this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Google has criticized the European Union’s intentions to achieve digital sovereignty through open-source software. The company warned that Brussels’ policies aimed at reducing dependence on American tech companies could harm competitiveness. According to Google, the idea of replacing current tools with open-source programs would not contribute to economic growth.

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, warned of a competitive paradox that Europe is facing. According to the Financial Times, he said that creating regulatory barriers would be harmful in a context of rapid technological advancement. His remarks came just days after the European Commission concluded a public consultation assessing the transition to open-source software.

Google’s chief legal officer clarified that he is not opposed to digital sovereignty, but recommended making use of the “best technologies in the world.” Walker suggested that American companies could collaborate with European firms to implement measures ensuring data protection. Local management or servers located in Europe to store information are among the options.

The EU is preparing a technological sovereignty package aimed at eliminating dependence on third-party software, such as Google’s. After reviewing proposals, it concluded that reliance on external suppliers for critical infrastructure entails economic risks and creates vulnerabilities. The strategy focuses not only on regulation but also on adopting open-source software to achieve digital sovereignty.

According to Google, this change would represent a problem for users. Walker argues that the market moves faster than legislation and warns that regulatory friction will only leave European consumers and businesses behind in what he calls “the most competitive technological transition we have ever seen.” As it did with the DMA and other laws, Google is playing on fear. Kent Walker suggested that this initiative would stifle innovation and deny people access to the “best digital tools.”

The promotion of open-source software aims to break dependence on foreign suppliers, especially during a period of instability caused by the Trump administration. The European Union has highlighted the risks of continuing under this system and proposes that public institutions should have full control over their own technology.

According to a study on the impact of open-source software, the European Commission found that it contributes between €65 billion and €95 billion annually to the European Union’s GDP. The executive body estimates that a 10% increase in contributions to open-source software would generate an additional €100 billion in growth for the bloc’s economy.

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[–] anothermember@feddit.uk 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Because in 20+ years of off and on using linux, I’ve never once gotten apt to install anything. I have however fucked up my whole system by doing sudo apt update/sudo apt upgrade.

Sorry but that's really not typical, you must have been doing something out of the ordinary or been very unlucky.

I didn’t say I want to know why it needs them. I’m upset it tells me that it tells me it needs them, and then says “they won’t be installed”, but won’t tell me WHY they won’t be installed. If the program needs those dependancies, just install them. Instead it juat says “we know you need the dependancies, but we’re not going to do that”.

It's the package manager that handles dependencies, not the program you're trying to install. Random programs shouldn't be able to just install things on your computer. Did you try installing the dependencies?

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Did you try installing the dependencies?

I have zero clue how to do that. I don't even know what file extention they would be, or where I would get them, or what step 1 would be to installing them.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

They would also be .deb files. If you wanted to install package A.deb that depended on B.deb and C.deb, with C.deb itself depending on D.deb and E.deb, you would work down the dependency tree to figure that out, obtaining the .deb file for each package as you went (presumably manually downloading from each project website itself, since we're doing this in hard mode), then run dpkg install E.deb, dpkg install D.deb, dpkg install C.deb, dpkg install B.deb, and finally dpkg install A.deb in that order. You also have to make sure each of those packages is the correct version compatible with the others, BTW.

This is what apt is designed to do for you, automatically. This is why you use it instead of dpkg.

(Side note: I sure would love to find out how to control syntax highlighting in Lemmy inline code markup.)