- From: Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us>
- Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2023 12:59:08 -0400
- To: mail@sebastianlasse.de
- Cc: public-swicg@w3.org
- Message-ID: <CAA1s49U=y0N7FMrDeZfx9xMzoOm=OTjW-yC4TtevUUi2CRP6PA@mail.gmail.com>
The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American nonprofit corporation. It is not an agency of, or creation of, the government -- although it has received funding from US government funded programs. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund) It seems to me that AS/AP, as infrastructural protocols, would qualify for the German program since they are not "user-facing applications." However, a SocialWeb client would not qualify. bob wyman On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 12:43 PM <mail@sebastianlasse.de> wrote: > Thanks for the feedback. The USA had such a programm. > Then a crazy fool became their president and completely freezed it. > > I had talked about the US OpenTechFund with Karen Kornbluh. > > She was the Former US Ambassador to OECD during the Obama > adminstration and responsible for the Fund once. > She promised to reopen it, I proposed to make it an alliance with > sovereigntech … Seems it didn't happen. > > Please note that applications are open to anyone. > > It is also possible to include different milestones or work in one application. > > In the beginning my gov. asked wikimedia foundation and me for ActivityPub > how much it needs > to secure critical infrastructure. So given the initial promises of “60 > Mio.” I am not fully convinved yet :) > > Please note that last round was just a closed start for Open Wounds which bleeded heavily. > It was a so called “Nachtragshaushalt” [a budget which is small cause it > was negotiated too late] … > > About “not looking”, I can't go in details just be assured that their > interest in ActivityPub is high! > > Sebastian > > > March 23, 2023 at 4:01 PM, "Bob Wyman" <bob@wyman.us > <bob@wyman.us?to=%22Bob%20Wyman%22%20%3Cbob%40wyman.us%3E>> wrote: > > It is great to see that the German government has taken the lead > in supporting our critical open source infrastructure. But, I continue to > be disappointed that the US government doesn't appear to have a similar > program. Some time ago, I contributed to an unsuccessful Schmidt Futures > proposal > <https://www.plaintextgroup.com/reports/securing-open-source-software-at-the-source> > to modify the NDAA to include such a process. I remain hopeful that the US > will, in time, recognize that our open source infrastructure is just as > important as our road, port, and utility infrastructure. My guess is that > supporting Open Source Infrastructure produces a benefit-cost ratio > (benefit/cost) exceeding that of virtually any other government investment. > (Note: The English version of the Sovereign Tech Fund announcement is here: > https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/applications/ ) > > I'm intrigued by the *minimum funding level of €150,000* and that they > have a budget of €10 million/year. I'm assuming that the minimum is set at > something like a single-year's salary for an experienced developer. > > They say they are "*not* looking for user-facing applications, such as > messaging apps or file storage services," which makes sense. They are > properly focused on infrastructure, not applications that use that > infrastructure. The projects they started funding last October give some > sense of their scope and focus. Those were: Bundler/RubyGems, curl, Fortran > Package Manager, OpenBGPd, OpenMLS, OpenPGP.js/GopenPGP, OpenSSH, Sequoia > PGP, and WireGuard. Their feasibility study provides additional insight > into their motivations and process. ( > https://sovereigntechfund.de/files/SovereignTechFund_Machbarkeitsstudie_en.pdf > ) > > bob wyman > > >
Received on Thursday, 23 March 2023 16:59:34 UTC