Asking because there's increasing awareness in gov that maybe we shouldn't just take but also contribute to some of these projects that we rely on.
Discussion
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Discussion
@Gina would be so cool for governments (and companies!) to use AND support OSS more.
Also related to this meeting I just had with some awesome volunteers from #Forgejo, in which I ask them some questions about using Forgejo for our national codeplatform, as well as what sort of support would be helpful to receive in return: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/412
@Gina also mentioned at Angry Nerds…
@photovince yay! (Why are they angry?)
@Gina To have an excuse to have at least one <rant></rant> per episode?
@Gina Great to see that this is a discussion being held in the open, thank you for sharing.
Different projects need different things and I no expert in what Forgejo needs, but can confirm their contributors are indeed awesome.
I guess that money is a major need for many projects, either to provide for key developers to work on a project full time or targeted amounts to cover a particular need (such as hosting costs for the next "x" period of time (for example)).
@Gina This is wonderful to see.
There's this idea by a colleague at the Ministry of Health to support OSS communities through "Social Return on Investment (SROI) measures. Basically reserving a percentage of procurement costs on funding #opensource as a social return cause. This could be one way of structurally giving back.
Info:
https://ibestuur.nl/artikel/maatschappelijk-verantwoord-opdrachtgeven-en-inkopen-met-open-source/
The bigger picture is that gov *says* that they want digitally sovereign alternatives, but that also requires investing in them.
If we even spend 1/100th of what we spend on Microsoft, AWS, Broadcom etc on opensource communities we'd not only have cheaper alternatives but a much stronger European market as well.
@Gina The European Commission is already using Open Source Software (OpenLDAP) for its Directory Services. That's an Open Source foundation for your build-out. #ldap #openldap #opensource
@Gina it would be nice to trade big tech for an echosystem of reasonably sized tech companies.
@Gina all not-for-profit companies could / should contribute too , e.g. ANBI rules could be adjusted to say that they have to pay into FLOSS fund… as a solidarity activity
~Personally~ what I would like to see is that @nlnet becomes our Sovereign Tech Fund.
@jankatins @nlnet not sure, but if it happens it'll probably come from the EDIC https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-launch-digital-commons-edic-support-sovereign-european-digital-infrastructure-and
@Gina that sounds like a great idea. I was pondering recently about different type of investment. What does it mean to invest? I invest in order to improve my life in the future. If I improve lives of others around me that is a worthy investment that is going to benefit me and not only me in the long term.
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