapons. Look at Chinas EVs, they are light years more advanced as Tesla, same in robotics, already massive implemented in the society (surveillance apart)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Ji_p0ODKk

[–] mat@jlai.lu 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In my opinion, only turning to China is not enough. Diversifying is good, but in the same time, nothing "under control" is built, your stability depends on diplomacy and in this case, and it is a big weakness (this is how Xi made Trump bending with rare earth)

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

It is always best not to depend on third countries in the essentials. This thing about rare earths is basically not so correct, since they are not really rare, they are found in practically all countries, only the extraction is enormously polluting, but on the other hand there are in each country old exploitations and mining in an environment that has already been destroyed. Urban mining may also should be more used than currently, with the huge amount of electronic waste available everywhere and are a big source for not only "rare earth", but also a lot of other raw material. As always, political, economic and corporation interests prevail the common sense.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

TOPXI

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

If the EU doesn't also pursue Open Source Hardware (OSH), then vulnerabilities will still exist.

FOSS or FLOSS is good, but OSH should be with it side by side.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago

does anyone know what the difference between OsmAnd and Organic Maps is?

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 35 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Isn't the Fediverse already an open source social media platform?

[–] faercol@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 5 days ago

It is, but developing is also supporting existing software, so supporting Mastodon, or other fediverse platforms would fit the bill.

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Regarding the social network piece, I’d like to see a push in the worldwide OSS community to make an installer for self hosted federated services. I know it’s not realistic to make that completely push-button, but something that will take local machine config and connection information and then configure docker and the necessary containers for whatever services the person wants to host.

I’d start the project myself but my coding ability amounts to only a little more than hello world in a couple languages.

[–] boomzilla@programming.dev 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Already exists.

https://yunohost.org/

Not using it myself as I like to play with docker but I'd try it if I want to host a Lemmy instance e.g.

It has multiple federated apps available:

https://apps.yunohost.org/catalog?category=social_media

[–] robbiejuffermans@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

https://qlick.cloud/

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago

finally. i've been waiting for this for a long time. finally a worthwhile software development project again.

France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands will work to develop open, European alternatives in “key areas” such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and – curiously – social networks.

especially social networks are important, as it allows people to connect and exchange messages outside of the influence of US big biased algorithms.

does anybody have a link to the project website, where one can sign up and contribute?

[–] LemUrun@pawb.social 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Link preview, my ass

[–] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

each instance gets the link previews independently of each other, and some instances might be blocked to get them, mine shows it clearly.

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Apologies I had no idea that would happen. I'll look for a better source to add alongside that one

Edit: It's the only source...

[–] LemUrun@pawb.social 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You're good. Just furry instance is not the best instance in the Lemmyverse lol

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Furry instance? I'm unfamiliar with what you mean

[–] Tehdastehdas@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago

pawb.social - "Fediverse Communities For Furries By Furries."