If, on the other hand, maybe we’d like more folks to contribute to the commons and maybe not even be captured by Silicon Valley how about this radical idea: Fund them so they can live (at least as well) as any mediocre yes-person at a mainstream tech company.

#mastodon #fediverse #FOSS #funding #EU #NextGenerationInternet #NGI #NLNet #EUCommission #DigitalSingleMarket #commons #neoliberalism #SiliconValley #corporateCapture #TimBerbersLee #WorldWideWeb (7/7)

So what do we need, ideally? The equivalent of VC but for tech for the common good.

Pick ten organisations working the common good and give them €5M each. Let them experiment. Let them pivot. Let them cooperate. The only thing you don’t let them do is exit. You can’t sell. Build something for the commons that will live on for the next ten, twenty, fifty years… if not more.

I said as much 5 years ago at the European Parliament:

https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/

3/3

#funding #EU #SmallTech

The Future of Internet Regulation at the European Parliament

A brief write-up of my talk at the EU Parliament last week with embedded videos of my talk and a link to my slides.

^{Aral Balkan}

@laguiri Because we’re clearly not getting funded from the EU/ngi/NLNet:

https://ar.al/2022/10/20/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain-rejected/

https://ar.al/2022/07/29/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain/

https://ar.al/2022/09/28/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain-first-update-questions-and-answers/

#SmallWeb #Domain #Kitten #Place #funding #EU #NLNet #NGI #Horizon2020

@laguiri Well, some of us are trying and it would be amazing if folks actually funded us so we could continue to exist and do our work.

https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

https://small-tech.org

https://small-tech.org/fund-us

#SmallWeb #SmallTechnologyFoundation #funding #foss #commons

What is the Small Web?

Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player.

^{Aral Balkan}

Interesting story: did you know the Web wasn’t initially understood or embraced at CERN? It was seen as a distraction.

Here’s Robert’s video of Ben Segal – lovely human being and Tim’s mentor – showing us around CERN ~15 years ago and telling the story (see if you can spot a much younger me in shot):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3nF6Jw6uU

“The crucial thing was the development in the USA.”

Here’s hoping Europe will do better with the Small Web.

Doesn’t look like it, though.

#SmallWeb #EU #funding #web

Ben Segal - The Mentor of Tim Berners-Lee at CERN

You know Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of the World Wide Web. CERN is the birthplace. So, how did Tim look up to at CERN? Ben Segal. Here Ben gives us some...

^YouTube

This is approximately how long it takes to deploy a Small Web¹ place currently using Domain² (under a minute).

https://vimeo.com/932155088

I plan on reducing that another order of magnitude to single-digit seconds by the end of the week.

(Made a recording so we can compare it afterwards.) ;)

Learn more about Domain on our failed @NGIZero funding application: https://ar.al/2022/10/20/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain-rejected/

💕

¹ https://codeberg.org/domain/app

#Domain #SmallWeb #technical #design #ngi #NLNet #eu #funding

app

Domain is a free and open Small Web hosting platform.

^Codeberg.org

"You have to understand, we’re responsible for taxpayer money here. We can’t just make a donation to your open source project."

— a national government who relies on #Matrix when being asked to support it financially

Read more about the problem and some initiatives that are responding to it:

https://matrix.org/blog/2024/04/open-source-publicly-funded-service/

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #funding #xz #sustainability

Open Source Infrastructure must be a publicly funded service.

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

^{Matthew Hodgson (matrix.org)}