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I think the control should be in the hands of the public. Stewarded by a public organization with government funds. What do you think?

creato 2y ago
Good luck paying engineers to work on chrome on the GS pay scale, subject to the whims of Elon Musk's DOGE.
- acdha 2y ago
  I think you’d have had zero problems having engineers on the GS scale prior to November 6th, 2024. No, they wouldn’t get rich but it’s a space full of interesting technical and usability challenges and you’d be able to work on incredibly high-impact open source projects. Like if you simply make it easier for someone older/disabled/etc. to fill out forms, make good security decisions, find information, etc. literally millions of people benefit from that a couple of weeks later. It’d be neat if the EU picked up the torch here but with any government it seems like it’d be better to have a non-profit get a block grant so you avoid things like those salary issues or other challenges: for example, if the EU decided they didn’t want to depend on the U.S. for critical infrastructure, funding a back-to-its-roots Mozilla.org would make it easier for, say, Canada or India to join in without the issues you’d have trying to directly pay government employee salaries.
- keepamovin 2y ago
  Hehehe - government funding doesn't mean government in charge. Maybe they only bootstrap it. The right structure is possible.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> I think the control should be in the hands of the public. Stewarded by a public organization with government funds. What do you think? I don't know. I think today the EU could set up EUBrowser, a fork of Chromium, and start work. Almost all the hard work has been done by OSS contributions. Google engineers, and Google-funded things such as Firefox. They could live off that comfortably while providing a more locked-down browser if they liked. A more meaningful, less parasitic option would take longer: the EU (or whomoever) writes a browser from scratch. Then they could decide exactly what goes into it, and have independent input into standards etc.
- keepamovin 2y ago
  I like both these ideas. But feel the first more destined for success.

creato 2y ago

Good luck paying engineers to work on chrome on the GS pay scale, subject to the whims of Elon Musk's DOGE.

acdha 2y ago
I think you’d have had zero problems having engineers on the GS scale prior to November 6th, 2024. No, they wouldn’t get rich but it’s a space full of interesting technical and usability challenges and you’d be able to work on incredibly high-impact open source projects. Like if you simply make it easier for someone older/disabled/etc. to fill out forms, make good security decisions, find information, etc. literally millions of people benefit from that a couple of weeks later. It’d be neat if the EU picked up the torch here but with any government it seems like it’d be better to have a non-profit get a block grant so you avoid things like those salary issues or other challenges: for example, if the EU decided they didn’t want to depend on the U.S. for critical infrastructure, funding a back-to-its-roots Mozilla.org would make it easier for, say, Canada or India to join in without the issues you’d have trying to directly pay government employee salaries.
keepamovin 2y ago
Hehehe - government funding doesn't mean government in charge. Maybe they only bootstrap it. The right structure is possible.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> I think the control should be in the hands of the public. Stewarded by a public organization with government funds. What do you think? I don't know. I think today the EU could set up EUBrowser, a fork of Chromium, and start work. Almost all the hard work has been done by OSS contributions. Google engineers, and Google-funded things such as Firefox. They could live off that comfortably while providing a more locked-down browser if they liked. A more meaningful, less parasitic option would take longer: the EU (or whomoever) writes a browser from scratch. Then they could decide exactly what goes into it, and have independent input into standards etc.

keepamovin 2y ago
I like both these ideas. But feel the first more destined for success.