Comment by 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?
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.)
50k EUR is a salary that only someone coming fresh out of the University will accept and only someone who has no other choice, e.g. someone not quite competitive on the market. If you want to make a difference then this is not the pool of people you're looking for.
> 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.
> Are you expecting these people to end up flush with cash, or what's the issue?
No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant since serious products of larger scale (impact) necessitates more than a single expert.
How do you build an alternative cloud or alternative database or alternative AI model with a 50k grant? Or how do you attract 10, 15 maybe 20 people to work on it? How much money do you consider would be enough for these people to be "financially safe".
> Because most of us experts actually care about what we work with, not how much we get paid.
Most? I believe not. Most experts in the field are working for a beyond average salary and not for the FOSS projects. You need a leverage to attract those people to leave their jobs to contribute to something bigger (in terms of society) and yet this leverage is, as you say, "experts care about what we work with, not how much we get paid". This is laughable and at the same time worrying because you're genuinely convinced that this is an attitude everyone should follow. Such an ignorant view, sorry.
> No, you cannot build a serious product to compete with globally established products only by using the 50k EUR grant
Who said you have to? Software is not a "winner takes all", you can solve a niche problem, get paid OK for it, and have a better standard of living than the average person in your country. This is widespread in Europe already, not sure why it's so foreign to so many.
I'm sorry, but that you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is, but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.
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