Posted by e12e 2 hours ago
I remember applying for a job (at some weird company) to be put up as an open-source contributor last year. The idea was that I was going to build on top of MuleSoft stuff. They ghosted me a day later, despite me having already done these things for the literal client they needed me for. I would advise anyone that is looking for OS contributors to not out-source them through companies, as the models don't really align.
Nowadays I'm communicating with people in Utrecht to get partijgedrag to a newer level (the current one is kind of weak). I would love to build some tooling on top of our government APIs, as well. I don't think people realize how much internal tooling is being built with the idea to release them to the public. It's really cool to see.
Kind of interesting how the perspective is so different from the inside! Maybe it's the typical "the grass is always greener..."?
Most notably the Labor and Welfare Administration with 3000+ open repos.
France even has an official map of this kind, with publicly visible recommendations: https://suiteterritoriale.anct.gouv.fr/conformite/cartograph...
Disclaimer: I made mxmap.be after seeing Swiss ant Dutch counterparts. I did not look at MX records only but also at EHLO replies, SPF and DMARC records and at fronting services.
https://jurgen.gaeremyn.be/2025/03/08/european-critical-depe...
"Purely based on the MX-records, we learn that 72% of Belgian municipalities run Microsoft mail servers and 60% of the Dutch municipalities. For Scandinavia, it’s 64% in Norway and 57% in Sweden. In Finland, it’s a whopping 77% if the cities that are being served by Microsoft."
I don't have the numbers at hand and cannot dig them up right now. If anyone knows the extent of participation of each country that'd be definitely interesting for others too.
And interestingly, code.overheid.nl runs from a residential ip address.
That’s not what I’m seeing.
IP address is currently 147.181.37.238, which is assigned to ODC-Noord via RIPE.
ODC-Noord is a data centre for national government organisations according to https://www.odc-noord.nl/
Checked with `host`, `dig` and hosting-checker.net
That's not a fair characterization. The company that runs it might be bought. That's not planning to put it in USA hands
The result is that the information needed to log in to all the important government systems becomes subject to American jurisdiction. Foreign agents will be able to authenticate themselves as any Dutch citizen and act on their behalf.
And you have concrete proof that this is indeed the plan, stated by the government as the official position, or this is based on your own extrapolation of rumors?
The amount of misinformation that any story related to any European country seems to pull in is crazy, seems to be something about the continent that makes some parts of HN feel blood in their mouth or something.
Parliament has asked government with near unanimity to prevent this from happening. Government has not even acknowledged that this should be prevented.
But the lack of action is not proof that "their plan is to do nothing" nor "the government plans to hand authentication data over to US", those stronger claims require stronger proof, something you seem to be unable to provide.
The dutch government has an authentication system called DigiD. It's effectively an OAuth protocol for government sites, and one of the few ways in which the Dutch government has centralized IT. Every dutch citizen can get access to it, and probably will need it at some point to deal with the government (paper options are meant to exist, but you can already guess on how easy the availability of that is.)
DigiD is currently hosted by a dutch company named Solvinity and developed by Logius (the governments in-house IT development organization). Solvinity is currently in the process of being bought out by another company, Kyndryl, which is based in the US. The government approved the takeover under the previous coalition (who are no longer in power.) The takeover currently is under extreme public scrutiny because of everything to do with the US - most people are at least vaguely aware of the deadly combination of the US CLOUD/PATRIOT laws, which would compel Kyndryl to hand over data on any dutch citizen to the US government for any reason[0]. The US government right now is not exactly behaving like a good steward with the powers it has, instead favoring maximum exploitation within (and outside, if the lawsuits are any indication) it's legal limitations, and is also verbally attacking it's own allies near constantly. Given DigiD is effectively a list of personal information on almost every dutch citizen, it's probably a bad idea to hand access to it over to a hostile foreign country.
On an employee level, the takeover is deeply unpopular - some government workers have actively reached out to the press to warn about the deal, something which very rarely happens as government workers aren't expected to publicly break with government policy. This has led to a motion in the second chamber (parliament) to change DigiDs hosting from Solvinity to another provider being passed... in 2028, for a deal set to go through in a much shorter timespan. At the same time, the government (this time: the elected politicians) is unwilling to reconsider it's stance on the Solvinity takeover, claiming that because it already said it was OK before, it can't change its mind now.
[0]: It's also, almost certainly illegal in a GDPR/AVG (local version of GDPR) sense. US/EU privacy laws are fundamentally incompatible with one another because of these two laws, and the courts keep shooting the international data transfer agreements to bits every time. Even on a basic level, having your government authentication systems legality tied to whether or not Max Schrems wins his court cases is a bad idea.
But I still don't see the "inaction of blocking the sale" as proof that the government is planning or trying to push that sale through, regardless if I personally happen to disagree or I see the drawbacks from it.
> Machine-readable Dutch law execution. regelrecht takes legal texts, encodes them as structured YAML, and runs them as deterministic decision logic. The engine takes a regulation and a set of inputs, evaluates the decision logic, and returns a result with a full explanation trail
Can someone explain this to me? Not the technical aspect, but rather a user story or use case, maybe with example. I can't really wrap my head around it. Thanks in advanced.
As for the use case, it seems to be an explorative exercise to see if something like that can help provide more transparency and consistency within systems of law, "whether machine-executable legislation can provide an answer" to complex and opaque cases. The websites linked earlier have more information + examples.
Bringing the boring old legal system closer to smart contracts.
But I don't have a clue if this is really the case.
I think that's the project.
"Modern calculation engine as a building block for the entire government. In collaboration with the Benefits Service (Dienst Toeslagen). Can we develop a general calculation engine for the government? This project explores how such a system could help in executing complex regulations for citizens and businesses, for example, when calculating benefits."
Integral – A Federated, Post-Monetary, Cybernetic Cooperative Economic System
PS.: The earlier we try to encourage exploration and wider discussion of alternatives to "capitalism-vs-socialism-vs-nationalism" dogmas, the faster we might get to a healthier global living environment, IMHO.
So again, why keep spreading this project you aren't responsible for, and whose domain you aren't even familiar with?
I run a Forgejo instance too for my own use, but haven’t looked into how translation is set up as I haven’t had any need for changing any of the templates or texts that ship with Forgejo by default.