Open Source Projects Receive Funding to Reclaim the Public Internet

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).

>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.

The current NGI program (“Next Generation Internet“), of which NLNet is a participant of, is part of the Horizon Europe EU level program with a (fixed) runtime from 2021-2027.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Europe

And how would that new system vendor not become the european equivalent of microsoft? What you describe is exactly that.

> A new system vendor needs to be created

If it’s not created and grown organically (with some extra funding and indirect support) it will certainly and inevitably suck.

Government bureaucracies can’t directly establish and build a tech company. They will end up replicating their structure and decision making processes which will lead to massive inefficiency and result in crappy product with poor UX that are not built for actual users.

Also free market competition always was and is the main source of human progress. If EU can establish an environment where competition can thrive something might happen. If they create a government owned monopoly and everyone is forced to use the same vendor who has zero incentive to build non crappy products, well.. the outcome won’t be good.

If it’s government owned/controlled it will be much, much worse than Microsoft (purely from the product quality perspective)

And?

> free market competition always was and is the main source of human progress

Not really though, most progress is driven by scientific or government institutions, offloaded only to private enterprise for execution, usually still heavily subsidized to cover risk.

True free market competition creates monopolies and stagnation, this is not a controversial opinion.

> Also free market competition always was and is the main source of human progress.

Source: "100 things that never happened"

I dunno if that many Nobel prizes are being awarded to people working for private companies.

But yes, you're right, a government monopoly where there isn't a natural monopoly isn't a good plan. Funding a whole bunch of small projects might be quite a good plan, though. Sort of like angel investment.

> most progress

Well most progress in computing, software and related areas did come from private companies.

> True free market competition creates monopolies and

That’s where regulation must come in. To stop monopolies from forming or at least from abusing their position.

Anyway your suggestion is to jump straight to the monopoly phase?

Or the majority of human history..

But of course it depends on how you define “free market competition” (markets are very rarely even close to being free without significant regulation). Entities which end up “winning” almost inevitably do their utmost to restrict any competition which leads to stagnation.

I don’t know if that many Nobel prizes were rewarded to any anyone working on software or even computing in general.

There is an uncomfortable truth to reconcile with in that the vast majority of technological progress in private companies has come from monopolistic ones.

Uh? Why? You think that government employees are genetically stupid?

The Internet came from the military originally, the Web came from CERN, many advances in programming languages (like automatic garbage collection) came from academia, and so on. Your claim about where most progress came from isn't obviously true.

And to the extent that it might be true, to what extent is that just structural? In a society with a focus on free markets, more will come from free markets, naturally.

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).

> Internet came from the military originally, the Web came from CERN,

That’s certainly true, yet 90-99% (exact percentage is debatable) of progress came from non government funded organizations.

> extent is that just structural

Generally human behavior is driven by competition. That applies to individuals (e.g. scientists) even if they work in the public sector. Large government organizations or monopolies have no such incentives.

True, yet those major tech companies are still incentivized to make good products to some extent if they want to remain monopolies longterm. Just look at Intel..

If you have the government forcing everyone to buy your products regardless of their quality you have no such incentives.

Your religious faith in the perfect market is a dangerous cult. I hope you can seek help at some point.

What perfect market? What is that even supposed to mean..