[walterbell]

NLnet funds tactical feature improvements in selected OSS projects, not Google-scale underwriting of employee teams.

> don't have the bandwidth to pull off this sort of delicate technical work

What's the basis for this claim? There are literally 1,000 technical work engagements listed above, scoped in detail and reviewed by a few humans (not "all of Europe") at NLnet, with a track record of successful delivery to upstream OSS projects.

[roenxi]

> What's the basis for this claim?

The title of the piece is "Open Letter to the European Commission".

The EU commission has more important things to focus on than this low impact slush fund aspect of NLnet. Given the lack of impressive successes that you can point at, maybe there is an argument that they are and that NLnet just isn't doing very well. I dunno. If they could manage to get a Google-scale company to take root in Europe it'd achieve a lot more.

[walterbell]

Are you comparing nonprofit project budgets of a few thousand euros to corporate VC/investment budgets that are orders of magnitudes larger?

> the lack of impressive success

Successful delivery of hundreds of projects doesn't count? Improvements to widely used office and communication software? Improving critical infrastructure used by journalists and other members of civil society? Mentoring the next generation of developers who can staff future EU technology companies?

What type of tech projects, budget and success do you expect the EU commission to fund? Are there previous successes that could be emulated, from the EU or other governments? Google was created by private investors, as was Skype.

[roenxi]

> What type of tech projects, budget and success do you expect the EU commission to fund? Are there previous successes that could be emulated, from the EU or other governments? Google was created by private investors, as was Skype.

I'm not sure why you think the EU should be wasting bandwidth on this given that you are (accurately) identifying that it isn't managing to marshal much capital or following a model that leads to notable successes. The focus should be on incubating more successful strategies. The way to get good OSS ecosystems is a web of companies making money off open source software. That is how we get things like Linux, Chrome or Postgres.

> Successful delivery of hundreds of projects doesn't count?

Not really, no. Especially if the projects are already being funded by a government program - give me a budget and I can fund a thousand github projects. When you tried to list successes, you put together a list with names like XMPP or WordPress on it. And don't misunderstand me, I like XMPP and Wordpress; but they are not strategically useful to a body like the EU.

> Are you comparing nonprofit project budgets of a few thousand euros to corporate VC/investment budgets that are orders of magnitudes larger?

Yep. And it is unimpressive. It doesn't look like a close race to me, efforts via NLnet are feeble compared to the US approach, where they pour in orders of magnitude more effort and get much bigger payoffs.

The EU has a problem - no companies. They should solve that problem, not make random microdonations - there is no particular evidence that is powerful, at least not that I've seen. There is evidence that corporations are powerful at producing OSS though.

[walterbell]

> The EU has a problem - no companies. They should solve that problem

This thread is about Horizon Europe, which has a specific charter.

If you want to solve a different problem, define a new investment program and lobby for it to be funded.