[hardcopy]

A few weeks ago a wrote in to my Senator on the complete lack of government funding for independent engineers/small projects building FOSS (USA).

NLNet in the EU is awesome. We really should have something like the NLNet in the USA.

[onthecanposting]

I'm undecided if it would be a net good or bad. If you think government should subsidize infrastructure that creates value that's hard to bill to users (like roads), then software is a pretty logical extension. However, given my personal knowledge of transportation project delivery and the astronomical amount of waste it includes, I suspect this might just make things worse.

[hardcopy]

I like NLNet model. NLNet isn't a government agency. NLNet is a nonprofit foundation that is responsible for distributing certain government grants, such as NGI Core Zero, which are themed for particular goals.

I definitely wouldn't want FOSS projects to apply directly to a government agency.

https://nlnet.nl/foundation/

[lucb1e]

OSTIF is vaguely similar and iirc from the USA

[hardcopy]

OSTIF scope is really narrow. It's mainly for patching security related bugs/vulnerabilities in existing large projects. And AFAIK it has a significantly smaller source of funding, relying on corporate donations.

It's not comparable to the projects that NLNet funds.

[paulddraper]

IDK maybe we just should let the EU pay for it

[redkoala]

We need more funding, not less.