European companies are already sinking into a de facto techno-feudalism ruled by big tech, and AI is about to push them even deeper. Open source is on the brink of collapse. Soon, some people will see little value in collaborating or maintaining projects when LLMs can churn out slop endlessly. Innovation will also take a hit: since most companies will naturally default to technologies that LLMs are already heavily trained on, there will be little incentive to adopt anything new. It’s well known that European companies, especially, have a very risk-averse mindset.
Some might refuse to accept this, but given the way things are moving, not only the Erlang ecosystem but many other programming languages, libraries, and tools will slowly die out. Given all this, shouldn’t Ericsson seek funding from the EU and the Swedish government to develop, maintain, and promote Erlang as one of cornerstone of the European tech sector
Not only is sovereignty a big deal, but also supply chain security. If you cut out the OS and the container orchestration, you cut out a huge chunk of the supply chain dependencies.
Back to your point, I don’t think it would be Ericsson that would be pushing this - that would be in the remit of the EEF if they choose, and have the bandwidth, to do so.
I believe that it is A US based nonprofit for administrative reasons, rather than geopolitical allegiance. Certainly a lot of the key contributors and membership base dwell outside the US. However, I don’t think I’m qualified to opine on EEF priorities.
As aboard member I can say that advancing any political or governmental positions has never been brought up. The EEF is an international organization composed of and run by good people from around the world.
I’ve been an outsider re. Ericsson for some 18 years now, but one of the lessons from the “platform wars” back in the '90s was that Ericsson is not, and should not be, in the business of promoting specific technology platforms. While I would imagine that there isn’t much resistance to bragging about the company’s contribution to Erlang, Ericsson is a leading integrator of hugely complex network solutions, and needs to stay at the right abstraction level with its messaging. Ericsson’s solutions are designed to outlive most technology frameworks.
Just my 2 cents’ worth. Apart from that, my experience with EU-funded technology projects is that different commercial actors will primarily try to push their own tech. Grandiose projects for the betterment of Humanity will always stall due to competing special interests or become gravy trains of corruption.
Erlang’s strength is based on its grassroots origins, and having had to fight for survival on pure merit. While this tends to make you feel constantly unappreciated, there is actually real value in that. Some of my former Ericsson colleagues used to quip that the worst thing that can happen to you is to be blessed by Management.
Opera soprano legend Beverly Sills is supposed to have said “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”. Erlang’s path has been one of persistent excellence, largely thanks to, rather than despite, the lack of establishment appeal.
I agree with much of what you said.
Still, Ericsson holds a unique position, no other company, European or global, offers anything like Erlang as a whole. For Ericsson, it’s just a tool that has served them well and will continue to do so. But this leaves a lot of potential on the table. More funding could improve the ecosystem, address community’s shortcomings, and much more.
