alt Hacker NewsI'm a team lead in an American organization that relies heavily on Cloudflare's Project Galileo[1], and I read that post with growing dread. My first thought was that this guy doesn't sound very much like a CEO. Let me rephrase that: He sounds like the kind of unhinged CEO of orgs I try to stay away from (X, for instance).
Then I read what you're talking about:
> [...] we are considering the following actions: [...] 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; [...]
That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power (Project Galileo is free for journalists). If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
I was complacent and we need to re-think our relationship with them. It's true what they say: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Replies
When you fine a company more than the entire revenue they get from your nation, they will pull out. It is not retributive. What is hard to understand about that?
> If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
Absolutely. And if any of their competitors claims they can guarantee that they won't ever (have to) pull out somewhere for political reasons, they're lying or ignorant. You cannot escape politics. One election or new law can redraw the landscape overnight.
Also I doubt you "depend" on any single SaaS product where you're completely at the mercy of another company. There's probably nothing that you couldn't swap out in a pinch.
Cloudflare's job is not to call truth to power. Cloudflare's job is to make money.
Voglio vederti ricevere una multa di 14 milioni di euro e rimanere diplomatico
> That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power
Cloudflare is a business. If the fines for operating are several times the money it can get from Italian users, why should it stay in Italy at all?
It's like when Wikipedia went dark for a day. It punished all users, but the point is to show that politicians are forcing it to do so.
He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.