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.
This is REALLY cool. This is how public funding should be allocated.
Imagine if they could one day get the whole EU to agree on something like this…and to even use the software! 😵
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.
Would love if there was open source software hard budgeted in there on an EU level…
There has been for years: NLNet. It just got suspended by right-wingers. A lot of European projects were relying on it.
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.
Do you have to be European to get funded?
You just have to sit while peeing if you’re a guy
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.
Yeah checks out here’s your funds 💰
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.
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.
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.
