Well worth reflecting that relatively little of existing free software seems to come from that sort of funding. It is mostly commercial companies following commoditise-the-complement strategies, consultancies building free tools then supporting them, or research spinoffs.<p>If EU funding can create and sustain a thriving free software ecosystem I suspect it would require a new funding model that we haven't seen yet. Otherwise, why would they do it and how would the institution detect if it was working?
My town had a budget vote not to long ago.<p>I actually read the budget proposals and look at the year over year breakdown for certain categories.<p>The amount my town is paying for microsoft365 and GIS software is substantial. While not an eyewatering amount, and I can understand that certain things need to be licensed....its hard to understand why my local town isn't using a FOSS GIS and just setting up a basic proxmox cluster with HA failover to host the darn thing.
I am not sure what to make of the EU’s agenda on free software. On the one hand, we see provinces of some countries announcing open source adoption strategies. On the other hand, we see controversial regulation on things like AI that basically proposes to pull up the ladder and give the market to incumbents.
It's ridiculously short sighted to cancel this stuff. NLnet in particular is by far one of the most impressive & broadspanning places for innovation & development in the software world in general, and vanguard for open source at large. The benefits are so multi-fold.<p>Half the projects go no where, a quarter have some meaningful output with varying levels of adoption, and a quarter are amazing & loved bits of work.<p>Theres folks asking if we are getting out moneys worth. First, $27m just doesn't seem like all that much. Especially for such a broad array of nations. Second, the hit ratio is never going to be perfect; worrying about how every dollar is spent will insure you never ever have good research & development, will insure only lukewarm mild takes get tried. You have to be willing to fund adventerous stuff; that's what VCs for example bank on. Because it's impossible to tell, because trying to be smart ahead of time breeds mediocrity. And this r&d&maintenance funding: it buys not only the fruits of that labor, but it maintains a dynamic & empowered culture across the region. It curates talent & starts efforts & intensives the best parts of it's software world.<p>NLnet is so exceedingly important. There's so much possible good that humanity so rarely can get up to. NLNet has been one of core & best ways to promote making things better. This vision of human possibility is saintly & sovereign. I hope EU can keep it going.
I was thinking earlier today that self-driving automobiles would be a good use-case for a public-private venture for open source software development. My half-baked idea would be that car and computing companies could contribute their existing software to a open source consortium that would be government-sponsored, but privately run. Some fair valuation would be set for their contributions and the OSS license would require anyone using the software to contribute back their changes. Part of the funding mechanism would be that any self-driving vehicle would have a fairly high “tax” per vehicle (maybe $10K, 20K?) but that this could be prepaid by the manufacturer through software contributions. Yes, I know there are bottomless logistical issues to be worked out, but the idea being that perhaps, if everyone can see exactly what everyone else is doing we can maybe get out of the current pit of semi-working solutions that prevent true autonomous vehicles from being viable.<p>Or, it might end up that self-driving vehicles are an infrastructure problem and that they need dedicated roadways without incursion by non-self-driven cars. Perhaps we could set them up to run on dedicated schedules on electrified metal causeways with shared ridership.
[dupe]<p>Some more discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40970985">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40970985</a>
Money is a limited resource and I don't think NGI has proven to be a good investment. They made the same sort of embarrassing mistakes your average VC fund would make like BS blockchain ideas. A lot of uninspiring "research" where some of the deliverables is some open source software that no one ever uses and for which development stops after funding runs out. There seems to be something rotten about the open source "community" funded by the EU. I never going to forget the scene of NLnet members distributing free t-shirts with their logo on it to random attendees of the CCC congres in Berlin and then taking a big group photo for some social proof they can put on their website. All in the name of free and open source software that respects EU democratic values, that is pro-social narcissism for you right there.