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The @EUCommission has cut important funds for #FreeSoftware in a non-transparent decision. 💥 Raise your voice and take part in an ongoing consultation to ask for sustainable long-term funds for software freedom! 17 comments
 Is software truly free, or at least independent, if it can't survive without state or corporate support? Just thinking aloud ... not sure of the answer yet. @rzeta0 @fsfe @EUCommission I think it is less about maintaining than igniting innovation. As soon, e.g. Mastodon, becomes big enough to have its own network effect and sufficient (individual) backers it's easier to continue. But starting from the ground up? It takes years before that might happen, and in the end it might just fail because of lack of resources. That's what this programme, in my eyes, is for: pushing and jump starting promising projects, so they might surpass their threshold. I think this is a good analysis. There will be categories of software which gov doesn't want to kick-start. The German gov, a influential power in the EU, would not want software that helps journalists and human rights groups hold Israel to account for its war crimes and genocide - for example. Hungary, currently a member of the EU, may discourage investment in software that helps support or protect people from some monitory groups. Italy - refugee safety, eg I also remember the intense lobbying of governments by Microsoft about 15 years ago over open document standards.... @rzeta0 @fsfe @EUCommission are people mixing the concept of free beer with the price of making the free beer? And of course they gotta do the whole "powering up the AI factories thing" at the same time.   @fsfe @EUCommission I don't know if my answers were submitted. The form seems to be reset. I hope it still worked; I spent a lot of time on writing the texts. 😬 @fell Maybe good for others to copy & paste answers in a file when working on a submission to have a backup of the answers and resubmit if unsure. @fsfe @EUCommission Hey EU Commission, you just collected 16 billion € in fines from Apple and Google, yet you cut 27 million € in funding for free and open source projects? I hope you reconsider your position and not even restore but also increase that funding @fsfe @EUCommission all fines on tech companies (like Apple & Google recently) should straight go to Free Software funds. @fsfe@mastodon.social The article has gifs that play without any user prompting, one of them kind of flashing, even if "reduced motion" is active in the browser. That's a serious accessibility issue (making it extremely hard for me to read, and flashing can trigger some forms of epilepsy), can you get that fixed please?  > ask for sustainable long-term funds We should stop begging for tax money and build our own fund by making our companies join initiatives like @copiepublique |
Gregory's Server
@fsfe @EUCommission
An utter stupidity…