so glad about the accessibility part. it is a struggle sometimes. also, as far as both chrome and ff converged on the same accessibility architecture, I hope that the project will be using it from the very start and will have tangible results soon.
"The Sovereign Tech Agency started in October 2022 as the Sovereign Tech Fund and is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It is a subsidiary of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND GmbH."
Glad to see Europe (in this case Germany https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund) is doing something to support Open Source as part of its bid to make itself less reliant on the US tech giants. They could of course do more, but still...
The Sovereign Tech Agency is doing a great job, I hope other countries will follow Germany's example and fund similar agencies. If we want to rely on Open Source software, we need to pay for maintenance.
A good initiative, but there seems to be nothing on the horizon that can limit the increasing dependence on iOS / App Store and Android / Play Store / Play Services in European citizens' lives, and Microsoft in European corporate and government desktops. If anything, policy makers seem to prefer to increase the dependence, e.g.
Why would I focus towards being an entrepreneur if the state is just going to step in and steal from me after taking all the risk, after giving up time with my family, after taking on all the stress for the extremely small chance of success and if by amazing odds I manage to hit that success the government will knock at my door and scalp the actual payoff for my risk, talent, and years of time despite contributing nothing other than paying a teacher who isn't an entrepreneur and has never run a business to pretend to teach and graduate me on the matter.
Looking forward to Servo replacing embedded Chromium everywhere and getting rid of that pesky $HOME/.pki that Chromium project doesn't care to fix by using libnss correctly.
Is it just me or is the total amount of funding at the Sovereign Tech fund (https://www.sovereign.tech/faq) hilariously small? 11.5 mil eur right now? 17 mil next year? Better than nothing of course, but...
yes, though perhaps stating the obvious: it depends what they do with it.
Ladybird currently has 8 full-time devs [1] and is making impressive progress on delivering a browser from scratch. Wise investment in small, focused, capable teams can go a long way if they're not chasing VC-driven Unicorn status (or in stasis as a Google anti-trust diversion).
That's not challenging your point though: in the face of competing budgets at US tech giants, EUR17Mn still barely registers above noise level. Nevertheless, it's a start. We can only hope it grows and doesn't get shut down by some political lobbying by the aforementioned US behemoths. A modest budget might actually help there - not yet big enough to cause concern to incumbents.
The best sovereign tech fund would be a robust commitment to 'public money, public code'. To think how many sponsored features in LibreOffice, GIMP, Nextcloud,... could be paid for by the money that the governments of the world are paying each year to MS, Adobe,... and it would create sustainable demand for OSS development.
2 out of 3 points should not be in the list at this point of time.
There is no browser around servo that is usable and they start with accessibility?
The effort should go first to have it work as an everyday browser and get as much market share as possible. Then think of accessibility and WebView Integration.
This is a unique opportunity to have a browser engine not depending on Google, Microsoft or some of AI companies wanting to get into this field. By watering it down, you will just lose the market to the ladybird which is focused.
1. Accessibility is easier to build in at the start rather than trying to tack it on at the end.
2. Building a browser around an existing webview is fairly easy compared to all the other parts that go into the finished product.
3. Making the webview integration better means more than just a single browser are using it (which would increase the user share that you deemed as important).
25 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 51.2 ms ] thread"The Sovereign Tech Agency started in October 2022 as the Sovereign Tech Fund and is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It is a subsidiary of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND GmbH."
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/.github/blob/m...
> graduate more entrepreneurs
Why would I focus towards being an entrepreneur if the state is just going to step in and steal from me after taking all the risk, after giving up time with my family, after taking on all the stress for the extremely small chance of success and if by amazing odds I manage to hit that success the government will knock at my door and scalp the actual payoff for my risk, talent, and years of time despite contributing nothing other than paying a teacher who isn't an entrepreneur and has never run a business to pretend to teach and graduate me on the matter.
https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/servo / https://archive.is/kryIb
Ladybird currently has 8 full-time devs [1] and is making impressive progress on delivering a browser from scratch. Wise investment in small, focused, capable teams can go a long way if they're not chasing VC-driven Unicorn status (or in stasis as a Google anti-trust diversion).
That's not challenging your point though: in the face of competing budgets at US tech giants, EUR17Mn still barely registers above noise level. Nevertheless, it's a start. We can only hope it grows and doesn't get shut down by some political lobbying by the aforementioned US behemoths. A modest budget might actually help there - not yet big enough to cause concern to incumbents.
[1]: https://ladybird.org/
Edit:
John Wick got a gift of 7 bullets, EU will do with one ? And it even looks like bullet part in IT world...
There is no browser around servo that is usable and they start with accessibility?
The effort should go first to have it work as an everyday browser and get as much market share as possible. Then think of accessibility and WebView Integration.
This is a unique opportunity to have a browser engine not depending on Google, Microsoft or some of AI companies wanting to get into this field. By watering it down, you will just lose the market to the ladybird which is focused.
1. Accessibility is easier to build in at the start rather than trying to tack it on at the end.
2. Building a browser around an existing webview is fairly easy compared to all the other parts that go into the finished product.
3. Making the webview integration better means more than just a single browser are using it (which would increase the user share that you deemed as important).