[00:00.000 --> 00:16.000] Okay, so the goal also of this talk is to talk also about the progress and challenges [00:16.000 --> 00:18.800] of alternatives facing the big techs. [00:18.800 --> 00:28.960] So I want to first explain a bit why apps is key, why end user apps is important and [00:28.960 --> 00:34.120] also where are we, what are we doing with these apps, do they exist? [00:34.120 --> 00:35.360] So first who am I? [00:35.360 --> 00:42.360] So I'm Ludwig Dubost, I'm the creator of Xwiki, so I created the Xwiki software, so I don't [00:42.360 --> 00:47.920] know, does anybody who knows Xwiki here, oh cool, that's already, nice, who knows, and [00:47.920 --> 00:54.400] we also created a second software in my company, which is CripPad, who knows CripPad, cool, [00:54.400 --> 00:57.280] and that's pretty nice. [00:57.280 --> 01:04.360] And so we've been doing collaboration software for 20 years now, like 19 years, and we've [01:04.360 --> 01:14.400] been competing with software from the big techs, and it's not an easy thing to do, like [01:14.400 --> 01:22.280] you get lots of challenges there in order to actually build that software and get to [01:22.280 --> 01:24.640] the level that you can compete. [01:24.640 --> 01:33.880] And so I've done this at the same time I created the company, so it was a business goal to [01:33.880 --> 01:42.680] be able to live from building these applications as open source, and we have 50 employees, [01:42.680 --> 01:48.720] we're a remote first company, and we have employees in France and Romania and also now [01:48.720 --> 01:56.960] in Germany, and actually we hire, so if you're interested, come see what we do, and we are [01:56.960 --> 02:05.520] currently having more success, and that's not happening every year to be able to hire, [02:05.520 --> 02:12.000] so if you're interested to see how it works inside the company that has a goal of doing [02:12.000 --> 02:17.080] open source, of building open source applications, not only using them or installing them, but [02:17.080 --> 02:20.560] really creating them, come see what we do. [02:20.560 --> 02:27.160] So as a company, we're also a member of our ecosystem, we're a member of associations [02:27.160 --> 02:33.040] in France, for example the Systematique, OW2, the CNL, it's Conseil Nationale de Logiciels [02:33.040 --> 02:38.480] Libres, we're not a member of OSBA in Germany, but we actually want to be, it's planned, [02:38.480 --> 02:46.200] we're also a member of, yeah, we're also a member of CLIDIA, so APEL is actually a European [02:46.200 --> 02:55.160] entity over CNN and OSBA, we're trying to be active also in order to try to promote [02:55.160 --> 03:02.200] what the type of things that our companies do, and I'm a strong believer that European [03:02.200 --> 03:08.280] companies should work together more than they do together, and I know how difficult it is [03:08.280 --> 03:15.160] because it's super difficult because we're all very focused on what we do every day, [03:15.160 --> 03:17.880] but collaboration is actually super important. [03:17.880 --> 03:26.680] So first, one thing is, in 1995 technology was more like you buy machines, you buy or [03:26.680 --> 03:32.280] you build software, you install that software, and not all activities in our lives were actually [03:32.280 --> 03:35.640] dependent on software in 1995. [03:35.640 --> 03:45.000] It was not as important, but in 28 years, actually a lot of things have changed. [03:45.000 --> 03:53.320] Now your renting cloud servers, you could even run your server just on the cloud without [03:53.320 --> 03:59.440] worrying about buying in a machine, just take the service, but you could also run cloud [03:59.440 --> 04:05.680] servers, you could build and make your own software and run it, but also one thing is [04:05.680 --> 04:12.000] that almost everything, there is no business that's not dependent on software, it's starting [04:12.000 --> 04:18.000] to be really hard to find anything that won't use any software, maybe some independent agriculture [04:18.000 --> 04:23.920] people might not need any software, but even though might still use some of them to be [04:23.920 --> 04:31.800] more efficient in their job, but you have a lot of activities that are highly dependent [04:31.800 --> 04:38.520] on software for every day work, and it can be a major competitive differentiator to [04:38.520 --> 04:43.640] use software in your business. [04:43.640 --> 04:50.720] We also see that there is a business imbalance, actually these are numbers, so I didn't put [04:50.720 --> 05:04.280] the source, I should have, basically the GDP of the tech sector in the U.S. is 10%, and [05:04.280 --> 05:09.560] there is data from Europe, from Europe's websites where you see GDP is 4%, so it's not easy [05:09.560 --> 05:12.880] to know if they're actually exactly talking about the same thing. [05:12.880 --> 05:19.800] The scoping of what is the tech sector is not always easy to match from one country [05:19.800 --> 05:29.560] to another, but we kind of intuitively know that there is much more tech in the U.S., [05:29.560 --> 05:36.200] and that actually makes a huge difference, and if we look at the problem from the sovereignty [05:36.200 --> 05:42.360] point of view, so what I try to do here is to look at the different levels of what we [05:42.360 --> 05:52.080] use in technology, and what the situation is, and how Europe competes from that point [05:52.080 --> 06:00.120] of view, but there are some differences also in the way it works, so for example, you might [06:00.120 --> 06:06.320] not know how to make a hardware component, like you might not have the people that can [06:06.320 --> 06:14.400] do it, but once you bought it, the hardware component is yours, and that actually is something [06:14.400 --> 06:22.880] that is significantly different from the top, where you might not know how to do the cloud [06:22.880 --> 06:31.000] service, but you also don't own it, you don't have it, you use it, you use it remotely. [06:31.000 --> 06:36.960] Now, it's true, even in hardware, you're seeing evolutions where the world of software, [06:36.960 --> 06:44.160] the way software works, of software works, is starting to happen on the hardware level, [06:44.160 --> 06:54.520] you can turn on a feature in a Tesla remotely, and you can turn it off also remotely, so [06:54.520 --> 07:01.360] we might have situations where we don't own the software that is inside a hardware machine, [07:01.360 --> 07:07.200] so you have a lot of hardware that contains software, even a chip can contain software, [07:07.200 --> 07:13.600] whether or not they can turn off feature remotely from the internet is another story, but software [07:13.600 --> 07:18.560] is something that you can turn on, turn off remotely, and that's something very important. [07:18.560 --> 07:24.880] Now, we're not actually looking that good all over the place, we know in Europe how [07:24.880 --> 07:32.440] to make some semiconductors, for example, RM is a European company, was almost acquired [07:32.440 --> 07:38.800] by NVIDIA, but it didn't happen, but it's a UK company, so we still own a semiconductor [07:38.800 --> 07:43.840] company in Europe. [07:43.840 --> 07:48.800] We have some actors for hardware, but most of it is manufactured in Asia, so that's [07:48.800 --> 07:55.120] something important, and we know that with COVID, when we wanted masks in Europe, we [07:55.120 --> 08:02.680] didn't get them as fast as we wanted, as we needed them, so being able to manufacture [08:02.680 --> 08:04.920] our technology can be important. [08:04.920 --> 08:11.640] So now, cloud services, we do have European actors, but the good thing is that we have [08:11.640 --> 08:20.160] standardized open source tools in cloud services, so Linux, things like that, like Kubernetes, [08:20.160 --> 08:26.760] Docker, these are open source software, we don't always have the competences in Europe, [08:26.760 --> 08:34.240] we are not the ones that build them, most of them, but we do have access to the source, [08:34.240 --> 08:44.240] and we have actors, and it's possible to run VMs all over Europe, that's not a big problem. [08:44.240 --> 08:51.320] Now when you go to pass software, platform as a service, you have a major dominance [08:51.320 --> 08:52.520] from the actors. [08:52.520 --> 09:00.680] In France, there's been a complaint about the fact that the Health Data Hub, which is [09:00.680 --> 09:09.480] a national service doing statistics on health data, was run on Microsoft Cloud, and basically [09:09.480 --> 09:15.320] a lot of people say, what, you're running health data of all the people in France on [09:15.320 --> 09:21.000] an American system, how is that protecting our data, it's not compliant with GDPR, and [09:21.000 --> 09:26.800] basically the answer of the people that had made these decisions said there are not enough [09:26.800 --> 09:31.800] good APIs on the French cloud services to run it on the French cloud service, obviously [09:31.800 --> 09:37.080] everybody said no, there are, you have enough, there is enough to, maybe you're going to [09:37.080 --> 09:42.320] miss a little bit of stuff, maybe it's not going to be convenient for you, but it's possible, [09:42.320 --> 09:49.040] but they basically, the argumentation was that it was not good enough, the ministry [09:49.040 --> 09:55.520] in France basically bashed the French companies for not being good enough, and the answer [09:55.520 --> 10:00.440] of course the ecosystem, what are you waiting for to give money to the French company to [10:00.440 --> 10:08.000] allow them to be good enough, what are you doing instead of putting that type of service [10:08.000 --> 10:18.360] on foreign systems, so the technology is possible to develop it, a lot of it is open source, [10:18.360 --> 10:24.560] but companies like Amazon or Google cloud, Amazon web service, Google cloud or Microsoft [10:24.560 --> 10:31.520] are very ahead in terms of number of services that they have, when I looked as a company [10:31.520 --> 10:40.600] what technologies are available to deploy Xwiki software and Krippat software in an app store [10:40.600 --> 10:50.520] on cloud providers, I mean you have like different technologies on all of them, but they all [10:50.520 --> 10:57.160] have a lot of options for how you would sell your software on their app store, and when [10:57.160 --> 11:01.880] you look at what European companies have, they don't have systems to automatically deploy [11:01.880 --> 11:08.760] applications and sell them and put the price on them and people would start buying them, [11:08.760 --> 11:15.680] so they are really ahead, and when you go to SaaS you have like thousands of services [11:15.680 --> 11:23.000] all around the world, startups, and we do have national actors and a lot of these actors [11:23.000 --> 11:28.080] are not open source, so you have a lot of SaaS services and a lot are not open source [11:28.080 --> 11:35.400] and even the ones provided by Microsoft, Google and Amazon are not open source or they can [11:35.400 --> 11:39.000] be based on open source but they are not themselves open source, that means you cannot decide [11:39.000 --> 11:45.680] to self host them and take control of them, and that's actually something that we'll [11:45.680 --> 11:53.400] see is important, now in the collaboration space when you ask to the big companies what [11:53.400 --> 12:00.400] they need, they don't need one collaboration software, they need a whole stack, it was [12:00.400 --> 12:04.560] interesting in the previous presentation about the co-op, it was about deploying multiple [12:04.560 --> 12:11.240] apps and this is actually, bigger companies want all these software, they need all multiple [12:11.240 --> 12:17.240] software and they need them to work well together, so they need authentication, user management, [12:17.240 --> 12:23.880] they need of course email, chat, video conferencing, file storage, they want to edit documents, [12:23.880 --> 12:28.720] they want collaboration tools and then they even want to build custom apps, so they want [12:28.720 --> 12:37.400] a lot of different software and they want all these to be simple and easy, and when [12:37.400 --> 12:45.360] you start using apps, you become very quickly locked in, even when the app is open source [12:45.360 --> 12:54.080] by the way, when you put your data in a system, the way you put that data in makes you quickly [12:54.080 --> 12:59.760] locked, because it's complicated to get the data out and to adapt the way you work to [12:59.760 --> 13:07.240] other apps, even if the app is standard, in 20 years of Xwiki, I've heard so many people [13:07.240 --> 13:15.960] say that how they use to the fact that the button in Microsoft Office version X something, [13:15.960 --> 13:21.800] it's here on the screen, and you give them another tool where the button is on the right [13:21.800 --> 13:27.800] and they say it's difficult to use, like it's difficult to use because the button is on [13:27.800 --> 13:32.480] the right, no, they don't even know why it's difficult to use but it feels difficult to [13:32.480 --> 13:38.200] use to them, because they're so used to the way they worked before that it's very difficult [13:38.200 --> 13:46.360] to change, and so we have been trying to move people from Office to Wikis, so imagine how [13:46.360 --> 13:53.800] they tell you that it's difficult to use, no, it's not that difficult to use, you need [13:53.800 --> 13:58.280] to adapt your way of working, you need to learn a new tool, it's not that difficult [13:58.280 --> 14:04.240] to use, it's just, it takes time to adapt, you need to try to think how it works and [14:04.240 --> 14:12.200] try to adapt your way of working, so the lock-in is very high, and on SaaS software, the lock-in [14:12.200 --> 14:20.800] is actually immense, like I worked at Netscape in 1995, and we were talking about the lock-in [14:20.800 --> 14:27.480] of Microsoft on software when it was on premise software, and it's like oh Microsoft controls [14:27.480 --> 14:33.000] your software, like you're blocked on their software, but at least the software was in [14:33.000 --> 14:40.640] your company, and you could put firewall around it and potentially no data would go out, here [14:40.640 --> 14:45.280] now it's on the cloud, and so they will tell you it's going to be double the price to upgrade, [14:45.280 --> 14:49.280] but you didn't have to upgrade, you could decide to stay on the older version for a [14:49.280 --> 14:55.320] bit longer, and you didn't have to pay every year, you paid licenses for a long time, now [14:55.320 --> 15:05.000] you're paying every year, and if you don't pay on the first of January for your renewal [15:05.000 --> 15:12.120] or every month, they turn off the software immediately, so you're actually in an immense [15:12.120 --> 15:18.560] lock-in, the lock-in is actually way higher than it was in 1995 when a lot of the industry [15:18.560 --> 15:24.600] was complaining about that lock-in, and the data is controlled by the provider, there's [15:24.600 --> 15:32.640] a huge lack of standards on the structure of the data, so how that data, your basic [15:32.640 --> 15:39.360] formats are standardized, but in collaborative apps, even in wikis, I have to recognize [15:39.360 --> 15:45.920] that the xwiki software formats are not that standardized, we tried at some point to work [15:45.920 --> 15:53.240] with other wiki providers to work on common syntaxes, but never happened, like our syntax [15:53.240 --> 15:59.680] was based on something called wiki creole, which was discussed 15 years ago, but now [15:59.680 --> 16:04.000] everybody is using markdown, so there was something that people said that should be [16:04.000 --> 16:09.680] the standard, like a lot of wiki providers discussed, especially said that's a good [16:09.680 --> 16:14.840] common standard, but it's a completely other one that a lot of people now say, ah, it's [16:14.840 --> 16:21.360] great, but not many people discussed the markdown standard, it was just, ah, people liked it, [16:21.360 --> 16:30.520] and it started to become very liked, so the standards are very difficult to have, even [16:30.520 --> 16:36.920] when they exist, they're not necessarily adopted, and so if they're not adopted, they're not [16:36.920 --> 16:43.320] very useful to move data from one system to another, the complexity of the software makes [16:43.320 --> 16:49.600] it very difficult to switch, and one key aspect of the software industry is the winner takes [16:49.600 --> 16:56.240] it all approach, like this is basically why VCs love the tech industry, they put a lot [16:56.240 --> 17:02.160] of money, they try to win, and they like the fact that when you win, everybody else is [17:02.160 --> 17:08.520] dead, the winner makes 95% of the revenue, all the other people fight for the 5% that's [17:08.520 --> 17:14.000] left, and they love that because that's actually their goal, trying to be the winner, so what's [17:14.000 --> 17:18.080] interesting is that they don't necessarily win that much because they create 10 companies [17:18.080 --> 17:23.920] or 100 companies and only one makes it to the win, to being the winner, and so in the [17:23.920 --> 17:28.760] end they don't win that much money because they drop a lot of money on the way, but this [17:28.760 --> 17:37.160] is their goal basically of what they're trying to do, and one of the problems of the locking [17:37.160 --> 17:43.960] also is unfair business practices, you have a lot of unfair business practices because [17:43.960 --> 17:51.160] the providers are so powerful that it's very tempting to use that power to make more money, [17:51.160 --> 18:02.800] so if you ask a business lead to make 10% more revenue next year, if there is no difficulty [18:02.800 --> 18:06.800] to increase the price because everybody's locked they will just increase the price 10%, [18:06.800 --> 18:15.520] that's much easier than work hard to try to get new customers, and so in order to keep [18:15.520 --> 18:25.680] that approach running, they also try to, another approach is to, okay let's make other people [18:25.680 --> 18:33.460] buy my second software, I have a first software, if I can force the other people, if I can [18:33.460 --> 18:40.120] encourage them to use it, I give for free the second software, then at some point they [18:40.120 --> 18:44.720] become used to it, it's free, and at some point I say now it's not free anymore, Microsoft [18:44.720 --> 18:52.080] Teams is typically that approach, and Slack has actually complained about it, they actually [18:52.080 --> 18:58.920] sued about it because Teams was free, Office 365 is very expensive, they just gave Teams [18:58.920 --> 19:07.240] to everybody that has Office 365, and at some point they say now you have to pay, and all [19:07.240 --> 19:16.520] the others are dead in the meantime, so you have a huge amount of risks, of lack of sovereignty [19:16.520 --> 19:26.280] associated to this, so if you can stop all the software remotely, if we disagree with [19:26.280 --> 19:30.680] the US government, knowing that all these companies are US based, if we disagree with [19:30.680 --> 19:36.760] the US government, they could turn off the software, and even worse than that by the [19:36.760 --> 19:45.800] way, is that they don't even need to turn the software, because they just need to remind [19:45.800 --> 19:53.480] our government that they can turn off the software, and then the other government will [19:53.480 --> 19:58.920] start being, want less to disagree with the American government, because they know it's [19:58.920 --> 20:06.800] possible, or in negotiations it could be vaguely reminded that it's possible, and that's actually [20:06.800 --> 20:17.880] a big problem, and our ministry in France of economy and finance said no political sovereignty [20:17.880 --> 20:24.200] without digital sovereignty, I'm not sure what they actually do to try to avoid that [20:24.200 --> 20:31.720] situation, but they actually acknowledge it that there was a problem, that at some point [20:31.720 --> 20:39.600] you cannot state your political opinions if you're dependent so much on other people [20:39.600 --> 20:43.560] that have a different opinion than you. [20:43.560 --> 20:50.600] And at this point, I'm not sure how many businesses would still function if you shut down their [20:50.600 --> 20:58.920] collaboration tools, or if you shut down Microsoft today, what's the impact? [20:58.920 --> 21:05.200] It's a bit difficult to analyze, but how long would it take for the companies to start being [21:05.200 --> 21:09.160] able to do work again? [21:09.160 --> 21:17.160] And so from my point of view, that makes really collaboration apps very important, because [21:17.160 --> 21:25.240] we don't have the control on these apps, and it's the primary set of tools that people [21:25.240 --> 21:33.320] use, actually I didn't ask that question, in your company, which ones are using Microsoft [21:33.320 --> 21:39.880] or Google? [21:39.880 --> 21:48.920] And so it's the primary tool that people are using, and they get really used to it. [21:48.920 --> 21:55.320] And it's also the primary authentication system that people use. [21:55.320 --> 22:02.280] Most companies will put Azure AD, LDAP, Active Directory, not LDAP, Active Directory, as [22:02.280 --> 22:07.800] well as the authentication system. [22:07.800 --> 22:15.640] And basically, they end up also being almost ready to deploy servers. [22:15.640 --> 22:20.440] So when you have Azure AD, you have an Azure account, you're one click away from deploying [22:20.440 --> 22:23.640] servers on the Microsoft system. [22:23.640 --> 22:29.560] So people buy Office 365, they tell people, you need to connect Office 365 to Azure AD [22:29.560 --> 22:35.160] to manage your users, and then you're one click away to deploy servers. [22:35.160 --> 22:38.360] And a lot of users like simplicity. [22:38.360 --> 22:46.000] If it's simple to click, they start using the other servers, and they do a lot of work [22:46.000 --> 22:49.920] to make all this work as easy as possible together. [22:49.920 --> 22:58.000] Do they do a good job is another question, but they have the possibility to make it easy. [22:58.000 --> 23:01.760] We might be happy that they're not always very good at it. [23:01.760 --> 23:08.560] And so that gives us some opportunities to provide other solutions. [23:08.560 --> 23:12.920] And so it's the entry point of all software. [23:12.920 --> 23:21.680] And the biggest problem from my point of view has been the bundle issue, is that a lot of [23:21.680 --> 23:24.640] software becomes bundled as a package. [23:24.640 --> 23:32.000] And so when you go to Microsoft's website to buy, you say, I need Office, you will be [23:32.000 --> 23:38.320] proposed the whole Microsoft suite, not only Office 365, and you will have this software [23:38.320 --> 23:40.440] plus this software plus this software. [23:40.440 --> 23:46.160] And you'll see that the difference of pricing is not always very high between the package [23:46.160 --> 23:47.160] rules. [23:47.160 --> 23:52.120] And I'm not even sure it exists, only Office 365, only Office. [23:52.120 --> 23:57.920] You will get for free one thing, even what you don't need. [23:57.920 --> 24:03.720] This was actually the problem of computers bundled with Windows, which were bundled with [24:03.720 --> 24:05.040] Internet Explorer. [24:05.040 --> 24:11.680] I said I worked at Netscape, and I can remember how it killed Netscape's business around the [24:11.680 --> 24:16.280] browser when Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer in Windows. [24:16.280 --> 24:21.920] Who would buy a browser if you have one for free with Windows when you get your computer, [24:21.920 --> 24:24.120] which, and at the time, you were paying Windows? [24:24.120 --> 24:29.000] Well, in the meantime, there's a lot of things that have changed, because now browsers also [24:29.000 --> 24:32.680] got free because you can make money through advertisement. [24:32.680 --> 24:37.600] But that's actually potentially a problem, because you can make money through advertisement, [24:37.600 --> 24:41.800] but we also got tracking, thanks to that. [24:41.800 --> 24:48.440] So we get browsers for free, but we get tracking, and that's also a problem of sovereignty. [24:48.440 --> 24:51.200] So now they bundle even more. [24:51.200 --> 24:57.160] They bundle apps, but they also bundle Office 365 with the cloud, with the pass, with the [24:57.160 --> 24:58.160] yes. [24:58.160 --> 25:06.280] Microsoft has a whole offer, servers, yes, a pass, and apps. [25:06.280 --> 25:11.280] When you go see a client with you, ah, I have a wiki, would you like my wiki? [25:11.280 --> 25:15.600] Well, sorry, I already have it for free in the whole offer. [25:15.600 --> 25:23.000] Like, no, you need, you know, and I even, I think I had a few cases like that, is for [25:23.000 --> 25:29.080] a department that's part of a big company, if they buy another software, they pay for [25:29.080 --> 25:30.960] it. [25:30.960 --> 25:41.240] If they use Microsoft software, the central entity pays for it, and it's divided, and [25:41.240 --> 25:45.160] they pay the same share of it whether they use it or not. [25:45.160 --> 25:52.240] So basically, you come as a provider, and you have a cost, and the Microsoft software [25:52.240 --> 25:55.640] you're competing with has no cost. [25:55.640 --> 25:56.800] It's free. [25:56.800 --> 26:02.760] But it has a cost in reality because everybody then will start, some people will start using [26:02.760 --> 26:08.880] some of the software, and when they renew the license with Microsoft three years later, [26:08.880 --> 26:17.040] Microsoft comes and counts everything that is being used, and they set the new bill. [26:17.040 --> 26:23.800] And so, the company will end up paying it, the fact that they started using that software. [26:23.800 --> 26:27.320] And so, it's very difficult to compete. [26:27.320 --> 26:35.120] And so, everything's, actually, NextCloud has sued on this, I think, antitrust.nextcloud.com, [26:35.120 --> 26:42.000] I think, I have the link a bit later. [26:42.000 --> 26:48.800] And so, because it's a real antitrust issue, in the end, you cannot compete with that type [26:48.800 --> 26:52.960] of situation. [26:52.960 --> 27:00.560] And so, some people say, and especially this is true in France, on our government, they [27:00.560 --> 27:04.320] say, we need to build better software companies. [27:04.320 --> 27:12.160] So, the problem is not the way the competition works, or the way these companies operate [27:12.160 --> 27:13.160] and so on. [27:13.160 --> 27:14.160] That's not the problem. [27:14.160 --> 27:19.160] The problem is we don't have a French one, or we don't have a European one. [27:19.160 --> 27:22.240] And so, say, let's build unicorns and make companies. [27:22.240 --> 27:30.040] But in reality, when you look at unicorns, is that first, well, if they actually get [27:30.040 --> 27:35.240] very big, if they manage to get very big, they will behave exactly the same way. [27:35.240 --> 27:40.040] And it's not going to help the people and the small companies. [27:40.040 --> 27:43.600] It's going to be a bit less a sovereignty issue, because maybe our government will have [27:43.600 --> 27:45.640] a little more control on them. [27:45.640 --> 27:51.600] But it's, we are not going to get our own sovereignty, because we're going to be very [27:51.600 --> 27:53.320] dependent on this big company. [27:53.320 --> 28:02.600] The other problem is that most of these unicorns are made with fun VCs. [28:02.600 --> 28:08.800] Most of them of these VCs are actually not even European, and VCs want to make money, [28:08.800 --> 28:11.320] so they want to sell the company at some point. [28:11.320 --> 28:16.000] And it's much easier to sell it to the ones that have the most money, which are the current [28:16.000 --> 28:17.000] American companies. [28:17.000 --> 28:22.920] So, in the end, there is a very big chance that all these unicorns will either die, because [28:22.920 --> 28:29.480] they don't work well enough, or they're going to be bought by the same companies that are [28:29.480 --> 28:34.240] currently leading the market. [28:34.240 --> 28:40.520] And another thing, yeah, and that's actually, they usually use the American cloud providers [28:40.520 --> 28:44.720] for their services, and so these cloud providers see everything they do. [28:44.720 --> 28:47.080] So when something works well, they can replicate it. [28:47.080 --> 28:53.680] This is actually a complaint against Amazon, even in the US, that small businesses that [28:53.680 --> 28:57.480] sell on Amazon are showing to Amazon everything that works. [28:57.480 --> 29:04.200] And surprisingly, at some point, you get products that pop up made by Amazon instead, and they [29:04.200 --> 29:06.760] take the market. [29:06.760 --> 29:11.120] And so they're supposed to not look at the statistics, but we don't know what really [29:11.120 --> 29:13.600] happens. [29:13.600 --> 29:22.800] And now, how can open source help to solve these type of problems? [29:22.800 --> 29:28.920] So one thing I believe is very important is that if you try to build local companies, [29:28.920 --> 29:34.960] French ones, German ones, UK ones, even though UK is not in Europe anymore, but still in [29:34.960 --> 29:37.400] Europe, physically. [29:37.400 --> 29:46.120] But if you try to build your own local companies, and you all do it at the same time, at some [29:46.120 --> 29:48.840] point, you'll have a problem. [29:48.840 --> 29:53.600] And because suppose one of them buys the other one, you're going to have one very big French [29:53.600 --> 30:00.440] company or one very big German company, and maybe, I don't know, a Swedish one. [30:00.440 --> 30:07.280] And the problem is that this won't be sovereignty for the countries that don't own these companies. [30:07.280 --> 30:15.880] So, you might have a bit of sovereignty in France, but no sovereignty in Poland. [30:15.880 --> 30:26.080] And so if you try then to tell, so let's invest all, let's start using the software from this [30:26.080 --> 30:32.440] European company, like in Poland, they're not very interested to use the software from [30:32.440 --> 30:36.800] a French one, and that doesn't give them that much sovereignty. [30:36.800 --> 30:39.760] So an open source works very differently. [30:39.760 --> 30:48.360] If we invest in open source in France, it can be used in Germany, and it can give sovereignty [30:48.360 --> 30:52.320] to Germany because Germany can control the software. [30:52.320 --> 30:56.840] German companies can build competence on top of that software. [30:56.840 --> 31:01.160] And that's true in Poland, and that's true in Romania, et cetera. [31:01.160 --> 31:10.600] So if we all in different countries co-invest in open source, we can all get more sovereignty [31:10.600 --> 31:11.600] out of it. [31:11.600 --> 31:18.520] And we also can get individual sovereignty out of it because any individual can then [31:18.520 --> 31:19.520] make use of it. [31:19.520 --> 31:25.280] So I'm sure I don't have to convince that much about open source here, but it's important [31:25.280 --> 31:34.400] to remind these arguments which can be useful if you meet people in your own countries. [31:34.400 --> 31:40.480] So also open source is usually a bit more open to standards, and if the provider doesn't [31:40.480 --> 31:45.080] want to adapt this software to standards, then somebody else can do it. [31:45.080 --> 31:46.720] You have this possibility. [31:46.720 --> 31:58.000] So open source will allow to adapt software to standards when providers don't want to [31:58.000 --> 32:03.280] do it because it's not in their economical interest. [32:03.280 --> 32:04.280] It's very hard. [32:04.280 --> 32:07.440] Like if you look at software, you very often have a lot of import tools. [32:07.440 --> 32:10.960] You very rarely have export tools. [32:10.960 --> 32:15.960] But anybody can build the export tools on open source software. [32:15.960 --> 32:26.520] And one aspect that is also interesting is that we can reuse also US open source software. [32:26.520 --> 32:31.000] Like we need, but we need, however, to build local competence. [32:31.000 --> 32:39.640] If we use massively very large US based software, but we're not building local competence on [32:39.640 --> 32:44.520] it, we will risk having a lack of sovereignty. [32:44.520 --> 32:47.880] Because we don't have the people that can take over. [32:47.880 --> 32:54.560] So we can reuse open source software from anywhere in the world, but it's also important [32:54.560 --> 32:57.520] to invest in the competence. [32:57.520 --> 33:06.480] So if we start building massive solutions, and not only competence about how to use them, [33:06.480 --> 33:11.840] but competence how they're built, how they're made inside the software, it's very easy to [33:11.840 --> 33:14.080] use open source. [33:14.080 --> 33:19.040] It's much more difficult to improve an open source software. [33:19.040 --> 33:23.400] Like you need to build competence on the software itself. [33:23.400 --> 33:31.880] So now I want to look a bit at what actually exists. [33:31.880 --> 33:38.640] Because we're looking, and I've been maybe a bit looking pessimistic because it's hard, [33:38.640 --> 33:39.800] it's tough. [33:39.800 --> 33:44.720] But actually, what's interesting is that we have tons of great open source software [33:44.720 --> 33:46.520] in Europe. [33:46.520 --> 33:54.960] And I'm sure I missed a lot, because I spend most of my time on our own software. [33:54.960 --> 34:00.560] And I'm sure I missed a lot, but I mentioned the list of types of software that companies [34:00.560 --> 34:03.240] are looking for for collaboration. [34:03.240 --> 34:08.760] And so for example, in video conferencing, we have software like Jitsi, which has been [34:08.760 --> 34:10.120] created in France. [34:10.120 --> 34:17.040] Actually, core developers are in the US now, but it was created in Strasbourg. [34:17.040 --> 34:22.240] Big Blue Button, Canadian, it's open source, not developed in Europe. [34:22.240 --> 34:24.440] Next Cloud Talk, developed in Europe. [34:24.440 --> 34:33.160] Only Office is developed in Letony, if I'm correct. [34:33.160 --> 34:39.400] There are also issues around Only Office, because it's linked to Russia. [34:39.400 --> 34:51.560] So we also need to have more control on it, on the development of it, collaboration. [34:51.560 --> 34:56.880] On collaboration, Next Cloud, Xwiki, Krippad, project management, projects like Tulip, open [34:56.880 --> 34:57.880] project. [34:57.880 --> 35:04.320] We have a lot of software on authentication, software like Lemoneldap, Univention, on email, [35:04.320 --> 35:13.240] we have Open Exchange, we have Sogo, BlueMind, and on file management, software like Next [35:13.240 --> 35:15.040] Cloud, PDO, Krippad. [35:15.040 --> 35:18.560] And on chat, we have great solutions like Matrix. [35:18.560 --> 35:24.840] So we actually have all the bricks existing. [35:24.840 --> 35:34.360] Now, they're all provided by different companies, different providers, and they do, they're [35:34.360 --> 35:40.280] not as integrated as the other solutions will be. [35:40.280 --> 35:47.560] And another aspect, I'll come back to that, the integration aspect. [35:47.560 --> 35:53.200] Another aspect is that actually building open source business, it works. [35:53.200 --> 36:00.520] Like all these software have core teams, the software I mentioned, they do have core teams. [36:00.520 --> 36:10.960] Most of the companies, most of the software have a core team that is working for at least [36:10.960 --> 36:17.320] one company that has regular revenue out of this software, and they're able to fund the [36:17.320 --> 36:21.240] roadmap and have a regular development on top of this software. [36:21.240 --> 36:33.120] So it's possible, and I can attest to it, with my company, we didn't raise any money, [36:33.120 --> 36:39.560] and for 19 years we've been able to pay the people in the team and grow, and we've even [36:39.560 --> 36:48.960] been able to create a second software out of the work that we were doing on the first [36:48.960 --> 36:49.960] one. [36:49.960 --> 36:54.480] So it's possible to fund the company. [36:54.480 --> 37:00.240] Now, at the beginning it's not easy, like the first years you need to build critical [37:00.240 --> 37:11.880] mass, and sometimes you have an issue of competition, so you're not necessarily finding enough [37:11.880 --> 37:19.520] money to build it quickly at the level that it can compete, but it's possible to find [37:19.520 --> 37:26.760] business and it progresses, the better your software is, the more companies are interested [37:26.760 --> 37:30.920] in it, when it's good enough, the companies get interested in it. [37:30.920 --> 37:36.640] So you have moments where companies will just go to the other provider, the winner takes [37:36.640 --> 37:41.680] it all, so you get very little market share, but then at some point they get more interested [37:41.680 --> 37:45.640] and you get more prospects. [37:45.640 --> 37:49.880] So how does open source business work? [37:49.880 --> 37:57.160] You can, clients do buy support, but you need also to have the price right, so if you put [37:57.160 --> 38:03.800] it too expensive then clients might just go away, but if you put the right price you get [38:03.800 --> 38:06.080] clients that buy support. [38:06.080 --> 38:13.960] You also have clients that sponsor development, but you have issues of dumping and bundling [38:13.960 --> 38:22.840] that slows it down, like you cannot sell to everybody because you have competitors and [38:22.840 --> 38:30.480] their software is given for free or cheaper, and Xwiki knows it very well because we've [38:30.480 --> 38:37.280] been competing with Xwiki with conference, anybody has conference, is there a company? [38:37.280 --> 38:43.000] So while you can try to convince your companies to switch to Xwiki, we have importers and [38:43.000 --> 38:50.760] we have, and Atlassian has kept increased the price over the time and they actually, [38:50.760 --> 38:57.160] they changed a lot the strategy, so they had a pretty low price for small businesses and [38:57.160 --> 39:01.080] now they say small businesses you have to go on the cloud. [39:01.080 --> 39:06.960] We stop doing the small price software even though it makes money. [39:06.960 --> 39:11.680] If you look at the finances of Atlassian it does make money, so it's a conscious choice [39:11.680 --> 39:13.920] to make more money. [39:13.920 --> 39:18.000] It's not something that doesn't work, it's something that works, but now that they've [39:18.000 --> 39:25.760] done that we have a lot of calls and we get much more clients, and even though we never [39:25.760 --> 39:30.480] got the money of these clients to build our own software, so we've been able to build [39:30.480 --> 39:35.520] the software with the money of other clients and now we're having more clients coming, [39:35.520 --> 39:42.680] so I think it's a clear proof that the dumping and the bundling approaches are slowing down [39:42.680 --> 39:47.120] open source and there are unfair practices. [39:47.120 --> 39:54.040] There are also some good news, for example European initiatives, NGI, so we at Xwiki [39:54.040 --> 40:01.240] we've been able to benefit from that on CripPad in particular because CripPad doesn't have [40:01.240 --> 40:02.240] that many clients. [40:02.240 --> 40:07.000] It has almost no enterprise clients, it's just starting to have enterprise clients and [40:07.000 --> 40:11.480] it's been mostly funded with research money. [40:11.480 --> 40:19.400] We do have some clients, we have donations and subscriptions on our instance, but it [40:19.400 --> 40:27.600] would not be enough to pay for that software which requires a lot of work. [40:27.600 --> 40:33.560] So NGI is providing funding for companies and that's really a great thing. [40:33.560 --> 40:41.520] They also, the EU started to pay for bug bounties on open source software, we've been able to [40:41.520 --> 40:45.040] benefit from it also and that's been great. [40:45.040 --> 40:52.280] GAIAX is interesting, but there are also issues with it from my point of view, it's [40:52.280 --> 41:01.320] not easy to understand, to see how four small providers like us that are doing apps, how [41:01.320 --> 41:08.640] to work together with the big cloud providers and big companies that are currently running [41:08.640 --> 41:09.640] GAIAX. [41:09.640 --> 41:17.840] We're not seeing also open source being as put in front in the GAIAX project. [41:17.840 --> 41:23.920] So there are initiatives in Europe to help and we've seen that it's becoming more and [41:23.920 --> 41:26.680] more in subject, that's interesting. [41:26.680 --> 41:33.440] In France we have the French government decided to put some funding, so on one side they're [41:33.440 --> 41:40.560] opening the door to American software, they also reacted to the fact that from the GDPR [41:40.560 --> 41:48.920] perspective there is a huge problem with the cloud act, this is the Max-Ramp act and basically [41:48.920 --> 41:59.000] they're recognizing that it's illegal to host data on American companies systems, but it [41:59.000 --> 42:05.160] seems to be illegal but we don't really know if they consider it illegal for everybody, [42:05.160 --> 42:12.080] is it illegal only for the public service, it's illegal for all the companies, it's [42:12.080 --> 42:18.680] unclear but they started to say, okay for example the national education should not [42:18.680 --> 42:26.280] deploy Microsoft software anymore, but on the other side they're proposing that French [42:26.280 --> 42:35.640] companies are going to build clouds to deploy Microsoft and Google software on them and host [42:35.640 --> 42:40.240] it instead of Microsoft and Google and that will be okay. [42:40.240 --> 42:44.400] So they will control the software but they won't, they will control the hosting but they [42:44.400 --> 42:47.840] won't control the software. [42:47.840 --> 42:51.800] On the other side they say okay let's fund a little bit alternative, so they decided [42:51.800 --> 42:57.440] to put 50 million but they didn't put it on open source, we are partners in some of the [42:57.440 --> 43:03.760] projects to try to get funding for Xwiki and Crip Pad and try to build also additional [43:03.760 --> 43:10.480] solutions, so you have a bit of a mixed message, on one side they like open source, on the [43:10.480 --> 43:17.800] other side they don't promote only open source so it's not always clear. [43:17.800 --> 43:24.440] So you have messages, there are better news in Germany where you have specific funding [43:24.440 --> 43:33.000] for open source platforms with the sovereign workplace project, actually at Xwiki we have [43:33.000 --> 43:39.840] had the chance to be called in and that is actually great news for us and you have a [43:39.840 --> 43:45.400] bunch of great open source software that are part of that project, you also have additional [43:45.400 --> 43:50.960] initiatives like the sovereign tech fund and there is a specific entity called the [43:50.960 --> 43:59.840] Centrum for Digital Server Initiate, then this, my German is good, and you have the [43:59.840 --> 44:06.640] open code project, so a bit better news but at the same time it's never completely won, [44:06.640 --> 44:13.640] you have internally governments, some people pro and some people that will continue to [44:13.640 --> 44:20.520] push for it's not so important, let's use American software. [44:20.520 --> 44:27.360] So there are also, so the challenges I've talked about them, the antitrust is clearly [44:27.360 --> 44:35.480] bundling and unfair practices and trying to kill competition with aggressive pricing. [44:35.480 --> 44:41.760] I've seen cloud develop and I mean the typical cloud business model is let's give things [44:41.760 --> 44:48.840] for free and then increase the price, let's get the users when they're in, when I'm sufficiently [44:48.840 --> 44:51.600] known, let's change the price. [44:51.600 --> 44:56.960] You could say open source, that's the same thing, let's make it open source and at some [44:56.960 --> 45:05.080] point let's give it for free and let's change the price or let's stop being open source [45:05.080 --> 45:07.200] so some companies do it. [45:07.200 --> 45:12.960] There is a big difference however is that what you put as open source you can never [45:12.960 --> 45:21.960] take away, so maybe you can change your price, stop do open source and do your own life and [45:21.960 --> 45:28.120] turn your back on the people that helped you because you have a lot of people that helped [45:28.120 --> 45:33.880] you when you do open source, you give them a lot but they also give you a lot, I can [45:33.880 --> 45:38.860] say that I have a lot of people that gave us things, gave us contribution, make the [45:38.860 --> 45:40.360] software known. [45:40.360 --> 45:46.720] The user's crypto platform wouldn't be what it is with all the people making it known [45:46.720 --> 45:50.640] so we have a lot of people helping so you can do that but you can never take away the [45:50.640 --> 45:57.480] code and that's a very, very important difference versus the strategy of the cloud providers [45:57.480 --> 46:02.960] that gives things for free and increase the price later. [46:02.960 --> 46:12.640] This is also why on my side I'm a big proponent of AGPL with no CLA so no retaining the copyright [46:12.640 --> 46:20.000] of everything that people give you because this shows that you will not turn your back [46:20.000 --> 46:27.480] on open source or at least you will have to give back all the code and redo what people [46:27.480 --> 46:31.280] gave you. [46:31.280 --> 46:37.720] For CRIPAD it's AGPL, XWIC is LGPL and we don't want to change it because this is what [46:37.720 --> 46:43.440] we did and we don't want to change that but CRIPAD is AGPL and we have never taken any [46:43.440 --> 46:53.760] CLA on contributions and we believe we cannot go away of what we're doing. [46:53.760 --> 47:00.200] There is another challenge which is open source financing so the initial financing of an open [47:00.200 --> 47:06.200] source project is very difficult, it's something that is tough. [47:06.200 --> 47:10.680] There is one thing that is very important is that a lot of people when they build open [47:10.680 --> 47:18.920] source software and they try to live from it they question the open source business model [47:18.920 --> 47:23.520] is that yeah but somebody is going to steal my software or somebody is going to compete [47:23.520 --> 47:32.080] with me etc etc and you always have difficulties but sometimes it's very important to understand [47:32.080 --> 47:37.200] that the main difficulty is not the business model, the main difficulty is do a good enough [47:37.200 --> 47:39.400] software. [47:39.400 --> 47:49.680] In many cases when you tend to think that you should be selling it instead of giving [47:49.680 --> 47:55.640] it away as open source, well sometimes that's not the problem, the problem is that the software [47:55.640 --> 48:01.040] is not good enough, you need to be better, the competition is too good and you need to [48:01.040 --> 48:03.080] work more on your software. [48:03.080 --> 48:09.200] We had phases where it was a bit difficult at XWIC and what we did we worked on the software [48:09.200 --> 48:15.840] and things improved so you have to look at that. [48:15.840 --> 48:24.960] We also decided at XWIC to do extensions that are open source but paying and so I usually [48:24.960 --> 48:31.480] have a bit of a complexity to explain that, I even had some people that say but so they [48:31.480 --> 48:43.280] asked but can I take it or can I reuse it for free, I said yeah take the source, rebuild [48:43.280 --> 48:51.160] it, remove the license check and you can use it, it's open source so it's not open source [48:51.160 --> 48:55.720] I cannot use it for free, that's not open source, it's about the source, it's not about [48:55.720 --> 48:59.840] whether or not it's easy for you to use it. [48:59.840 --> 49:06.720] So we decided to have some extensions of XWIC which are open source but either you go find [49:06.720 --> 49:12.400] the source and you go and take it and build it yourself and install it yourself or you [49:12.400 --> 49:18.000] use our app store and in one click you can use it, pay for it and buy it and it's been [49:18.000 --> 49:23.800] very useful for us because it allows also to explain to companies that concept, the [49:23.800 --> 49:29.960] fact that the important part is the fact that it's open source, it's not that it's free [49:29.960 --> 49:35.320] and that's what is important in what we do but it allowed to explain that and it helped [49:35.320 --> 49:40.640] actually improve the relationship with some of our clients which tend naturally to say [49:40.640 --> 49:45.760] okay if I don't have to pay, I don't pay, I don't help the project, I don't need to [49:45.760 --> 49:54.160] pay so you have to find that balance also between the commercial offers and the freedom. [49:54.160 --> 49:59.880] Sometimes when you build open source you are too idealistic in a way that okay everything [49:59.880 --> 50:03.800] should be free but the problem is that when everything is free you have a lot of people [50:03.800 --> 50:09.560] that don't understand that they actually should help the project because this project will [50:09.560 --> 50:18.880] not survive without funding, you need money to survive to make the software, it's necessary. [50:18.880 --> 50:22.560] Another aspect is that it's actually very difficult to make partnerships with service [50:22.560 --> 50:24.080] and cloud companies. [50:24.080 --> 50:30.760] Right now Xwiki has not been able to do good partnerships with other service companies [50:30.760 --> 50:39.200] to distribute our software, it's not simple and I'm not really sure how to do partnerships [50:39.200 --> 50:40.840] with cloud companies. [50:40.840 --> 50:46.920] Cloud companies can be very tempted to just reuse all the open source software available [50:46.920 --> 50:56.840] and sell it and not fund in any way the software that are in these offers and we need a model [50:56.840 --> 51:05.760] for that so if we want to separate the work of cloud service and of software we need to [51:05.760 --> 51:14.560] find a model to how to sell open source software when it's sold to companies otherwise the [51:14.560 --> 51:20.360] software will not be able to fund themselves so Matrix for example has made a blog post [51:20.360 --> 51:28.000] about the fact that they have major success in terms of usage and deployments but many [51:28.000 --> 51:33.760] of these deployments are made by other companies that are making money off of it and are not [51:33.760 --> 51:40.840] giving back anything, not even developers to work on the project, neither funding, neither [51:40.840 --> 51:49.840] developers and in the end they had to fire people and so in order to, I mean if you want [51:49.840 --> 51:54.520] to do good software you need great people, you need great developers and so you need [51:54.520 --> 51:59.120] to find a funding model that works. [51:59.120 --> 52:06.480] One aspect for open source company is to work with less cash so I don't believe in VC investment [52:06.480 --> 52:12.880] because I think that doesn't allow to keep the independence of what we build but you [52:12.880 --> 52:20.440] have to work with less cash so even when you're growing it's difficult to hire because you [52:20.440 --> 52:26.400] need a lot of cash to run the company itself like to advance the money and you are taking [52:26.400 --> 52:30.880] risks and it's not a simple problem. [52:30.880 --> 52:36.360] Another problem is integration and fragmentation so clients want things that are integrated [52:36.360 --> 52:42.480] that's actually also one of the reasons you start to see packages that bundle the software [52:42.480 --> 52:49.520] so trying to make them all installable together easily that's actually something that's important [52:49.520 --> 52:56.080] and cloud providers providing multiple software together. [52:56.080 --> 53:02.880] This is very interesting but there is a lot of integration work that is necessary and [53:02.880 --> 53:11.120] sometimes that work is not brought back to the project and we need to make that happen. [53:11.120 --> 53:16.040] There's also a lot of fragmentation in the EU market so you need to go to multiple countries [53:16.040 --> 53:22.440] to sell it takes a lot of time so we need also partnerships between the companies in [53:22.440 --> 53:30.200] the different countries to work together in order to make that work and I'm very happy [53:30.200 --> 53:37.880] to have partnerships with Univention for example because for us it's a major win of [53:37.880 --> 53:42.560] time to go on the German market. [53:42.560 --> 53:49.640] If a company says look at this French company it changes a lot the way the German market [53:49.640 --> 53:55.240] will see a French company and that is going to be true the other way so we need to work [53:55.240 --> 54:03.760] more together so that's a bit the next step I have and so first is we need to believe [54:03.760 --> 54:09.680] in ourselves so we have great offers and the companies that are building software open [54:09.680 --> 54:16.720] source software are able to make it and the difficulties sometimes they have is about competition [54:16.720 --> 54:22.880] is about being considered good enough so that a lot of companies invest in them there is [54:22.880 --> 54:30.640] a huge amount of money sold on collaboration like I think we count billions of euros that [54:30.640 --> 54:36.720] are given to Microsoft and Google and if we sum all the open source companies we are talking [54:36.720 --> 54:44.360] about we are talking about 50, 100 million something like that revenue I don't know exactly [54:44.360 --> 54:50.560] because it's not always easy to get the numbers but we're spending billions on collaboration [54:50.560 --> 54:57.840] software from America to American companies so there is a lot of money it's just we need [54:57.840 --> 55:06.840] to convince the clients that we're good enough as a group not only as individual company [55:06.840 --> 55:12.360] and open source provides good openness and flexibility and that's useful to clients so [55:12.360 --> 55:18.640] there are also good technical arguments for open source when it comes to company we have [55:18.640 --> 55:25.760] had a lot of clients that were very interested in the flexibility of our software but they [55:25.760 --> 55:34.000] also want easy to go solution one provided to buy from and that's a real difficulty [55:34.000 --> 55:39.360] we need to work more on European collaborations I talked about it so at Xwiki this is something [55:39.360 --> 55:45.480] we're trying to do more so the Univention partnership we did last year and we're also [55:45.480 --> 55:50.440] looking at the partnerships with NextCloud with OpenProject where there are multiple [55:50.440 --> 55:56.600] companies in Europe that think the same way they just lack a lot of time to actually make [55:56.600 --> 56:05.920] it happen and so it's going to take time but there are many companies that want to do that [56:05.920 --> 56:13.920] and the sovereign workplace project is really great to create also this integrated offer [56:13.920 --> 56:21.360] bring the providers together now we will need to find ways to do partnerships with cloud [56:21.360 --> 56:27.240] providers I've yet to see how this will happen and we need more open standards that's also [56:27.240 --> 56:34.120] another aspect that's transversal we need more open standards I've also been a believer [56:34.120 --> 56:40.240] that we need an open source marketplace so a way for cloud providers to sell open source [56:40.240 --> 56:49.520] software in one easy way but it's it I thought I hope that GaiaX would be a place for that [56:49.520 --> 56:57.080] I haven't seen that that happening and we the most important thing we need is clients [56:57.080 --> 57:02.840] so any any clients that are brought to the companies that are providing this alternate [57:02.840 --> 57:09.560] platform are helping these companies bring the software a little bit better and it makes [57:09.560 --> 57:18.000] a difference so everything that as individual you can do to tell your your boss employers [57:18.000 --> 57:23.000] and that maybe they should look at what these companies are doing that other companies are [57:23.000 --> 57:31.160] actually deploying the software is is helping so I mean if you can help us do it and make [57:31.160 --> 57:49.080] it known and that's it if there are any questions think there's two minutes left so everybody [57:49.080 --> 57:56.200] fall asleep one hi you mentioned earlier in your talk that the French government deemed [57:56.200 --> 58:02.840] it illegal to host data on American companies because of the US cloud act could you expand [58:02.840 --> 58:09.520] on the cloud act a bit more yeah so the cloud act is the fact that the US government is [58:09.520 --> 58:21.160] able to access data on from American companies and even from American people so first I'm [58:21.160 --> 58:32.040] not a lawyer okay so don't don't take everything I say for granted so it allows to access data [58:32.040 --> 58:38.360] even if that data is in a foreign country so and and they can even I understood from [58:38.360 --> 58:47.120] a paper in Holland by lawyers that they could even ask to an American person secretly to [58:47.120 --> 58:54.880] get give the data that these people can access and and and they cannot refuse basically like [58:54.880 --> 59:01.200] they risk a lot so Microsoft if asked would secretly have to give money that they have [59:01.200 --> 59:08.920] on servers in Ireland and that is and that is not compliant with GDPR that's that's what [59:08.920 --> 59:16.880] the Max Schrempf judgment said so it's been written but then the problem is that they [59:16.880 --> 59:23.400] it needs to be recognized and decisions need to be made to stop doing it and and and it [59:23.400 --> 59:29.480] seems that it takes and and it seems like everybody's waiting for Europe to sign another [59:29.480 --> 59:36.080] agreement to say that it's okay so that you don't have to make the decision to stop hosting [59:36.080 --> 59:44.800] it on American systems please hi thanks for the the presentation so you were saying that [59:44.800 --> 59:52.120] actually like open source collaborative software would help solve the the issue or improve the [59:52.120 --> 01:00:00.080] digital sovereignty if we suppose that Microsoft tomorrow makes office source code available [01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:08.040] on GitHub let's say how that how that change the the actual stage of the digital sovereignty [01:00:08.040 --> 01:00:14.000] in the EU well it will change it if people start to to take that software and host it [01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:20.800] and verify that it solves the business needs so but yes it would it would improve it for [01:00:20.800 --> 01:00:25.480] example Microsoft does not give the source code of office so if you want to do office [01:00:25.480 --> 01:00:30.640] editing you have to work with software that has been built by other people not by Microsoft [01:00:30.640 --> 01:00:35.280] and Microsoft and Google have better software more compatible with office formats and so [01:00:35.280 --> 01:00:39.920] on and so on so it would improve it still would need to be packaged there will still [01:00:39.920 --> 01:00:46.400] be a lot of work but it would improve the offers the alternative offers and then companies [01:00:46.400 --> 01:00:52.920] but so about the digital sovereignty the thing is if if tomorrow we have a political problem [01:00:52.920 --> 01:00:56.840] they can turn off the software so all our companies will have problems the question [01:00:56.840 --> 01:01:02.120] is okay do we have alternatives to replace that software at this point they're not necessarily [01:01:02.120 --> 01:01:07.040] as good and they are not as good because we're not buying these alternatives so we we cannot [01:01:07.040 --> 01:01:12.480] fund them so the distance between the American solutions and the European solution is increasing [01:01:12.480 --> 01:01:18.440] instead of being reduced and so it's all about whether or not we would be able to replace [01:01:18.440 --> 01:01:25.000] that software if Microsoft made it open source it would be easier to replace to replace their [01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:32.760] own services their online services sorry I want a bit follow-up to the first question [01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:46.200] basically so US Cloud Act regarding it as far as they recall privacy shield was the first [01:01:46.200 --> 01:01:53.400] one that has been taken down by your court and I'm not sure if like US Cloud Act somehow [01:01:53.400 --> 01:02:01.000] replaces it or not because no no privacy the cloud is an American law the cloud that makes [01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:07.040] it a problem that makes privacy shield illegal basically privacy shield said it's okay to [01:02:07.040 --> 01:02:16.560] put data in in in the US and basically the judgment the from Mike shrimps go see his website [01:02:16.560 --> 01:02:22.200] to explain he explains the problem much more precisely says that this is not true privacy [01:02:22.200 --> 01:02:28.160] shield says it's okay but it's not okay because of the cloud act and the visa visa warrants [01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:34.880] the laws in the US that allow access to data even if it's hosted in Europe yeah yeah and [01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:41.000] European court accepted that privacy shield is not valid it's not a couple of years I [01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:46.280] believe now the European government is right now negotiating the Commission is negotiating [01:02:46.280 --> 01:02:55.720] with Biden some new paper that says it would be okay but it's already kind of validated [01:02:55.720 --> 01:03:02.080] that this paper is not okay that it wouldn't but there will need to be another judgment [01:03:02.080 --> 01:03:07.360] to say that it's not okay so it's a kind of a cat and mouse because some people in Europe [01:03:07.360 --> 01:03:14.440] don't want it to be illegal to use American system and Biden doesn't want to change the [01:03:14.440 --> 01:03:32.920] cloud act thank you.