It's humanly impossible to know what a program does when it grows beyond the size anyone can read in reasonable amount of time.
For comparison, consider this: I'm in my late 40s and I've never read In Search of Lost Time. My memory isn't what it used to be in my 20s... All eight volumes are about 5K pages, so about 150K lines. I can read about 100 pages per day. So, it will take me about two month to read the whole book (likely a lot longer, since I won't be reading every day, and won't read as many as 100 pages every time I do etc.) By the time I'm done, I will have already lost some memories of what happened two months ago. Also, the beginning of the novel will have to be reinterpreted in the light of what came next.
Reading programs is substantially harder than reading prose. Of course, people are different, and there is no hard limit on how much of program code one can internalize... but there's definitely a number of lines that makes most programmers unable to process the entire program. If we want programs to be practically understandable, we need to keep them shorter than that number.
You have just given the rationale for STEPS, which I am aware of and agree with.
But the claim was that the EU should embark and find this to “gain independence from the US”, even though free software already gives you that independence.
So, my question is: in what way would this project make the EU less dependent?
North Korea reportedly has a Linux distribution, for example.
> even though free software already gives you that independence.
No, not in the way I'd want (and probably not in the way parent wants). For all the same reasons. If you are given something you cannot understand, you depend on the provider for support of the thing you cannot understand. Even if your PC were to be shipped with the blueprints for the CPU, you'd still depend on the CPU manufacturer to make your PCs. The fact that you can sort of figure out how the manufacturer made one doesn't help you to become the real owner of the PC (because of the complexity of the manufacturing process that will make it prohibitively expensive for you to become the PC true owner).
But, let's move this back into software world, where the problem is just as real (if not more so). Realistically, there are only two Web browsers, and the second one makes every effort to alienate its users and die being forgotten and irrelevant. Chrome (or Chromium and Co) are "free", but they are so complex that if you wanted a substantial change to their behavior, you, alone wouldn't be really able to effect that change. (Hey, remember user scripts? Like in Opera before it folded and became Chromium clone? Was super useful, but adding this functionality back would be impossible nowadays without a major team effort.)
So... the Chromium and Co aren't really free. They are sort-of free.
There are, unfortunately, many novel and insidious ways in which software freedom is attacked, subversion attempts come in a relentless tide. Complexity is one of the enemies of software freedom.
There are a lot of people in Europe working on KDE, including the really open web browser. They are the provider.
The problem with a web implementation not being a small thing is inherent due to the size of the spec. You can definitely make a browser with many of the same functional capabilities in 20K lines but it won’t be showing the existing web or be a replacement for chrome.
Many companies have a customized Linux kernel which means you aren’t actually dependent on the provider.
In my opinion, the GGP’s claim the EU should fund their STEPS-like project because “it will help avoid American dependence” is … not in line with reality, just a straw man argument to grab available funds.
Other than that, I agree it’s desirable for everyone to have such a thing. But not in any way because of American hegemony over Chrome.
For comparison, consider this: I'm in my late 40s and I've never read In Search of Lost Time. My memory isn't what it used to be in my 20s... All eight volumes are about 5K pages, so about 150K lines. I can read about 100 pages per day. So, it will take me about two month to read the whole book (likely a lot longer, since I won't be reading every day, and won't read as many as 100 pages every time I do etc.) By the time I'm done, I will have already lost some memories of what happened two months ago. Also, the beginning of the novel will have to be reinterpreted in the light of what came next.
Reading programs is substantially harder than reading prose. Of course, people are different, and there is no hard limit on how much of program code one can internalize... but there's definitely a number of lines that makes most programmers unable to process the entire program. If we want programs to be practically understandable, we need to keep them shorter than that number.