: Nearly 100 orgs plead for homegrown lifeline amid geopolitical tensions

European companies like Airbus, Dassault, and OVHcloud apparently want Europe to reduce its dependence on US tech companies.

Thoughts?

  • ambitiousslab@lemmy.mlEnglish
    71·
    2 days ago

    I would love for such a fund to invest very liberally in these companies, on the condition that anything it funds must be free and open source - public money, public code! The only way to take down these giant US companies is to work together, and the most effective way to work together is to release everything in the open in such a way that anyone can build on top of it.

    If the money just gets funneled into these companies so they can build their own lock-in, the EU would be recreating the same dependency on a few small companies that happened in the US. It wouldn’t increase productivity in the long run, it would instead substitute dependency on a few US companies for a few EU companies.

    But, if they invest in open source software, it could spur innovation not only in the companies that are directly funded, but also thousands of other companies throughout the EU that would now have common infrastructure that they can build on top of.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      I would love for such a fund to invest very liberally in these companies, on the condition that anything it funds must be free and open source

      That’s not how the game is played. You absorb the public losses. But they privatize the gains. Otherwise, there’s no deal.

      If the money just gets funneled into these companies so they can build their own lock-in, the EU would be recreating the same dependency on a few small companies that happened in the US.

      That’s the goal, yes.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
      51·
      1 day ago

      I wholeheartedly agree with this. But what actually makes this work is taxes.

      If a government provides funds to grow a business, and that business makes more money, the government benefits from both corporate taxes and keeping that money in their country, thus going to individuals who also pay taxes, and spend money on material goods which means more taxes.

      The challenge with FOSS and moneymaking, is it only works if there’s a profit center to come back via taxes. Sure, it’s public money, but government is also a business. And since OSI still doesnt have a tier to support license like SSPLv1, source available is the best companies can do in that kind of situation (think MongoDB and Redis, for instance).

      So, to me, an admittedly N of 1:

      • Provide public funds on requirement of an SSPLv1 style license
      • If there is no business model for SSPLv1 (non-reseller), require FOSS release after a period of 5 years of exclusive use of code built with public funds