"Open Source runs much of the world's critical infrastructure. It powers government services, supports national security, and enables everything from public health systems to elections. This means governments must help fund Open Source." #Technologyhttps://werd.io/funding-open-source-like-public-infrastructure/
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@ben I’m not privy to the details but what I picked up from a recent video from Matthew the CEO of Element.io is that the French government uses #Matrix extensively and contributes nothing back at all.
Matrix could really use more support in order to fix the problems currently happening as outlined in his video https://youtu.be/OyuqM7RbX5E?si=TkS7HeT8eQdGPmLL
@martin Right - I've been in a similar position. And then when you complain people tell you you're not being true to the spirit of open source, and that you should be doing it "for the love of it" (a real thing I've heard more than once). It's incredibly frustrating.
@ben 'help fund' or 'contribute to'?
@ben @martin you're writing from the perspective of OSS authors, which I appreciate. Think of that as the 'entrepreneur' model of OSS. consider an alternative 'public service' model of OSS where the product is created by (say) government and made available to the community. We might want this especially for infrastructure and the really big stuff like OSS AI.
@ben obvious orgs to check out are @nlnet and @sovtechfund - though stuff like AI FOMO is a bit of a risk when it comes to stability of government funding.
One thing that struck me at UN Open Source Week this summer was that governments in general approach open-source projects as weird vendors, hence the lack of consideration for the wider ecosystem. It'd take a lot for them to break out of that mold.
@ben Appropriate caveat at the start: "I think this proposal is sound for every country other than the United States"
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