France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

I’m not in Europe but in another allied country, the feeling amongst people here is that the US is not able to be trusted as a partner anymore.

And with ways the Government can apply pressure to US companies (CLOUD Act etc.) that extends to IS companies too.

To respond to the rest of your post: while the Trump administration's behavior has diminished US standing in the world, the US is doing well compared to Europe in many important dimensions (e.g. economic growth). Also, far-right parties in Europe seem much more dangerous than the right in the US.

But all of that is a side show. European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era. It's fundamentally about resentment. Europe is geopolitically weak and depends on the US for defense which is galling, especially for France with its history as a global power.

So, while the US may not be doing particularly well right now, it's still doing better than Europe.

Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:

https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributo...

EU's GDP is so catching up with the US:

https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-...

NOT

So, it's performative. While they complain about American hegemony, Europeans buy iPhones (or Android), drink Coke, scroll Instagram, and listen to Taylor Swift. And while they might object to NATO spending, decades of inadequate military spending have left Europe with no real alternative to buying protection from America.

Did you listen/read Vance's recent speeches in Hungary? Or read the US policy document put out months back? It goes way beyond merely "not helping" - the US administration is in turns provoking, alienating and separating itself from center/center-left European governments in pursuit of exporting extremist partisan politics in the hopes of getting far-right governments elected across Europe.

European citizens and politicians everywhere can see the actions for what they are. What was that about Greenland and annexing Canada? There's no big-money conspiracy, just a bully administration with no sense of second-and third-order effects.

Yes, languages can change, but there is no evidence that native speakers have started saying "a French". The only context I've ever seen that in is "As a French...", which strongly implies a non-native speaker of English. The evidence suggests that it's a common language interference error from French, not some future development of English.

Demonyms for historical neighbours of England have irregular forms when speaking of a particular person from there. Scotland has 'Scot' and 'Scotsman'; Wales has 'Welshman'; Spain has 'Spaniard'. Other countries indeed need a second word, such as 'person' or 'citizen' ('a Chinese' sounds offensive to me; I would say 'a Chinese person' in all cases). The only country I can think of where using a bare demonym is grammatical when speaking of a single person from there is Germany with 'a German' - probably because it has the suffix -man.

Edit: A sibling comment pointed out that 'an American' is grammatical, and thinking about it, I think the suffix -an is what makes bare demonyms grammatical - you can say 'an Angolan', 'a Laotian', 'a Peruvian', 'a Moroccan', etc, but wouldn't say 'a Thai', 'a Swedish', 'a Sudanese', etc.

"French" is adjective or a collective noun, but don't use it as a countable noun.

Trying to say "as a French" makes about as much sense as thinking "as a American" is correct.

As has already been said ... "a French (wo)man","a French person","a French citizen" is the correct way to go.

The reason you can say "an American" is because America starts with a vowel.

Same reason why you would not say "a British" but you could say "a Brit".

In English, you have to disambiguate be adding a noun: French person, French citizen, or Frenchman if you're old and inconsiderate.

Similarly, we don't call people "a Chinese". That construction is considered derogatory, if not outright racist. Demonyms typically cannot be used as nouns alone without a suffix. "A Brazilian" or "a Spaniard" are acceptable.

As usual for English, the rules are vague and inconsistent.

Ironically most French people I know would be perfectly receptive and happy to receive corrections in grammar, English or otherwise.

The French tend to be particularly pedantic about the teaching of their own grammar. Most native French speakers are quite used to being swiftly and firmly corrected on grammar from an early age.

French people have 'rosbif' to refer to the English and Australians have 'pom' or 'pommie'. You wouldn't call the prime minister that at a diplomatic event, but it's not offensive to call your friends that.

Europe has always managed to make the wrong choice historically, and that's how it still continues

Even more, Sarcozy was jailed later by corruption, a symptom of a healthy democracy that US should try sometime (It would fix a lot of the current and future US problems).

Jumping in the Trump circus in Europe one year ago, maybe could work; now it equals to political suicide after Greenland, the Middle East mess and the more and more obvious symptoms of Trump's dementia and disgusting behaviour. Definitely didn't worked for Elon in the past Germany elections. European politicians are very aware of this, currently.

The elections in Hungary are probably ultra-rigged at this point, but we will see if Vance performing as guest comedian for the pro-Russian party Fidesz will help Orban (or Vance) in the long term.

It seems more like you are rationalizing your personal dislike into justification to use control over others speech in this forum for which you are clearly not qualified. And that is true regardless of what you do or I say.

You were given the power to abuse, I merely have the ability to speak and I will not refrain from speaking, even in jocular and challenging ways, regardless of what you are wont to do.

Do you know what “patronizing” means? You should look it up. It’s really a rather pathetic and vile quality no one should have. Yet here we are.

It might be worth examining the word “countries” there.

Both France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed EU Constitution by referendum in 2005. It was then regurgitated as the Lisbon Treaty (with only superficial changes) in 2007, which was ratified with no public vote.

The Irish people initially rejected both the EU-empowering treaties of Nice and Lisbon, and a followup vote was considered necessary. You get two bites of the democratic cherry if you have enough power.

A majority of the British people voted to leave in 2016, and in the three years that followed everything possible was done to reverse the decision.

You might be spotting here a difference in desires and power between the governors and the governed.

Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but we (I live in Spain) have come a long way since 1492 (534 years ago) and if that's the most recent example you can find of "Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders" I think you yourself know that stuff like that doesn't happen today, in Europe.

Lieutenant Torvalds on the other hand fulfilled his service duties.

Should the US and South Africa go to war it seems clear where musks loyalties would lie. Should the US and Finland go to war I suspect that Torvalds wouldn’t be as clear cut.

This move isn't just "Local French commune thinks about Linux", it's "French government agency that can mandate what others do, set hard guideline for agencies and magistrates to come up with a concrete plan for how to move to Linux", which is worlds beyond what we've seen before.

A human can however do the same job. Turning designs into code isn't a fundamentally new capability unlocked by GenAI, it's just a shuffling of costs from employing humans -> renting GPUs