11 ms·

Open Source Projects Receive Funding to Reclaim the Public Internet

473 points by edent 1y ago

maelito 1y ago
Motis (transit calculator), Clearance (OSM contribution analysis) and StreetComplete (OSM contribution gamified) : very important assets for the free mapping community. Good news !
- felixguendling 1y ago
  Thanks! Maintainer of MOTIS here. We're planning to bring support for NeTEx, SIRI and OJP to MOTIS and with those formats a lot of features that are only available with those formats but not with GTFS(-RT) (yet). But having them implemented will also help us to quickly activate them for GTFS(-RT) once GTFS(-RT) gains support.
constantcrying 1y ago
The EU and member states are currently putting in quite a bit of money trying to limit their exposure to US tech companies. Looking at the list of projects you can see that they support a huge variety of projects, with all kind of different scopes and intentions. While I think that the overarching goal is good and I would like to see them succeed, I also think that they fail to address the single most important issue. Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. The funding goes to many, but small projects, but this means the single biggest issue, actually deploying an open source system over an entire organization remains unaddressed.
- Deukhoofd 1y ago
  Note that this funding round was from applications up to October last year. The last couple of months have really accelerated the desire of European states and organizations to decouple from US tech, so we might see very different funding rounds soon. As for an entire integrated systems provider, I don't think it'd fit a funding round like this. It'd need stable and secure funding, and I think the only real way to do so is to start out either private with good backers, or public, with the EU directly funding it (and not through intermediate backers like NLNet, that's more for small but important projects).
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    >As for an entire integrated systems provider, I don't think it'd fit a funding round like this. I agree. But it is the single most important thing there is, if you want to limit exposure to US tech companies. The EU has the monetary resources to fund this. But it obviously does not know how, so we have these distributed system, where funding trickles down through multiple layers into many different small projects, which then get some funding for some time. I think the EU funding these many small projects is nice, but we should not pretend that distributed funding like this makes any meaningful difference, as long as most government and corporate institutions are running Microsoft products everywhere. A new system vendor needs to be created, it needs to be well funded, it needs to attract really good people and it needs to be deployed, millions of people need to be trained to use it, EU wide. This is a decade long project, but it is the only way to create an EU independent of Microsoft.
    - mvanbaak 1y ago
      And how would that new system vendor not become the european equivalent of microsoft? What you describe is exactly that.
      - wqaatwt 1y ago
        If it’s government owned/controlled it will be much, much worse than Microsoft (purely from the product quality perspective)
        guappa 1y ago
        Uh? Why? You think that government employees are genetically stupid?
        wqaatwt 1y ago
        Companies that don’t have to compete have no incentives to make good products. Especially when high level government officials (i.e. people controlling their funding) are their clients and jot end consumers. Wasting time/resources to make good products under such circumstances would be quite stupid. Of course same often applies to large enterprise corporation but thankfully at least occasionally they can go bankrupt (which keeps them in line to some extent).
- maelito 1y ago
  > Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors Google's Android is the largest OS by usage. But yes, you're right. When you try to use a non-US OS in France you end up buying US hardware and erasing your data on the next LineageOS release. We need vendors.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    >Google's Android is the largest OS by usage. I am primarily thinking about government institutions and corporations. There Microsoft is used almost everywhere. Mobile phones are a secondary issue in my opinion, also because Android is already much more open than Windows.
    - Flatterer3544 1y ago
      There's an attempt to move away from Microsoft enterprise tools, e.g. 365+ ecosystem. See opendesk.eu , it's a platform collaborating with many EU open-source developers, and it's funded primarily by the German government.
- pickledoyster 1y ago
  > Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. This is just a thought that ignores all the economies of scale etc., but what if monopolistic tech conglomerates were seen as a negative vs interoperable, modular systems? If that were the case, simply repeating US tech's blunders wouldn't be a true alternative, just more of the same with garden walls made of a different material.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    I think that is a question of architecture. What is important that there is one company you can go to who does all of that for you. Running a government institution and having 20 different vendors to make your basic IT system work is a nightmare. That you can get all in one from Microsoft is one of their biggest strengths in the market and you must compete with that.
    - mvanbaak 1y ago
      Add integration between all the parts to it and you will see why those big companies stay successful. Not only is managing 20 vendors a nightmare, they all live in their own bubble and moving data from one to the other is normally not that easy.
      - monade 1y ago
        Using standards typically makes a big difference. And having redundancy, so that lack of interoperability/lock in is actually not something you find out after it is too late.
      - Guthur 1y ago
        Microsoft has a terrible history of integration even among it's own products and has forced obsoletion throughout. If it's literally you only have a single vendor to pay then you must look for a nationalised solution otherwise you'll just be creating oligarchy. You can't on the one hand maintain the myth that there will somehow be private competition but then on the other set the barriers so high that only the largest most entrenched monopolies can succeed.
- pydry 1y ago
  The EU could set up something publicly run at first, creating (software) contracts which let chunks of the system get run by small, focused, competitive European businesses who could focus on, say, running a data center in France, providing blob storage services, managed Postgres or whatever...
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    But the issue with many small corporations is that you can not run office IT like that. People buy from Microsoft because you can get all in one from them. If you do not compete with that, then you aren't competing at all.
    - pydry 1y ago
      That was my whole point. These services can all individually be provided by small businesses but there needs to be an overarching organization that links it all together and creates an abstraction people can use that centralizes billing, discovery and links everything together. The EU government can provide that. That would not only compete with Microsoft it could harness the power of small business/startup competition for the individual components which Microsoft can't do. Japanese keiretsu are a good model to follow here. It was a network of small businesses each of whom held shares in related companies, centered around a bank that provided financing. It was responsible for Japan's economic miracle. China also did something quite similar which is why they are absolutely dominant in electronics manufacturing. The EU government doesn't appear willing to do anything like this though. I think they'd rather just get sweet talked by SAP into funneling taxpayer cash into their coffers.
      - fidotron 1y ago
        > That was my whole point. These services can all individually be provided by small businesses but there needs to be an overarching organization that links it all together and creates an abstraction people can use that centralizes billing, discovery and links everything together. This is legitimately a really good suggestion.
- jonathanstrange 1y ago
  There is still an application barrier. If you want to make a OS that becomes popular, it needs to have better applications than other operating systems. Making the OS compatible with existing ones is bound to fail and violate IP rights. Making it Linux-based doesn't help because existing Linux applications are not competitive enough. They could be improved with consistent OS-level services and APIs but that requires developers to actually use them. Nobody is interested in an OS without killer applications.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    I don't think administrative work needs any killer applications. You need a complete system which actually works together and can be sourced by a single vendor.
    - jonathanstrange 1y ago
      You're assuming that people want to switch but I'm talking about the incentives for end consumers to switch. There has to be some strong motivation for switching, and it's not only going to be GUI design. Something about a new OS must be really desirable, either the hardware it's running on or better applications. I'm using Linux as my daily workhorse since 2008 so I'm not opposed to it in any way. But the fact is that due to lack of integration with the OS, every Linux application is slightly less good than its commercial MacOS and Windows counterpart. GIMP is slightly awkward to use in comparison to Photoshop, LibreOffice can replace Word but definitely isn't better, pro audio applications are virtually non-existent for Linux and work only as good if you don't need any pro plugins (very few of which are produced for Linux), Dia, Inkscape, and other vector drawing programs are far less good than e.g. Affinity Publisher, and so on and so forth. Linux doesn't even have good content indexing comparable to Spotlight. Applications don't even have consistent user interfaces.
      - constantcrying 1y ago
        >You're assuming that people want to switch No, I am not. That is the stance of the EU. Switching is a matter of European security. What "people" want is already irrelevant and whether the GUI is consistent or not couldn't matter less.
- b112 1y ago
  Microsoft's push to the cloud and subscriptions for core stuff... outlook, word, excel, is so bizarre and filled with hubris. An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers. That's a good step. And a there are vendors supporting Linux. You can be sure such vendors would firm that up with a government sized buy. Linux support is flawless, as long as you select supported components. And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    >An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers. No. There is no vendor for this. Such a vendor would need to offer and support everything that MS is offering and supporting. >And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that. Integration is hard. It needs to work together. We all know that Linux has some rough edges (and so does Windows) and the vendor has to take care of it all and actually needs to fix it. A company like that has to suddenly do maintenance on many major open source projects.
    - nonrandomstring 1y ago
      > No. There is no vendor for this. You seem stuck on this model and not at all open to those commentators who are saying the single product vendor model itself is the problem? My observation is that, regardless the myriad solutions based on strongly enforced interoperability standards, no government has ever had the courage to directly go up against US technopoly. I can see that changing at last. And my goodness, what a long, long, dark time it's been coming.
      - constantcrying 1y ago
        >You seem stuck on this model and not at all open to those commentators who are saying the single product vendor model itself is the problem? Because there seems to be no alternative.
        1y ago
- preisschild 1y ago
  > While I think that the overarching goal is good and I would like to see them succeed, I also think that they fail to address the single most important issue. Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. I think that's good. It prevents forming monopolies and makes use of open standards more often.
- graemep 1y ago
  > The EU and member states are currently putting in quite a bit of money trying to limit their exposure to US tech companies. its also very little compared with how much they spend on US suppliers. It also does not address the issue of private sector dependence on the US. > Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system What exactly do you mean by this? What do people need that Apple supplies as an integrated system that is hard to replace?
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    >What exactly do you mean by this? What do people need that Apple supplies as an integrated system that is hard to replace? The complete package. Hardware, software and ecosystem by a single company. Only Microsoft and Google have anything coming close to this.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - graemep 1y ago
      Organisations are unlikely to rely only on Apple Software though. Most organisations do not use MS or Google hardware though. MS can provide everything for a standard office desktop, but the real strength of their OS is the availability of lots of third party software.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - sybercecurity 1y ago
        Don't forget enterprise management. Windows makes it easy to maintain a fleet of endpoints much easier than MacOS or Linux.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- cookiengineer 1y ago
  Well, you could also decide to pay a linux distribution of your choice. KDE is a German project, GNOME a French/German project, most of Debian's maintainers come from the EU, Manjaro is a German project, probably most Arch, NixOS and Alpine maintainers come from the EU as well... The problem with open source projects is always "unopinionatism". The only project that comes to mind where the design language feels actually integrated are KDE Plasma (not before) and maybe elementaryOS. But those projects need a lot of funding to come to feature parity with Microsoft's and Apple's alternatives. Especially in the enterprise/corporate product portfolio, and system landscape administration.
  - monade 1y ago
    KDE Plasma is actually in the list...
    - kps 1y ago
      And I'll be happy to see Dolphin get decent keyboard navigation.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    Again, none of these projects can solve the larger issue. KDE does not do what Microsoft does. You can not give 100M to KDE to have them setup and maintain your government infrastructure.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      If you have 100M I'll create a company to setup and maintain infrastructure. Though depending on your size I might need more money to maintain yours. Setting up the company isn't hard. What is hard is doing it today. It will take a year just to figure out the various custom configurations you need to get a majority of users switched over without issue, and there will be a long tail weird cases that will go on for years before everything is done. This isn't unusual - the simpler case of switching my college campus from Coke to Pepsi took over a month and there both vendors cooperated in making it a smooth switch (Coke does not want to burn bridges as this happens all the time and they want to be back again next time the contract comes up - right now Microsoft doesn't have that incentive)
- akudha 1y ago
  They gotta start somewhere, no? It is going to be extremely difficult (maybe even close to impossible) to dislodge the incumbents, doesn't mean they shouldn't try
- thmsths 1y ago
  Sounds like we need a European software agency then. While these projects are technically independent of the EU, Ariane and the A400M are great examples of European collaboration. We need the same for software: create a company/agency/institute, fund them appropriately (the A400M had a development cost of over 20 billions to give a ballpark figure) and ask them to produce an OS, a browser and an office suite. Make sure it's done with a product mindset, that they have ownership of it. Pay market rate for the employees. And within a decade we could have a credible alternative to Apple/Microsoft, then we can mandate the different EU administrations to switch to this software stack. The biggest road block I can foresee is the infighting about how to "fairly" distribute the jobs. My worry is that instead of having a couple of locations that can each focus on a key aspect of the project, we would end up with 27 offices, with all the siloing that it entails. Which is literally one of Ariane's greatest weaknesses...
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    I'm sure a centrally planned initiative will beat the market and create a better product for you to use in Europe, just like Lada defeated Ford!
    - constantcrying 1y ago
      Exactly. Just like Airbus can't compete with the likes of Boeing.
      - gunalx 1y ago
        Well. At least airbus dosent drop out of the skies, or loose emergency doors out of the blue.
        subulaz 1y ago
        constantcrying's comment may be meant with sarcasm because Airbus leads Boeing in market share in addition to having fewer models with explosive decompression issues...
    - 1y ago
- freedomben 1y ago
  I've long wished Red Hat would open some kind of consumer/business facing market. Fedora is already so damn close, it just needs a little bit more love. Red Hat could partner with Framework, or Lenovo, or Dell for the hardware. Red Hat is already so connected with various stakeholders (Linux Foundation, Gnome, etc) that they wouldn't even have the huge barrier-of-entry of herding all those cats. The EU funding or putting out an RFP or something would be amazing.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    The hardware vendors should just offer OS choice at checkout time, and revenue sharing for the resulting choices.
    - freedomben 1y ago
      I don't disagree, but without some sort of formal or official support from the distribution, I think this is a tall ask. Some vendors have shipped Ubuntu and Fedora on laptops, but not many. If they were going to truly do this, I think it's reasonable for them to expect a minimum level of support from the parent company behind the operating system. Even just for training and bug purposes, people could easily end up getting an OS they aren't comfortable with and complaining at the laptop vendor for it.
      - pabs3 1y ago
        That is definitely the wrong approach with the Linux ecosystem, and any other open source ecosystem. Not all distros actually have a single parent company, or any parent company, many are volunteer only but accept donations. The right approach would be for the laptop vendor to test their laptops with distros requested by their customers, and to contribute new drivers and fixes to the mainline Linux kernel and other upstream projects, and to require their chip suppliers to do the same. The revenue sharing could be via an official partnership, or conference/etc sponsorship arrangements or even just regular donations. The OS selection would probably have to be hidden behind an "advanced community supported options" area, to reduce the confusion you mention.
freetonik 1y ago
NLnet is a great initiative. Among the numerous projects they have supported is Marginalia [1] search engine. 1. https://www.marginalia.nu/ https://www.marginalia.nu/
- zoobab 1y ago
  "NLnet is a great initiative" Originally, NLNet was *private money* given by the founders of a dutch ISP¨. Now that this private money run out, they made a partnership with the European Commission, which is *public money* and comes with more strings attached.
  - danparsonson 1y ago
    That all sounds like it's meant to sound sinister, but why? Private individuals sometimes fund great initiatives, as do public organisations. What's your concern?
    - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
      Both have their ups and downs, but broadly speaking, private money tends to be a lot more flexible and risk-liberal, whereas public money can be like having the worst aspects of the ignorant absentee CEOs-golf-buddy manager and the micromanaging hands-on desperate-to-prove-himself CEOs-nephew manager. Public money is eventually traced back to some elected official who has absolutely nothing to do with technology but is also very emotionally-invested in showing to the constituents that the money isn't being wasted - to the point where spending the money on something useless but concrete ("ergonomic" coffee mugs) might be deemed preferable to a long-term investment that falls on the wrong side of a term-limit. Again, public money can be fine and completely no-strings sometimes (and, conversely, private charitable contributions can sometimes end up with plenty of strings too), but there's certainly reasons to point out the differences.
- mprime1 1y ago
  Mastodon is another one (ActivityPub / Feediverse) https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/
pickledoyster 1y ago
Some great initiatives being funded, especially: >PeerTube for Institutions — Make PeerTube easier to manage and moderate at scale I'd LOVE to see more institutions and NGOs move to PeerTube. The only gripe I see is funding for Wiktionary, part of the well funded Wikimedia that spends over a quarter of its budget on "Building analytics and ML services" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Foundation_Details https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
- diggan 1y ago
  > The only gripe I see is funding for Wiktionary Seems like a well-specified and specific reason for the funding though, not just "do whatever you want": > This project will develop QA modules for Wiktionary, leading to easy parsing and processing of cross-linguistic data. This helps to unify data formats across Wiktionary, and improve the overall reliability of this invaluable resource. Given that the EU has 24 official languages, I think it makes a lot of sense to try to contribute resources for improving cross-linguistic data, bonus points for funneling those resources to a relatively open platform.
- rapnie 1y ago
  TIL to my surprise that Wikimedia has an Enterprise, which serves big customers like Google. We monetise what you crowdsource to us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Wikimedia_Enterprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Wikimedia...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
asim 1y ago
Something I came across yesterday was OpenCloud. I think with many of these small projects being funded it's not clear there's a cohesive vision of how to reclaim the internet. I mean the browser itself is owned by big tech. I don't know whether you have to start again at the protocol level. https://opencloud.eu/en https://opencloud.eu/en Edit: if I was to dig a little deeper. What you do need is an operating system for the cloud. Something anyone can run and adapt. With a clear service to service protocol (not http or grpc) and a base set of services that make it useful. Things like proton are nice and we can support them and they run and manage the service. But if you wanted to run that stack yourself, you couldn't. I don't think it's entirely open source. I don't think that's their goal, but you also just couldn't run it yourself. We need this sort of default open model while having a cohesive strategy around how you build something. That is a true alternative to big tech and cloud providers. We are nowhere close to that.
mixcocam 1y ago
There is also a lot of indirect funding in the form of the governments purchasing habits: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-moving-30000-pcs-to-libreoffice/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-s... In the EU the size of the state is often bigger than 50% of GDP. What the government buys is very important and means a lot of $$ for projects, consultants and the rest of the open source ecosystem.
- fforflo 1y ago
  Except for the fact that big consultancies who receive most of the government contracts, have zero contribution to the open source ecosystem.
  - mixcocam 1y ago
    When you pay 1000 USD to Microsoft to use o365, how much of that goes to the developers? The argument of "but very little of that money will go to *actual* development" is not looking at the alternative being used now.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  I like the publicly funded open source funding in theory, in practice I suspect these guys had to pay consultants to create a funding project application, that went through some arbitrary agency, and the money that got to the developers is probably less than half of the money that was spent in the process. And then if this becomes more widespread an the existing software companies that do business with government will start sucking money out of such grants and the government quality code. If our governments had a way of funding quality software development we would not get the software that we get. Every now and then they will strike gold with stuff like Blender funding, but even that is peanuts comparably, and only passes through the art/culture channels probably.
  - monade 1y ago
    Actually, the grant process at NLnet is supposed super light weight. It consists of a single short form (https://nlnet.nl/propose https://nlnet.nl/propose) with very little boilerplate. No consultants needed...
sylware 1y ago
One key element is noscript/basic (x)html interop for the web, where _reasonable_ of course. And tons of online services can be provided like that as they were a few years back. At least the critical/"very utility" online services (for instance online shopping) should have interop which is actually working and tested. The benchmark is the critical/"very utility" online service should work with a noscript/basic (x)html text browser, then you could add a simple CSS stylesheet for the noscript/basic (x)html CSS renderer (for instance netsurf), then if it is really unreasonable to do otherwise <troll but not so much>you could have an wayland/alsa ELF RISC-V binary running on JSLinux itself running in apple/gogol Big Tech web engines</troll but not so much>. Don't forget that developping the software of the public web site/online service is not the main activity, timewise... the main activity, and by far, is the permanent monitoring and related development, security wise, and availability wise (in the end, the really really hard part is manufacturing state-of-the-art silicon hardware :) ).
nextpaco 1y ago
They applied in October 2024 and starting receiving funding (€ 50.000 max) in May 2025. This is beyond ridicoulness. This is beyond ridiculousness. An AI agent could make a far better job than many well-paid but extremely lazy european bureaurats. Let alone the corruption, if they choose their friend projects. I'm pro an unite Europe but current European Union is beyond shame.
- edhelas 1y ago
  What is your issue there ? I'm currently working on integrating multi-participants video-conferencing in the Movim platform using the NLNet funding system https://nlnet.nl/project/Movim-E2EE-video/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Movim-E2EE-video/ Its super easy to apply and the people are super nice to work with. Also try to find a company that would be interested to implement those kind of features for 5-50K€, they'll laugh at you. For a tiny bit of "public funding" you get many exciting features on many different open-source projects and initiatives that millions of users are using daily.$ Also NLNet is an independant non-profit organization. No "lazy-european-bureaucrats" there. > Wikipedia: The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking operations to UUNET (now part of Verizon), resulting in an endowment with which it makes grants.
  - nextpaco 1y ago
    > What is your issue there ? I applied to NGI Zero in December 2024, because it was promoted on European Union websites, and my application was rejected by the NLnet Foundation in April 2025. After FOUR MONTHS instead of one as supposed. Without a decent explanation. This is not the first time I have applied for a European grant. But got nothing till now. Once I applied for another Cascade Funding Call, and I mentor was assigned to me. It was a lady from a non-European country who was ignorant about popular innovation projects. And she was supposed to assist me and even judge my project. I, a European citizen without a job, should have been assisted by an ignorant non-European person paid with European funds. It was devastating for me. Later, I also applied to be a mentor for the same program, but my application was rejected. So, I can't help but think that corruption is real and rampant in European offices. Even tho I demonstrated many times my skills, even winning some important competitions, I'm long-term unemployed. I've been registered on EURES, the European Union job portal, for more than ten years. As well as on the job portal of my country of residence. No one contacted me to offer me a job. EVER. That said, after seeing how disgusting the current European Union is, I have no choice but to support any movement in favor of dismantling it. I hope it happens as soon as possible.
ryao 1y ago
https://nlnet.nl/project/SSH-Stamp/ https://nlnet.nl/project/SSH-Stamp/ SSH Stamp looks very interesting at a glance, but there is no information about a project page or a developer. A search for it with DuckDuckGo does not find any information beyond that page. I wonder if this is real. If there is anything open source about this, it is nothing like the open source projects I know.
- sigio 1y ago
  I'm guessing there isn't anything yet besides the proposal. Since the project start is this month. Knowing NLnet, I think there should be something soon enough.
- monade 1y ago
  There is now a link: https://github.com/brainstorm/ssh-stamp https://github.com/brainstorm/ssh-stamp
hello_computer 1y ago
Money down the toilet. Job #1 is to make a google replacement. Job #2, a domestic phone manufacturer (with its own plaftorm / appstore). These are the two primary portals to "The Internet". Without meaningful replacements, they're still on Uncle Sam's plantation. China figured that out a long time ago, and is in a far better position to digitally de-couple from the United States. They are so far behind. Focus! Spitballing 42 random projects is a luxury Europe does not have.
- monade 1y ago
  You didn't spot the open hardware tablet in there? There was another announcement made almost simultaneously about funding for a.o. F-Droid: https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250421-project-selection-pilots.html https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250421-project-selection-pilots... There are many search projects you can find like marginalia.nu and Searx, just not in this call round.
  - hello_computer 1y ago
    If you are talking about the MNT reform, that is utterly fatuous. Same with f-droid. These are toys for IT fanboys--nothing that will significantly dislodge Europeans from the US tech teat. Europe needs iOS & Google-tier replacements ASAP. China has Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, Alibaba. Even Russia has Yandex & Telegram. Europe has zilch. I figured that after we were caught bugging Merkel's telephone, Europe would have at least gotten started, but I figured wrong.
    - monade 1y ago
      We can agree to disagree on what is meaningful. Especially F-Droid is already widely used, and I would certainly not call it a toy. You shouldn't rule out the snowball effect of FOSS. The nice thing about this kind of open program is that someone like you that has a beef and a clue can actually propose something, and get a grant to get the party started. After that, communities can kick in.
      - 1y ago
tasn 1y ago
I previously received funding from nlnet and they have been great to work with. I highly recommend working with them, and they have been supporting amazing projects!
- AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  I’m curious what kind of strings came with the funding, and what kind of oversight contracts you had to sign.
  - tasn 1y ago
    No strings at all. Oversight: the way it worked is that you agree on a proposal and milestones. When a milestone is complete you present it to them and then they pay for that part of the agreement. If memory serves making it easy and accessible was one of their main goals, and they indeed lived up to it.
    - AndrewKemendo 1y ago
      Thanks for the follow up that’s good to hear
zkmon 1y ago
Risk appetite, accountability and support. These go against open source. Gone are the days when businesses were desperate for some software that just works. During my days at apache, I have seen large businesses officially allowing their devs to contribute to opensource full time. IBM being a large contributor. Now people can only accept managed software and hardware. Even if it opensource, it should be managed. Cloud providers offer a lot of opensource as managed services. That sells. No more wild-west.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
udev4096 1y ago
I see no mention of the core projects which have been maintained and being used for decades. xz, libexpat, openzfs, NetworkManager and way too many tiny projects which glue the entire linux system. That's how you start to reclaim the open internet. Where is pihole, who is trying to debloat the web? Where is dnsmasq, which is most widely used dns server?
- Tepix 1y ago
  The sovereign tech fund is doing precisely that: Funding critical infrastructure projects. NLnet is also helping in the effort as far as i'm aware, as are some other organizations. Even some companies are chipping in. There is of course always a lot left to do.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    From the looks of it, it doesn't seem enough. EU just doesn't have enough money to make this all viable. US is the only country with enough funding resources for quite a lot of critical and over-looked projects
    - zja 1y ago
      Governments employ millions of people, money is absolutely not a limitation.
- zo1 1y ago
  Also: who is working to usurp the free web and bloat it further. Examples being: DoH, cert-pinning, VMs inside apps (TikTok) and those advertising ID things that Google and Mozilla pushed.
  - orthecreedence 1y ago
    Cloudflare?
- monade 1y ago
  They did provide funding to dnsmasq: https://nlnet.nl/bluehatsprize/2024/1.html https://nlnet.nl/bluehatsprize/2024/1.html And DNSvizor: https://nlnet.nl/project/DNSvizor https://nlnet.nl/project/DNSvizor
berlinbrowndev 1y ago
I wish we could do something around cookies, trackers, ads, Like a simpler web server for http that only supports certain.
techlatest_net 1y ago
[dead]
MisterTea 1y ago
https://nlnet.nl/project/Ada-bootstrap/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Ada-bootstrap/ This is something I would be interested in but there is no link to a project page. I sent a message alerting them in case it was accidentally left out.
b0dhimind 1y ago
Would be cool if a lot of these get added to PortableApps for easy install and updates...
wolvesechoes 1y ago
The issue is that it is not enough to throw money at random projects. There should be at least high-level plan and rather specific goals. Frankly, "reclaim public internet" is a nice slogan, but it is too abstract to be a good, meaningful goal. Also money is but a one issue. Free software has a big problem with coordination of efforts. Though many claim it is its strength, it is a handicap when it comes to political action (and free software is a political action). In short, what we need is an equivalent of grand industrial policies of the past, but this time for free software.
- ozim 1y ago
  Observations from CVE issue was showing exactly that - loads of people jumping out that they can pick it up and continue. Would be fine only if they would look at what else is there like ENISA. So like everyone would start doing something for themselves duplicating and wasting effort and money.
eichin 1y ago
With a catchphrase like "reclaim the public internet" I expected they were funding Anubis https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/anubis/ https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/anubis/ (don't get me wrong, they've got a neat list of projects, I'm just quibbling with what's "public internet" about solar powered motherboards or Ada bootstrapping.)
- eadmund 1y ago
  Anubis isn’t really about reclaiming the public internet, though: it’s about excluding some internet users. It has its reasons, of course, but it’s fundamentally about making the internet not a commons.
  - eichin 1y ago
    From my perspective, anubis (and iocaine etc) is about keeping misbehaving load generators from suppressing small-scale "classic internet" sites. So yeah, it's exclusionary, like keeping semi trucks from taking shortcuts through a schoolyard.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      It would probably be better if it excluded problematic behavior rather than excluding classes of clients.
      - hooverd 1y ago
        Sure, but there's a very high correlation between classes of client and problematic behavior, and said classes of clients go to great lengths to mask their problematic behavior.
  - freddydumont 1y ago
    While I get your point about Anubis excluding some users, its purpose is to protect the "commons" from those who would abuse and destroy them: big tech crawlers that do not respect robots.txt files.
  - 1y ago
tekchip 1y ago
Seems like a lot of comments here are US centric. As if Canonical and Suse don't exist and aren't Europe based/focused? Also a lot of arguments that MS provides some total package which is irreplaceable which just isn't true. That argument seems to conflate software dominance in the US (is that even true? Linux runs most back end) with some kind of hardware dominance. MS doesn't provide hardware beyond some limited set of desktop hardware which most businesses don't even use. Most business lease from the likes of Dell, HP, and Lenovo both front and back end. This should probably be the real discussion.
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
nlnet are gamechangers. Without them we'd have no Lemmy, and I would still be on Reddit
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

473 points by edent 1y ago

Motis (transit calculator), Clearance (OSM contribution analysis) and StreetComplete (OSM contribution gamified) : very important assets for the free mapping community. Good news !

felixguendling 1y ago
Thanks! Maintainer of MOTIS here. We're planning to bring support for NeTEx, SIRI and OJP to MOTIS and with those formats a lot of features that are only available with those formats but not with GTFS(-RT) (yet). But having them implemented will also help us to quickly activate them for GTFS(-RT) once GTFS(-RT) gains support.

constantcrying 1y ago

The EU and member states are currently putting in quite a bit of money trying to limit their exposure to US tech companies. Looking at the list of projects you can see that they support a huge variety of projects, with all kind of different scopes and intentions. While I think that the overarching goal is good and I would like to see them succeed, I also think that they fail to address the single most important issue. Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. The funding goes to many, but small projects, but this means the single biggest issue, actually deploying an open source system over an entire organization remains unaddressed.

Deukhoofd 1y ago
Note that this funding round was from applications up to October last year. The last couple of months have really accelerated the desire of European states and organizations to decouple from US tech, so we might see very different funding rounds soon. As for an entire integrated systems provider, I don't think it'd fit a funding round like this. It'd need stable and secure funding, and I think the only real way to do so is to start out either private with good backers, or public, with the EU directly funding it (and not through intermediate backers like NLNet, that's more for small but important projects).
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >As for an entire integrated systems provider, I don't think it'd fit a funding round like this. I agree. But it is the single most important thing there is, if you want to limit exposure to US tech companies. The EU has the monetary resources to fund this. But it obviously does not know how, so we have these distributed system, where funding trickles down through multiple layers into many different small projects, which then get some funding for some time. I think the EU funding these many small projects is nice, but we should not pretend that distributed funding like this makes any meaningful difference, as long as most government and corporate institutions are running Microsoft products everywhere. A new system vendor needs to be created, it needs to be well funded, it needs to attract really good people and it needs to be deployed, millions of people need to be trained to use it, EU wide. This is a decade long project, but it is the only way to create an EU independent of Microsoft.
  - mvanbaak 1y ago
    And how would that new system vendor not become the european equivalent of microsoft? What you describe is exactly that.
    - wqaatwt 1y ago
      If it’s government owned/controlled it will be much, much worse than Microsoft (purely from the product quality perspective)
      - guappa 1y ago
        Uh? Why? You think that government employees are genetically stupid?
        wqaatwt 1y ago
        Companies that don’t have to compete have no incentives to make good products. Especially when high level government officials (i.e. people controlling their funding) are their clients and jot end consumers. Wasting time/resources to make good products under such circumstances would be quite stupid. Of course same often applies to large enterprise corporation but thankfully at least occasionally they can go bankrupt (which keeps them in line to some extent).
maelito 1y ago
> Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors Google's Android is the largest OS by usage. But yes, you're right. When you try to use a non-US OS in France you end up buying US hardware and erasing your data on the next LineageOS release. We need vendors.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >Google's Android is the largest OS by usage. I am primarily thinking about government institutions and corporations. There Microsoft is used almost everywhere. Mobile phones are a secondary issue in my opinion, also because Android is already much more open than Windows.
  - Flatterer3544 1y ago
    There's an attempt to move away from Microsoft enterprise tools, e.g. 365+ ecosystem. See opendesk.eu , it's a platform collaborating with many EU open-source developers, and it's funded primarily by the German government.
pickledoyster 1y ago
> Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. This is just a thought that ignores all the economies of scale etc., but what if monopolistic tech conglomerates were seen as a negative vs interoperable, modular systems? If that were the case, simply repeating US tech's blunders wouldn't be a true alternative, just more of the same with garden walls made of a different material.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  I think that is a question of architecture. What is important that there is one company you can go to who does all of that for you. Running a government institution and having 20 different vendors to make your basic IT system work is a nightmare. That you can get all in one from Microsoft is one of their biggest strengths in the market and you must compete with that.
  - mvanbaak 1y ago
    Add integration between all the parts to it and you will see why those big companies stay successful. Not only is managing 20 vendors a nightmare, they all live in their own bubble and moving data from one to the other is normally not that easy.
    - monade 1y ago
      Using standards typically makes a big difference. And having redundancy, so that lack of interoperability/lock in is actually not something you find out after it is too late.
    - Guthur 1y ago
      Microsoft has a terrible history of integration even among it's own products and has forced obsoletion throughout. If it's literally you only have a single vendor to pay then you must look for a nationalised solution otherwise you'll just be creating oligarchy. You can't on the one hand maintain the myth that there will somehow be private competition but then on the other set the barriers so high that only the largest most entrenched monopolies can succeed.
pydry 1y ago
The EU could set up something publicly run at first, creating (software) contracts which let chunks of the system get run by small, focused, competitive European businesses who could focus on, say, running a data center in France, providing blob storage services, managed Postgres or whatever...
- constantcrying 1y ago
  But the issue with many small corporations is that you can not run office IT like that. People buy from Microsoft because you can get all in one from them. If you do not compete with that, then you aren't competing at all.
  - pydry 1y ago
    That was my whole point. These services can all individually be provided by small businesses but there needs to be an overarching organization that links it all together and creates an abstraction people can use that centralizes billing, discovery and links everything together. The EU government can provide that. That would not only compete with Microsoft it could harness the power of small business/startup competition for the individual components which Microsoft can't do. Japanese keiretsu are a good model to follow here. It was a network of small businesses each of whom held shares in related companies, centered around a bank that provided financing. It was responsible for Japan's economic miracle. China also did something quite similar which is why they are absolutely dominant in electronics manufacturing. The EU government doesn't appear willing to do anything like this though. I think they'd rather just get sweet talked by SAP into funneling taxpayer cash into their coffers.
    - fidotron 1y ago
      > That was my whole point. These services can all individually be provided by small businesses but there needs to be an overarching organization that links it all together and creates an abstraction people can use that centralizes billing, discovery and links everything together. This is legitimately a really good suggestion.
jonathanstrange 1y ago
There is still an application barrier. If you want to make a OS that becomes popular, it needs to have better applications than other operating systems. Making the OS compatible with existing ones is bound to fail and violate IP rights. Making it Linux-based doesn't help because existing Linux applications are not competitive enough. They could be improved with consistent OS-level services and APIs but that requires developers to actually use them. Nobody is interested in an OS without killer applications.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  I don't think administrative work needs any killer applications. You need a complete system which actually works together and can be sourced by a single vendor.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    You're assuming that people want to switch but I'm talking about the incentives for end consumers to switch. There has to be some strong motivation for switching, and it's not only going to be GUI design. Something about a new OS must be really desirable, either the hardware it's running on or better applications. I'm using Linux as my daily workhorse since 2008 so I'm not opposed to it in any way. But the fact is that due to lack of integration with the OS, every Linux application is slightly less good than its commercial MacOS and Windows counterpart. GIMP is slightly awkward to use in comparison to Photoshop, LibreOffice can replace Word but definitely isn't better, pro audio applications are virtually non-existent for Linux and work only as good if you don't need any pro plugins (very few of which are produced for Linux), Dia, Inkscape, and other vector drawing programs are far less good than e.g. Affinity Publisher, and so on and so forth. Linux doesn't even have good content indexing comparable to Spotlight. Applications don't even have consistent user interfaces.
    - constantcrying 1y ago
      >You're assuming that people want to switch No, I am not. That is the stance of the EU. Switching is a matter of European security. What "people" want is already irrelevant and whether the GUI is consistent or not couldn't matter less.
b112 1y ago
Microsoft's push to the cloud and subscriptions for core stuff... outlook, word, excel, is so bizarre and filled with hubris. An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers. That's a good step. And a there are vendors supporting Linux. You can be sure such vendors would firm that up with a government sized buy. Linux support is flawless, as long as you select supported components. And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers. No. There is no vendor for this. Such a vendor would need to offer and support everything that MS is offering and supporting. >And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that. Integration is hard. It needs to work together. We all know that Linux has some rough edges (and so does Windows) and the vendor has to take care of it all and actually needs to fix it. A company like that has to suddenly do maintenance on many major open source projects.
  - nonrandomstring 1y ago
    > No. There is no vendor for this. You seem stuck on this model and not at all open to those commentators who are saying the single product vendor model itself is the problem? My observation is that, regardless the myriad solutions based on strongly enforced interoperability standards, no government has ever had the courage to directly go up against US technopoly. I can see that changing at last. And my goodness, what a long, long, dark time it's been coming.
    - constantcrying 1y ago
      >You seem stuck on this model and not at all open to those commentators who are saying the single product vendor model itself is the problem? Because there seems to be no alternative.
      - 1y ago
preisschild 1y ago
> While I think that the overarching goal is good and I would like to see them succeed, I also think that they fail to address the single most important issue. Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system and aren't just either single components or many different components packaged together, but without the interaction necessary to compete with Apple or Microsoft. I think that's good. It prevents forming monopolies and makes use of open standards more often.
graemep 1y ago
> The EU and member states are currently putting in quite a bit of money trying to limit their exposure to US tech companies. its also very little compared with how much they spend on US suppliers. It also does not address the issue of private sector dependence on the US. > Which is that Apple and Microsoft are the only real system vendors, corporations who can offer an entire integrated system What exactly do you mean by this? What do people need that Apple supplies as an integrated system that is hard to replace?
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >What exactly do you mean by this? What do people need that Apple supplies as an integrated system that is hard to replace? The complete package. Hardware, software and ecosystem by a single company. Only Microsoft and Google have anything coming close to this.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - graemep 1y ago
    Organisations are unlikely to rely only on Apple Software though. Most organisations do not use MS or Google hardware though. MS can provide everything for a standard office desktop, but the real strength of their OS is the availability of lots of third party software.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - sybercecurity 1y ago
      Don't forget enterprise management. Windows makes it easy to maintain a fleet of endpoints much easier than MacOS or Linux.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
cookiengineer 1y ago
Well, you could also decide to pay a linux distribution of your choice. KDE is a German project, GNOME a French/German project, most of Debian's maintainers come from the EU, Manjaro is a German project, probably most Arch, NixOS and Alpine maintainers come from the EU as well... The problem with open source projects is always "unopinionatism". The only project that comes to mind where the design language feels actually integrated are KDE Plasma (not before) and maybe elementaryOS. But those projects need a lot of funding to come to feature parity with Microsoft's and Apple's alternatives. Especially in the enterprise/corporate product portfolio, and system landscape administration.
- monade 1y ago
  KDE Plasma is actually in the list...
  - kps 1y ago
    And I'll be happy to see Dolphin get decent keyboard navigation.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  Again, none of these projects can solve the larger issue. KDE does not do what Microsoft does. You can not give 100M to KDE to have them setup and maintain your government infrastructure.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    If you have 100M I'll create a company to setup and maintain infrastructure. Though depending on your size I might need more money to maintain yours. Setting up the company isn't hard. What is hard is doing it today. It will take a year just to figure out the various custom configurations you need to get a majority of users switched over without issue, and there will be a long tail weird cases that will go on for years before everything is done. This isn't unusual - the simpler case of switching my college campus from Coke to Pepsi took over a month and there both vendors cooperated in making it a smooth switch (Coke does not want to burn bridges as this happens all the time and they want to be back again next time the contract comes up - right now Microsoft doesn't have that incentive)
akudha 1y ago
They gotta start somewhere, no? It is going to be extremely difficult (maybe even close to impossible) to dislodge the incumbents, doesn't mean they shouldn't try
thmsths 1y ago
Sounds like we need a European software agency then. While these projects are technically independent of the EU, Ariane and the A400M are great examples of European collaboration. We need the same for software: create a company/agency/institute, fund them appropriately (the A400M had a development cost of over 20 billions to give a ballpark figure) and ask them to produce an OS, a browser and an office suite. Make sure it's done with a product mindset, that they have ownership of it. Pay market rate for the employees. And within a decade we could have a credible alternative to Apple/Microsoft, then we can mandate the different EU administrations to switch to this software stack. The biggest road block I can foresee is the infighting about how to "fairly" distribute the jobs. My worry is that instead of having a couple of locations that can each focus on a key aspect of the project, we would end up with 27 offices, with all the siloing that it entails. Which is literally one of Ariane's greatest weaknesses...
- dingnuts 1y ago
  I'm sure a centrally planned initiative will beat the market and create a better product for you to use in Europe, just like Lada defeated Ford!
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    Exactly. Just like Airbus can't compete with the likes of Boeing.
    - gunalx 1y ago
      Well. At least airbus dosent drop out of the skies, or loose emergency doors out of the blue.
      - subulaz 1y ago
        constantcrying's comment may be meant with sarcasm because Airbus leads Boeing in market share in addition to having fewer models with explosive decompression issues...
  - 1y ago
freedomben 1y ago
I've long wished Red Hat would open some kind of consumer/business facing market. Fedora is already so damn close, it just needs a little bit more love. Red Hat could partner with Framework, or Lenovo, or Dell for the hardware. Red Hat is already so connected with various stakeholders (Linux Foundation, Gnome, etc) that they wouldn't even have the huge barrier-of-entry of herding all those cats. The EU funding or putting out an RFP or something would be amazing.
- pabs3 1y ago
  The hardware vendors should just offer OS choice at checkout time, and revenue sharing for the resulting choices.
  - freedomben 1y ago
    I don't disagree, but without some sort of formal or official support from the distribution, I think this is a tall ask. Some vendors have shipped Ubuntu and Fedora on laptops, but not many. If they were going to truly do this, I think it's reasonable for them to expect a minimum level of support from the parent company behind the operating system. Even just for training and bug purposes, people could easily end up getting an OS they aren't comfortable with and complaining at the laptop vendor for it.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      That is definitely the wrong approach with the Linux ecosystem, and any other open source ecosystem. Not all distros actually have a single parent company, or any parent company, many are volunteer only but accept donations. The right approach would be for the laptop vendor to test their laptops with distros requested by their customers, and to contribute new drivers and fixes to the mainline Linux kernel and other upstream projects, and to require their chip suppliers to do the same. The revenue sharing could be via an official partnership, or conference/etc sponsorship arrangements or even just regular donations. The OS selection would probably have to be hidden behind an "advanced community supported options" area, to reduce the confusion you mention.

freetonik 1y ago

NLnet is a great initiative. Among the numerous projects they have supported is Marginalia [1] search engine. 1. https://www.marginalia.nu/ https://www.marginalia.nu/

zoobab 1y ago
"NLnet is a great initiative" Originally, NLNet was *private money* given by the founders of a dutch ISP¨. Now that this private money run out, they made a partnership with the European Commission, which is *public money* and comes with more strings attached.
- danparsonson 1y ago
  That all sounds like it's meant to sound sinister, but why? Private individuals sometimes fund great initiatives, as do public organisations. What's your concern?
  - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
    Both have their ups and downs, but broadly speaking, private money tends to be a lot more flexible and risk-liberal, whereas public money can be like having the worst aspects of the ignorant absentee CEOs-golf-buddy manager and the micromanaging hands-on desperate-to-prove-himself CEOs-nephew manager. Public money is eventually traced back to some elected official who has absolutely nothing to do with technology but is also very emotionally-invested in showing to the constituents that the money isn't being wasted - to the point where spending the money on something useless but concrete ("ergonomic" coffee mugs) might be deemed preferable to a long-term investment that falls on the wrong side of a term-limit. Again, public money can be fine and completely no-strings sometimes (and, conversely, private charitable contributions can sometimes end up with plenty of strings too), but there's certainly reasons to point out the differences.
mprime1 1y ago
Mastodon is another one (ActivityPub / Feediverse) https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/

pickledoyster 1y ago

Some great initiatives being funded, especially: >PeerTube for Institutions — Make PeerTube easier to manage and moderate at scale I'd LOVE to see more institutions and NGOs move to PeerTube. The only gripe I see is funding for Wiktionary, part of the well funded Wikimedia that spends over a quarter of its budget on "Building analytics and ML services" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Foundation_Details https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...

diggan 1y ago
> The only gripe I see is funding for Wiktionary Seems like a well-specified and specific reason for the funding though, not just "do whatever you want": > This project will develop QA modules for Wiktionary, leading to easy parsing and processing of cross-linguistic data. This helps to unify data formats across Wiktionary, and improve the overall reliability of this invaluable resource. Given that the EU has 24 official languages, I think it makes a lot of sense to try to contribute resources for improving cross-linguistic data, bonus points for funneling those resources to a relatively open platform.
rapnie 1y ago
TIL to my surprise that Wikimedia has an Enterprise, which serves big customers like Google. We monetise what you crowdsource to us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Wikimedia_Enterprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Wikimedia...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

asim 1y ago

Something I came across yesterday was OpenCloud. I think with many of these small projects being funded it's not clear there's a cohesive vision of how to reclaim the internet. I mean the browser itself is owned by big tech. I don't know whether you have to start again at the protocol level. https://opencloud.eu/en https://opencloud.eu/en Edit: if I was to dig a little deeper. What you do need is an operating system for the cloud. Something anyone can run and adapt. With a clear service to service protocol (not http or grpc) and a base set of services that make it useful. Things like proton are nice and we can support them and they run and manage the service. But if you wanted to run that stack yourself, you couldn't. I don't think it's entirely open source. I don't think that's their goal, but you also just couldn't run it yourself. We need this sort of default open model while having a cohesive strategy around how you build something. That is a true alternative to big tech and cloud providers. We are nowhere close to that.

mixcocam 1y ago

There is also a lot of indirect funding in the form of the governments purchasing habits: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-state-moving-30000-pcs-to-libreoffice/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/04/04/german-s... In the EU the size of the state is often bigger than 50% of GDP. What the government buys is very important and means a lot of $$ for projects, consultants and the rest of the open source ecosystem.

fforflo 1y ago
Except for the fact that big consultancies who receive most of the government contracts, have zero contribution to the open source ecosystem.
- mixcocam 1y ago
  When you pay 1000 USD to Microsoft to use o365, how much of that goes to the developers? The argument of "but very little of that money will go to *actual* development" is not looking at the alternative being used now.
rafaelmn 1y ago
I like the publicly funded open source funding in theory, in practice I suspect these guys had to pay consultants to create a funding project application, that went through some arbitrary agency, and the money that got to the developers is probably less than half of the money that was spent in the process. And then if this becomes more widespread an the existing software companies that do business with government will start sucking money out of such grants and the government quality code. If our governments had a way of funding quality software development we would not get the software that we get. Every now and then they will strike gold with stuff like Blender funding, but even that is peanuts comparably, and only passes through the art/culture channels probably.
- monade 1y ago
  Actually, the grant process at NLnet is supposed super light weight. It consists of a single short form (https://nlnet.nl/propose https://nlnet.nl/propose) with very little boilerplate. No consultants needed...

sylware 1y ago

One key element is noscript/basic (x)html interop for the web, where _reasonable_ of course. And tons of online services can be provided like that as they were a few years back. At least the critical/"very utility" online services (for instance online shopping) should have interop which is actually working and tested. The benchmark is the critical/"very utility" online service should work with a noscript/basic (x)html text browser, then you could add a simple CSS stylesheet for the noscript/basic (x)html CSS renderer (for instance netsurf), then if it is really unreasonable to do otherwise <troll but not so much>you could have an wayland/alsa ELF RISC-V binary running on JSLinux itself running in apple/gogol Big Tech web engines</troll but not so much>. Don't forget that developping the software of the public web site/online service is not the main activity, timewise... the main activity, and by far, is the permanent monitoring and related development, security wise, and availability wise (in the end, the really really hard part is manufacturing state-of-the-art silicon hardware :) ).

nextpaco 1y ago

They applied in October 2024 and starting receiving funding (€ 50.000 max) in May 2025. This is beyond ridicoulness. This is beyond ridiculousness. An AI agent could make a far better job than many well-paid but extremely lazy european bureaurats. Let alone the corruption, if they choose their friend projects. I'm pro an unite Europe but current European Union is beyond shame.

edhelas 1y ago
What is your issue there ? I'm currently working on integrating multi-participants video-conferencing in the Movim platform using the NLNet funding system https://nlnet.nl/project/Movim-E2EE-video/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Movim-E2EE-video/ Its super easy to apply and the people are super nice to work with. Also try to find a company that would be interested to implement those kind of features for 5-50K€, they'll laugh at you. For a tiny bit of "public funding" you get many exciting features on many different open-source projects and initiatives that millions of users are using daily.$ Also NLNet is an independant non-profit organization. No "lazy-european-bureaucrats" there. > Wikipedia: The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking operations to UUNET (now part of Verizon), resulting in an endowment with which it makes grants.
- nextpaco 1y ago
  > What is your issue there ? I applied to NGI Zero in December 2024, because it was promoted on European Union websites, and my application was rejected by the NLnet Foundation in April 2025. After FOUR MONTHS instead of one as supposed. Without a decent explanation. This is not the first time I have applied for a European grant. But got nothing till now. Once I applied for another Cascade Funding Call, and I mentor was assigned to me. It was a lady from a non-European country who was ignorant about popular innovation projects. And she was supposed to assist me and even judge my project. I, a European citizen without a job, should have been assisted by an ignorant non-European person paid with European funds. It was devastating for me. Later, I also applied to be a mentor for the same program, but my application was rejected. So, I can't help but think that corruption is real and rampant in European offices. Even tho I demonstrated many times my skills, even winning some important competitions, I'm long-term unemployed. I've been registered on EURES, the European Union job portal, for more than ten years. As well as on the job portal of my country of residence. No one contacted me to offer me a job. EVER. That said, after seeing how disgusting the current European Union is, I have no choice but to support any movement in favor of dismantling it. I hope it happens as soon as possible.

ryao 1y ago

https://nlnet.nl/project/SSH-Stamp/ https://nlnet.nl/project/SSH-Stamp/ SSH Stamp looks very interesting at a glance, but there is no information about a project page or a developer. A search for it with DuckDuckGo does not find any information beyond that page. I wonder if this is real. If there is anything open source about this, it is nothing like the open source projects I know.

sigio 1y ago
I'm guessing there isn't anything yet besides the proposal. Since the project start is this month. Knowing NLnet, I think there should be something soon enough.
monade 1y ago
There is now a link: https://github.com/brainstorm/ssh-stamp https://github.com/brainstorm/ssh-stamp

hello_computer 1y ago

Money down the toilet. Job #1 is to make a google replacement. Job #2, a domestic phone manufacturer (with its own plaftorm / appstore). These are the two primary portals to "The Internet". Without meaningful replacements, they're still on Uncle Sam's plantation. China figured that out a long time ago, and is in a far better position to digitally de-couple from the United States. They are so far behind. Focus! Spitballing 42 random projects is a luxury Europe does not have.

monade 1y ago
You didn't spot the open hardware tablet in there? There was another announcement made almost simultaneously about funding for a.o. F-Droid: https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250421-project-selection-pilots.html https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250421-project-selection-pilots... There are many search projects you can find like marginalia.nu and Searx, just not in this call round.
- hello_computer 1y ago
  If you are talking about the MNT reform, that is utterly fatuous. Same with f-droid. These are toys for IT fanboys--nothing that will significantly dislodge Europeans from the US tech teat. Europe needs iOS & Google-tier replacements ASAP. China has Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, Alibaba. Even Russia has Yandex & Telegram. Europe has zilch. I figured that after we were caught bugging Merkel's telephone, Europe would have at least gotten started, but I figured wrong.
  - monade 1y ago
    We can agree to disagree on what is meaningful. Especially F-Droid is already widely used, and I would certainly not call it a toy. You shouldn't rule out the snowball effect of FOSS. The nice thing about this kind of open program is that someone like you that has a beef and a clue can actually propose something, and get a grant to get the party started. After that, communities can kick in.
    - 1y ago

tasn 1y ago

I previously received funding from nlnet and they have been great to work with. I highly recommend working with them, and they have been supporting amazing projects!

AndrewKemendo 1y ago
I’m curious what kind of strings came with the funding, and what kind of oversight contracts you had to sign.
- tasn 1y ago
  No strings at all. Oversight: the way it worked is that you agree on a proposal and milestones. When a milestone is complete you present it to them and then they pay for that part of the agreement. If memory serves making it easy and accessible was one of their main goals, and they indeed lived up to it.
  - AndrewKemendo 1y ago
    Thanks for the follow up that’s good to hear

zkmon 1y ago

Risk appetite, accountability and support. These go against open source. Gone are the days when businesses were desperate for some software that just works. During my days at apache, I have seen large businesses officially allowing their devs to contribute to opensource full time. IBM being a large contributor. Now people can only accept managed software and hardware. Even if it opensource, it should be managed. Cloud providers offer a lot of opensource as managed services. That sells. No more wild-west.

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udev4096 1y ago

I see no mention of the core projects which have been maintained and being used for decades. xz, libexpat, openzfs, NetworkManager and way too many tiny projects which glue the entire linux system. That's how you start to reclaim the open internet. Where is pihole, who is trying to debloat the web? Where is dnsmasq, which is most widely used dns server?

Tepix 1y ago
The sovereign tech fund is doing precisely that: Funding critical infrastructure projects. NLnet is also helping in the effort as far as i'm aware, as are some other organizations. Even some companies are chipping in. There is of course always a lot left to do.
- udev4096 1y ago
  From the looks of it, it doesn't seem enough. EU just doesn't have enough money to make this all viable. US is the only country with enough funding resources for quite a lot of critical and over-looked projects
  - zja 1y ago
    Governments employ millions of people, money is absolutely not a limitation.
zo1 1y ago
Also: who is working to usurp the free web and bloat it further. Examples being: DoH, cert-pinning, VMs inside apps (TikTok) and those advertising ID things that Google and Mozilla pushed.
- orthecreedence 1y ago
  Cloudflare?
monade 1y ago
They did provide funding to dnsmasq: https://nlnet.nl/bluehatsprize/2024/1.html https://nlnet.nl/bluehatsprize/2024/1.html And DNSvizor: https://nlnet.nl/project/DNSvizor https://nlnet.nl/project/DNSvizor

berlinbrowndev 1y ago

I wish we could do something around cookies, trackers, ads, Like a simpler web server for http that only supports certain.

techlatest_net 1y ago

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MisterTea 1y ago

https://nlnet.nl/project/Ada-bootstrap/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Ada-bootstrap/ This is something I would be interested in but there is no link to a project page. I sent a message alerting them in case it was accidentally left out.

b0dhimind 1y ago

Would be cool if a lot of these get added to PortableApps for easy install and updates...

wolvesechoes 1y ago

The issue is that it is not enough to throw money at random projects. There should be at least high-level plan and rather specific goals. Frankly, "reclaim public internet" is a nice slogan, but it is too abstract to be a good, meaningful goal. Also money is but a one issue. Free software has a big problem with coordination of efforts. Though many claim it is its strength, it is a handicap when it comes to political action (and free software is a political action). In short, what we need is an equivalent of grand industrial policies of the past, but this time for free software.

ozim 1y ago
Observations from CVE issue was showing exactly that - loads of people jumping out that they can pick it up and continue. Would be fine only if they would look at what else is there like ENISA. So like everyone would start doing something for themselves duplicating and wasting effort and money.

eichin 1y ago

With a catchphrase like "reclaim the public internet" I expected they were funding Anubis https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/anubis/ https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/anubis/ (don't get me wrong, they've got a neat list of projects, I'm just quibbling with what's "public internet" about solar powered motherboards or Ada bootstrapping.)

eadmund 1y ago
Anubis isn’t really about reclaiming the public internet, though: it’s about excluding some internet users. It has its reasons, of course, but it’s fundamentally about making the internet not a commons.
- eichin 1y ago
  From my perspective, anubis (and iocaine etc) is about keeping misbehaving load generators from suppressing small-scale "classic internet" sites. So yeah, it's exclusionary, like keeping semi trucks from taking shortcuts through a schoolyard.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    It would probably be better if it excluded problematic behavior rather than excluding classes of clients.
    - hooverd 1y ago
      Sure, but there's a very high correlation between classes of client and problematic behavior, and said classes of clients go to great lengths to mask their problematic behavior.
- freddydumont 1y ago
  While I get your point about Anubis excluding some users, its purpose is to protect the "commons" from those who would abuse and destroy them: big tech crawlers that do not respect robots.txt files.
- 1y ago

tekchip 1y ago

Seems like a lot of comments here are US centric. As if Canonical and Suse don't exist and aren't Europe based/focused? Also a lot of arguments that MS provides some total package which is irreplaceable which just isn't true. That argument seems to conflate software dominance in the US (is that even true? Linux runs most back end) with some kind of hardware dominance. MS doesn't provide hardware beyond some limited set of desktop hardware which most businesses don't even use. Most business lease from the likes of Dell, HP, and Lenovo both front and back end. This should probably be the real discussion.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago

nlnet are gamechangers. Without them we'd have no Lemmy, and I would still be on Reddit

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