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OW2: 'The European Union Must Keep Funding Free Software' (ow2.org) 15
OW2, the non-profit international consortium dedicated to developing open-source middleware, published an open letter to the European Commission today. They're urging the European Union to continue funding free software after noticing that the Next Generation Internet (NGI) programs were no longer mentioned in Cluster 4 of the 2025 Horizon Europe funding plans.
OW2 argues that discontinuing NGI funding would weaken Europe's technological ecosystem, leaving many projects under-resourced and jeopardizing Europe's position in the global digital landscape. The letter reads, in part: NGI programs have shown their strength and importance to support the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.
Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 millions euros to:
- "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe";
- "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life";
- "A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons."
In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organizations managing these European funding consortia.
OW2 argues that discontinuing NGI funding would weaken Europe's technological ecosystem, leaving many projects under-resourced and jeopardizing Europe's position in the global digital landscape. The letter reads, in part: NGI programs have shown their strength and importance to support the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.
Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 millions euros to:
- "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe";
- "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life";
- "A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons."
In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organizations managing these European funding consortia.
roflmao (Score:1)
Well yeah the masks and gloves are all coming off now.
Now that corporations have taken what they need and set up their own monetized ecosystems for that, the rest can be, uh, discarded.
What? It's fReEEEeeEE sOFtWarE, just make a fork if that bothers you lol.
I hope no one actually believed that the world's governments would continue funding fucking GNOME. roflmao
Re: (Score:2)
This is about small firms belonging to oligarchs churning small software companies that are the only ones that satisfy arcane regulations so they end up winning all bids. In the end all your data will pass trhu those small shops with zero oversight, because the regulation was written by them and politicians have no clue.
just look at https://www.ow2.org/view/Membership_Joining/Members
Re: roflmao (Score:2)
well yes, that sounds about right.
once i heard an eu bureaucrat straightforwardly claim that the sole purpose of academia is to provide grist for policymakers, it all became clear.
Re: roflmao (Score:2)
I for one have been hoping that everyone will stop funding GNOME. The only chance there is that it will become good again is if that stops and it becomes a small community project again.
OW2? (Score:2)
Is any even still playing Overwatch 2?
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently someone wants it to be open sourced in the EU!
Not unexpected (Score:1)
Industry group said "Govt must support us!" (Score:2)
Wow, what a surprise.
Next up, accountants said govt should implement the kind of taxes that would make people to hire more accountants to calculate!
Safety inspects urges govt to tighten safety requirements (and hence more jobs for them)!
Re: (Score:2)
to be fair, Europeans don't think about taxes in the same terms than Americans do.
Nonprofit asks government to support them (Score:2)
Can we just mark these 'news' articles (press releases) as '-1 Troll' at the article level and not have them on /.?
Someone who works for an organization / volunteers / etc. is advocating their own agenda and it somehow 'becomes news'.
Want to fund OSS? (Score:2)
Re: Want to fund OSS? (Score:2)
It would be nice if Calc would get live pivot tables. That is a killer feature.
It would also be nice to see a string splitting function. The answer of "use a regexp" is only slightly less terrible than "use a macro".
Excel really is worlds ahead of everything else.
How about _using_ FOSS? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Eu and its countries would be way better off if they actually _used_ FOSS. The funding will then handle itself.
If the EU would make a measured transition to open standards, FOSS and perhaps a redo of some fundamentally broken things such as DNS and universal encryption it would be running circles around Silicon Valley within a few years. But because deciders are to effing clueless and lobbies are calling the shots we're still blowing billions on expensive proprietary bullshit that doesn't work and isn't even revenued and taxed in the EU.
grocery sack full of krugerrands (Score:2)