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Comment by Xelbair

9 days ago

We'll see how it goes this time.

If they once again go for creating their own forks, instead of financing development of existing software then I'll know the initiative failed.

Also imho their 'questions' mentioned in the comment kinda feel like they have answer baked in - like it's foregone conclusion.

Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.

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Xelbair

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embedding-shape  9 days ago

> Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.

I think at this point we're beyond that, we already have these programs and they seem to be expanding. EU-STF is one such example, then there are other organizations supported by the EU in various ways, that also helps fund OSS, like NLnet Foundation.

  • menaerus  9 days ago

    Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"? If we leave aside all of the bureaucratic bs, political connections and corruption when it comes to obtaining these funds (for the most cases), how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?

    • pas  8 days ago

      50K EUR is OK to start. There's no point in trying to outspend the top private firms.

      Like many other people said there are already thousands of unpaid volunteers doing quality work.

      If the EU wants "domestic" stuff they need to mandate/incentivize it. It's not like if shit hits the fan the local employees cannot run the local stuff of non-EU companies. (Therefore the important thing is to have full control locally, no outside-EU kill switches allowed - eg. what Uber had and used.)

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    • embedding-shape  9 days ago

      > Do you honestly believe that all of these funding programs are beyond the point of "decency"?

      Yes, they currently fund people working full-time on contributing to FOSOS. If that's no "beyond decency", I don't know what is. Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?

      > how do you attract experts in the field with 50k EUR grants?

      Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid. Once you reach a certain level of income so you're financially safe, increasing that generally doesn't increase your happiness that much, so most of us focus on being fulfilled in other ways, mainly about caring about the work we do.

      As someone who used to work full-time in FOSS, it is a great feeling to contribute to something not just because it pays, but because it actually improves something in real life. I can't speak for everyone, but this is still mostly why I do FOSS.

      I think fundamentally there seems to be a difference between "European FOSS" and "American FOSS" where the latter focuses more on basically CV-driven FOSS projects, with the hope of the FOSS leading to you somehow getting paid more in some for-profit company. While European FOSS seems to mainly be concerned about making things sustainable, grow a healthy community, and remaining FOSS long-term.

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PeterStuer  9 days ago

I get your pain point, but the stated objective is "Sovereignty" so having a fully localized OSS ecosystem that is anchored (can't be bought or moved) and operates independent of outsider (US, China, Russia, ...) upstream is in that case non negotiable.

Whether the EU will ever produce the necessary public investment to achieve this remains an open question.

sofixa  9 days ago

> they once again go for creating their own forks, instead of financing development of existing software then I'll know the initiative failed.

Once again? When did they do that? They have been funding various open source projects (like VLC, Libre Office) for quite a while:

  • plastic-enjoyer  9 days ago

    I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one. It failed horrendously.

    • sofixa  9 days ago

      > I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one

      Yes, with all their configs, packages and certifications that were needed. Not really a problem.

      > It failed horrendously

      Because Microsoft came in, promised to relocate their HQ to Munich, and surprise, it was decided to come back to Windows. This was after reports found that although it took longer than expected, adoption was widespread (only a small minority of desktops remained on Windows for the few Windows specific apps they had), things were working well, user happyness was good, stability was good, and tons of taxpayer money had been saved.