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Germany to Fund Open Source Software Maintainers Through New Fellowship Program (fossforce.com)

submitted 4 months ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund unveils a program to fund maintainers of open source projects that's expected to be operational by year's end.

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[-] xploit@lemmy.world 43 points 4 months ago

Imagine if they could one day get the whole EU to agree on something like this...and to even use the software! 😵

[-] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 34 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

EU has a similar program called Horizon Europe, which spent around €95.5 billion so far. Though it's broader in scope, not limited to just software, but includes various open source research too.

[-] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Would love if there was open source software hard budgeted in there on an EU level...

[-] chobeat@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

There has been for years: NLNet. It just got suspended by right-wingers. A lot of European projects were relying on it.

[-] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 months ago

Lemmy development was funded by NLNet by the way.

[-] mrus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago

NLNet

The main problem with these Funds, especially European ones, are the inability of the people running the funds to properly identify technologies and direct funding to the right projects. If you have ever taken a look at NLNet's projects you will find how there's a 20:1 ratio of projects that are like "Errrr... okay" versus "Yes, that's a useful thing to fund". It also doesn't help the case that a noticeable amount of the funded projects appear relatively low in activity already.

For example, NLNet is funding bringing an extremely niche and largely irrelevant Android ROM to an even more niche phone and helping it release an update (?!?), while on the other hand you cannot find any support for a smartphone-related project that makes actual sense. I'd argue that there are plenty more successful "de-googled" Android ROMs that have a better track record and a larger user base than Replicant. And I'd also argue that there are a lot more reasonable Pinephone projects (cough cough Camera cough) to sponsor than bringing Android to it to make it.... another Android phone?

Horizon Europe

Horizon on the other hand has a different focus. It is not an open-source fund, but a broad "technology research" fund that ventures into health, environmental and many more areas. Horizon is very much politically driven. One famous example is the Horizon 2021-2022 programme agenda, which they unfortunately deleted, that describes HORIZON-CL3-2021-FCT-01-02: Lawful interception using new and emerging technologies (5G & beyond, quantum computing and encryption). Horizon is the very initiative that ProtonMail received funding from, btw.

Long story short, I don't think more funds and programs are needed, but rather a different way of how the existing ones are being run. From what I see, in many cases funds either completely miss the target, or they suffer from NIH syndrome when there are existing alternatives.

[-] chobeat@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

They just allocate according to different logic than the mainstream american FOSS ideology. For instance, hackerbros, and you seem to say the same, will tell you that resources should be centralized into the biggest project in its own category to add more and more features to it. Regardless of cooptation from the private sector, this is generally a bad idea. It leads to a monoculture and monoculture leads to critical bugs impacting enormous amount of users. Also it's predicated on the idea that there should be only a single way to fullfill a specific use-case, and that it's the same throughout the world, erasing cultural, economic, social, biological and political differences. Optimization requires standardization, standardization requires erasure and suppression of minoritarian voices and it's therefore oppressive. Maximizing it is not a good idea, both for technical, political and ethical reasons.

Seeding new projects that better fit local contexts, or simply produce diverse alternatives raises diversity and in turns raises resilience of the software ecosystem as a whole.

[-] Blaze@piefed.social 2 points 4 months ago

What? Crap, that's bad news

[-] demesisx@infosec.pub 27 points 4 months ago

This is REALLY cool. This is how public funding should be allocated.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 15 points 4 months ago

Do you have to be European to get funded?

[-] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

No.

https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/programs/applications#requirements

Take a look.

Though, if you have not heard of the program before, you're probably not involved with a project that qualifies.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 13 points 4 months ago

We invest in projects that benefit and strengthen the open source ecosystem. Examples include libraries for programming languages, package managers, open implementations of communication protocols, administration tools for developers, digital encryption technologies, and more

Wow, some countries are trying to make encryption tech illegal while Germany is just throwing money at tech that could bypass those laws. Amazing.

[-] timestatic@feddit.org 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Some german politicians have also tried time and time again to establish data retention policies because "think of the kids" argument blablabla. But so far they have failed to do that as it was proclaimed unconstitutional by our federal court. Some politicians play with the idea from time to time tho.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 5 points 4 months ago

Jesus 50,000 minimum and conference attendance covered? Sign me up, see you at CCC!

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 2 points 4 months ago

You just have to sit while peeing if you're a guy

[-] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 months ago

Great at nighttime when half asleep, don't need to turn on the light.

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 1 points 4 months ago

Okay sounds real enough here you go 💰

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I made my German girlfriend watch me pee while standing to show that it's a controlled stream.

Then she pulled out her funnel and made me watch her pee while standing.

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah checks out here's your funds 💰

[-] antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

What? Why?

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 4 points 4 months ago

German guys sit

[-] antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

I had no idea. Even though I've been travelling Germany regularly, I have never heard of or noticed anything related to this weird trend. However, multiple sources including the survey data that this article is based on confirms the rumor.

I'm still thinking "why?" ...