Gregory's ServerDrastic budget cuts for FOSS, by the EU, and the explanation given is that "because lots of budget are allocated to AI, there is not much left for Internet infrastructure". https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/foss_funding_vanishes_from_eus/ So here is one more way that the fever over "AI" bullshit does real harm. Infra projects that protect security, privacy, and other vital needs will be underfunded so that more money can be thrown into the "AI" black hole. Sigh.
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36 comments
 @cczona @ShadowJonathan Why not void the budget for the scam projects instead?
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17 July at 20:44 | Open on udongein.xyz
@exi I'd love to know who the heck looked at the word "infrastructure" and said to themselves "well that's clearly disposable". Why not also get rid of funding for public transit, power plants, telecom satellites, and pothole repairs while they're at it. Cuz who needs working infra! 🤦    @cczona eh idk. The Blockchain hype was *great* for a few digitalisation efforts. You don't get budget for "hey we need to develop a database backend and slightly reegineer this process." You *did* get budget for "we need to put this process on the Blockchain" and then during the project (but after the end of the planning cycle) "realize" that you need a database and not a Blockchain. Most AI systems build on layers of FOSS, so someone good at talking needs to put on a turtleneck. @nytpu @cczona 0, I know that. But OP was talking about EU budget getting shifted from FOSS to AI. What I was (not entirely serious) saying is that rather than asking money to do X, one probably need to ask for money to do "AI thing A, which incidentally involves X". It's stupid and inefficient, but it works surprisingly often.  @andrei_chiffa @cczona @vladimir_lu @cczona Piggybacking onto this: the European FOSS community is really bad at asking for money. Donating to the vast majority of useful FOSS projects/developers is only possible through US charities/corporations. I would love to see a European Free Software Foundation that makes it easy to donate to FOSS development (either charitably & tax-deductible for individuals, or invoiced as sponsoring or whatever for business). That might just persuade the EU to throw some money at it as well.  I doubt that it is a task for the less interested but for all. 10% of the national tax budget for digital would do the trick for OpenSource funding.  @cczona It doesn't look like an easy way out here for the EU if you think about the incentives at play. There are already no big cloud providers in the EU so that ship has sailed and every European tech company/startup pays the price. There's also no way of catching up to the big players in terms of cloud anymore. Now with AI they're probably fearing for the same to happen in case it will be the next big thing and that's why they want the EU to be part of it early on. It's complicated.   @cczona Luckily the :ms_sparkles: AI magic :ms_sparkles: doesn't depend on that boring old Internet infrastructure! Ah, wait...     @cczona let's also not forget €180 000 000 went to a "self-driving two-seater" fever dream.  If the #CloudStrike incident doesn't clue in legislators that monocultures of proprietary software are a geopolitical liability, what else will? Open source software is not only well aligned with the #RightToRepair ethos and is customisable. It's also part of a strategy that factors in diversity as a strength.  @cczona@hachyderm.io they're throwing stones in a glass treehouse. The bottom is gonna collapse under them and fuck them up.  @cczona Then stop spending on AI? I don't know... I'm not entirely convinced that ALL AI is bad... But the stuff that looks good, is rare, and I still question how much good it really is (ie. is it really doing something that couldn't have been brought about without the use of that level of resources?) Don't worry, the AI bubble's gonna pop soon due to AI companies literally running out of data to feed into their neural networks, and hopefully the hype will go away.  @cczona A very wise man once said: the nine most terrifying words in the english language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help. This rings especially true in the history of governments trying to "help" free software. They get swallowed up by big money and stop listening to real developers. What needs to happen is for them to stop propping up *any* big technology, freedom-respecting or not. Government's only function is to protect private property, and prevent abuses by monopolies. |
