Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?
- Reference: 1753359305
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/07/24/microsoftowned_github_says_open_source/
- Source link:
"Open source software is open digital infrastructure that our economies and societies rely on. Nevertheless, open source maintenance continues to be underfunded, especially when compared to physical infrastructure like roads or bridges. So we ask: how can the public sector better support open source maintenance," GitHub's director of developer policy Felix Reda [1]said , without a shred of irony.
Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze [2]READ MORE
The Register would like to point out that a good starting point might involve Microsoft putting its hand in its own pocket to start the fund raising. The proprietary software giant reported $72.3 billion (around £65 billion) in net income over its last financial year ( [3]fiscal 2024 ) yet which would appear eager to spend other people's money wherever possible
Reda added:
"There is a profound mismatch between the importance of open source maintenance and the public attention it receives. The demand-side value of open source software to the global economy is estimated at $8.8 trillion, and the European Commission's own research shows that OSS contributes a minimum of €65-95 billion ($76.5-111.8 billion) to the EU economy annually. The flip side of everybody benefiting from this open digital infrastructure is that too few feel responsible for paying the tab."
[4]
GitHub's call for the scales to be balanced is based on a [5]study , carried out by the Open Forum Europe, Fraunhofer ISI, and the European University Institute, into an existing sovereign tech fund: Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency, which opened funding in 2022.
[6]
[7]
"In the Sovereign Tech Fund, we have developed a new instrument with which we can effectively invest in Europe's digital sovereignty using secure, sustainable, and resilient open source enabling technologies," Franziska Brantner, parliamentary state secretary for economic affairs and climate action, said at the time. "The fund was developed in co-creation with the open source community and can respond flexibly to the needs of the users. It is to be consolidated and scaled up in the coming years."
GitHub's suggestion, though, is for a bigger scale-up than Brantner and colleagues had perhaps planned – taking the core concept of the fund and making it Europe-wide. Where the Sovereign Tech Agency started with a modest €1 million ($1.18 million) and grew to a little over €23 million ($27 million), GitHub's call is for "no less than €350 million" ($412 million) as a "minimum contribution from the upcoming EU multiannual budget" – a pull on ever-tightening public coffers which accounts for less than half a percent of GitHub parent Microsoft's annual profit for the last financial year.
[8]
The fund, the study says, should pull funding from "industry, national governments, and the EU," without volunteering GitHub or Microsoft as part of said industry, and provide a single place for open source maintainers to apply for funds - borrowing from the design of GitHub's own Secure Open Source Fund, a relatively narrowly focused grant programme which provides $10,000 to maintainers of selected open source software projects.
The bureaucracy should be kept to a minimum, the report recommends, and the fund should be politically independent with a community focus.
[9]After clash over Rust in Linux, now Asahi lead quits distro, slams Linus' kernel leadership
[10]Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?
[11]San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source
[12]Open Source world's Bruce Perens emits draft Post-Open Zero Cost License
[13]Is it time to tip open source developers? Here's one way to do it
It's a call to action which will likely resonate with the signatories to an open letter sent to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen [14]back in March calling for the creation of a sovereign infrastructure fund "to support public investments," with "significant additional commitment of funds" – but which did not specifically call for said funds to be directed towards open source software and hardware projects.
"Current digital infrastructure is to a large degree built on layers and layers of open source," notes Daniel Stenberg, founder and lead developer of the cURL project and president of the European Open Source Academy, in support of the study, "and yet a substantial part of this open source is built and maintained by enthusiasts or other financially- and resource-constrained teams. Funding options like the EU-STF proposal can truly help enforce the ecosystem and offer new paths towards sustainability."
The study is available to download now [15]on the OpenForum Europe website ; questions put to the European Commission had not been answered at the time of publication.
[16]
Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, told us her organization has worked with the UK public sector for some time on a blueprint for open source.
Open source community split over offer of 'corporate' welfare for critical dev tools [17]READ MORE
"We love that the EU is working on a fund and that is definitely a critical part of the landscape, but our approach is a little more holistic. As the world's first country to have an open source first policy in its public sector, we have a head start on understanding what is needed and funding is indeed absolutely critical.
"But for that money to be put to good use it needs much more and that more is a landscape review which ensures that the practical steps are taken across the infrastructure to embed the necessary processes, whether in the scoping of the proposals for funding, training the examiners, or ensuring that the companies funded don't simply dump code on GitHub without planning its longevity and building the necessary communities."
Recommendations OpenUK made earlier this year include "similar proposals" to the Sovereign tech fund, but also consider how funding can be allocated, innovation management and ways the "national infrastructure can be underpinned in the open source world."
"We are currently unable to share full details as we continue to workshop the recommendations with our public sector, but hope that a fuller picture will emerge this autumn." ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/we-need-a-european-sovereign-tech-fund/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/16/open_source_maintainers_state_of_open/
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2024-q4/press-release-webcast
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aIZNN1KwEP6FaQtMSQSFsgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aIZNN1KwEP6FaQtMSQSFsgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aIZNN1KwEP6FaQtMSQSFsgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aIZNN1KwEP6FaQtMSQSFsgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/13/ashai_linux_head_quits/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/14/youngsters_in_foss/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/25/open_source_funding_ads/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/30/bruce_perens_post_open_license/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/07/thanksdev_open_source_funding/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/17/european_tech_sovereign_fund/
[15] https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aIZNN1KwEP6FaQtMSQSFsgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/16/sourceware_open_source_openssf/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure
Yeah...and it recommends that the EU-STF should be low bureaucracy, politically independent, and strategically aligned with EU policy objectives. Those three are totally inimicable purely on logical grounds in most political systems, but doubly so in the EU.
There's only two outcomes here:
1) Nothing. The EU and member nations talk and talk and talk but can agree nothing. Nothing exceptional in that.
2) It all goes through, the EU creates a dreadful governance structure of undeserving place-men and poor qualified favourites, the organisation becomes a huge, slow moving, bloated bureaucracy that starts to cherry pick the winners primarily on national interest lines in response to political stakeholder pressure, and the outcome is that fund completely fails to support FOSS. Am I being unfair? Well, imagine the Mozilla Foundation with more money, but provided through a collection of sparring governments, that's "success" for an EU-STF.
Re: Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure
You forgot the 10 years of meetings; alternating between Brussels, Paris, Rome, Nice, Davos and some French Island in the Caribbean (depending on season) where they agree an acronym that doesn't have the words in the right order for any of the member languages
The way this was presented is startlingly similar to the proposal from the BBC for a tax based funding: Even those who don't use, nor have any interest in, what's offered still have to pay for it.
It does seem that the concept of a subscription is alien to these people. Or, more likely, they know they are not offering something that would be value for money for many and so they'd not get many subscriptions. Hence these insane ideas that they should be funded at public expense regardless of if it's of any benefit to the public at all.
So the EU will pay up 'cause it's not their money and they don't care. And you can't sack them 'cause they don't answer to you. Same as any government, really.
Tell me how anyone in the UK hasn't benefited from open source?
Let's try and narrow it down. Firstly, they will not be internet users.
Secondly, they will not watch Sky TV ( [1]https://www.sky.com/opensourcesoftware/SkyHD/ )
Don't bank with barclays (and no doubt many others) ( [2]https://section6.io/insight/unpacking-the-checkout-how-supermarkets-and-open-source-software-share-a-business-model/
We've already excluded the internet, so no need to mention Netflix ( [3]https://www.linkedin.com/posts/machaddr_netflix-freebsd-opensource-activity-7264610162236162048-rkrT
I could go on... Or maybe I should instead moan about paying for schools despite having no children? Or the police despite never committed a crime, or or free OAP bus passes, despite never using buses, or lifeguards at the beaches despite never going in the sea....
[1] https://www.sky.com/opensourcesoftware/SkyHD/
[2] https://section6.io/insight/unpacking-the-checkout-how-supermarkets-and-open-source-software-share-a-business-model/
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/machaddr_netflix-freebsd-opensource-activity-7264610162236162048-rkrT
Many of us give back via our own open-source code.
So we would be exempt? How would anyone police that correctly?
This is just a stupid power grab by a dying company.
They are paying for all that services. So, who is benefitting from open source? The users, or Google, Facebook, Sky, Neflix, banks, etc. etc? Who can slash their investments, hire less people, and increase profits, exploiting free labor?
People do not have to pay to send pupils to schoo, or call police.... that's very different.
Yes we do. We pay out of general taxation. Are you suggesting that open source is funded out of general taxation too?
Meanwhile the point is way over... there...
What you're listing are groups that do use open source. That's fine! They can invest from their profits, or as an alternative they could provide open source support, or they could pay a subscription.
Doesn't matter if it's Sky, or Barclays or anyone else: If they use open source then it's in their interest to support open source.
I'm talking about the EU funding open source. To what purpose? What is the benefit to the people of this. And note again: Companies using open source are likely to be investing anyway.
Plus, there is a difference between open source and Schools (public ones), the Police et al: Those are public services. How is open source a public service?
I think what's confused you here is regular people don't go to GitHub and download repositories: They don't know how and have no need to. Rather, companies do, and they then provide their services to the public. So my argument is that it's the companies that should be investing as they're choosing to use GitHub, not the end user. The end user - the public - mostly don't have a clue about that and wouldn't know the difference between open source and closed: It's just something that works.
And if the company doesn't find that specific open source platform to be worth the cost: They will look elsewhere. That will encourage the providers to maintain the quality of their services.
And the point of the Article was Microsoft wanting the EU to fund Microsoft's open source repository, GitHub (specifically): So companies that use something else, or close source their code don't impact on M$ income stream. And the public aren't benefitting directly as the vast majority won't be using GitHub. And hence why this is a parallel to the BBC TV licencing argument: The BBC want the public to pay via Tax for something they may not be directly using. As in if they're in a pub and the pub has their TV on (licenced for public viewing) - the cost of that licence is covered by the profits made by the Pub through sales of drinks and food.
TL:DR Let the market decide what gets funded/supported as the EU is clueless about open source so won't know when they're being conned over it.
A slight correction: Companies decide if they use open source code or not. End users don't care.
But I do have a thought as to what is really behind this proposal from M$: The more open source code out there, the more code available to train AI models.
That seems the most logical reason for why M$, through their subsidiary, would want the EU to fund projects to get more open source code.
Sure, there are benefits to open source: You get more code reviewers, for one (and more hackers trying to find exploits) but open source doesn't mean free: It just means the code is available for review and, depending on the licence model, for modification and use to generate variations of the code and further development. But that's for people developing software to support: They can fund this through a licence fees, where applicable, and through their own investment - and that's the main point I've been trying to make (and getting distracted and by the looks of it - occasionally botching an edit). A subscription model might support access to a pool of open source code: That might be an alternative. But there's no need for the EU to get involved.
Mostly you are completely correct
But, to split hairs which may well not need splitting, a lot of the beach lifeguards are provided by the RNLI which is a charity that doesn’t accept any government money.
Such a simple solution - a tax on every device sold that has a propitiatory OS on it. That should cheer MS no end.
MS wouldn't care and neither would any other software company - they'd just increase the price and the end user then has to pay. Since this would be implemented 100 different ways by 100 different governments, most of it wouldn't be ringfenced and go back to its intended use anyway as most governments are either inept or just as cash-grabbing as the corporations, so end users would then just be paying increased prices for nothing (and yes I'm an old cynic...)
.That sort of response to situations like this always puzzles me.
Surely, every company charges as much as they can to maximise profit (too cheap, not much profit; too expensive, too few sold)
If they could get away with increasing the cost, they'd do it anyway, just for the extra profit.
One of the limiting factors that prevents them from charging more is that they have competitors who aren't. If I make laptops and decide to increase my prices by 5%, but you make laptops and don't do that, I expect some people to stop buying mine and start buying yours, so I don't put in that increase. If someone puts on a tax of 5%, then everyone has to pay it. At that point, I know you'll increase your prices too, so it's safe for me to do it. It is possible that someone chooses to take less profit in the hope of winning more customers from the rest of us, but I still expect so many people to raise their prices that it feels possible. Also, one of the risks of raising prices is angry customers who see me as greedy, but if the tax is going into effect, I have the perfect excuse by saying that I won't be getting any of the money and it's a legal requirement, which, if true, tends to be pretty good at making angry customers go away and be angry at someone else.
Thank-you. You made some great points I naively hadn't thought of.
"One of the limiting factors that prevents them from charging more is that they have competitors who aren't."
And that's where brands become important. Apple hardware margins (around 35%) are far better than the likes of Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, and that's not because the hardware is better, it's because the buyers are willing to pay more for the brand. Apple maintain an aura of exclusivity by keeping hardware and software integrated, it's far more difficult for the makers of Windows machines to differentiate their offer.
If a hardware company can do something that the market perceives nobody else can (say Nvidia) then yes, they can and do put up their prices because they can - Nvidia hardware margin is around 50%.
Both of your examples have a lot of software involved. Apple does charge more for their hardware than the hardware costs, but at least some of that is because some buyers want to run Mac OS and are paying for that. Mac OS is not free. How much does that explain the price difference, and how much therefore is just from the brand? I don't know, neither do you, and likely Apple would have some trouble answering that. Nvidia not only has a lot of compatibility that other GPU manufacturers don't, but they also tend to make faster, if incredibly power-hungry GPUs. People who want fast and compatible are buying a real advantage, not the bragging rights that an Nvidia card is powering this box of theirs. At least mostly, as I could see some gamers having a brand loyalty problem to a GPU manufacturer, but if LLM companies could make more models with someone else's chips, they would.
> ... propitiatory OS ...
What a delightfully apposite malapropism.
Such a simple solution - a tax on every device sold that has a propitiatory OS on it.
" a propitiatory OS "
A serendipitously typo or autoconfuse really excelling itself.
Windows a propitiatory OS; the mandatory chicken entrails make it seem so. :)
Hers is a deal for you !!!!
I will gladly pay more tax to go into a 'Sovereign Fund' .... IF MS remove 'AI' crap out of Windows 11 and its children.
Else MS & Friends can afford to pay a 'TAX' to keep all the Open Source they 'borrow' running and improving !!!
:)
Proprietary?
If I understand this right an American owned company running proprietary software, is advocating that the EU give them lots of money as part of the EU's sovereign technology push to reduce their dependance on American technology.
Re: Proprietary?
The hypocrisy pointed out in the article is valid, but no, you don't understand it correctly. The correct version is:
An American owned company running proprietary software, is advocating that the EU give them the authors of open source software, not them lots of money as part of the EU's sovereign technology push to reduce their dependance on American technology.
GitHub does not stand to benefit if the EU goes along with this. The projects funded are likely to be at least partially run by people in the EU. But the article is right to say that Microsoft could easily pay the amounts they recommend. Admittedly, so could the EU, as it's about €0.78 per EU resident per year. In both cases, it would not be hard to spend that much and have a use for more money, so neither funding approach is very likely to end there.
Re: Proprietary?
“GitHub does not stand to benefit…”
Call me cynical but if the open source people have a defined and reliable revenue stream then surely that means GitHub (MS) can then ask them to contribute for using their services :-)
Actually, no. I don’t think I’m being cynical at all - just joining the dots
Re: Proprietary?
They could try, but there are a few problems with the idea.
People who use a lot of GitHub's additional services like automated build pipelines already pay them for that. People who don't use a subset, mostly hosting. If they try to charge for hosting, they're going to end up with a much bigger, more confusing, and more dangerous to their brand version of [1]GitLab's hosting crisis . I think that, if they tried that, it would end [2]the same way , and I think GitHub knows that and doesn't want to drive people away, so they won't try.
And, if they did, since there's no tie between GitHub and the funding, they could easily migrate to some other hosting. It would be very easy for some EU company to come along and offer extremely cheap Git hosting for any project being removed from GitHub since there's already money for it. I don't think you'd even need that, since a fund that size would likely only be funding a smallish subset of projects, and they could probably be hosted quite easily with donated resources from places like university mirrors. The idea has so many holes and functional alternatives that I don't think it would be attempted.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/gitlab_data_retention_policy/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/08/gitlab_versus_the_zombie_repos/
Re: Proprietary?
>"GitHub does not stand to benefit if the EU goes along with this."
Depends, remember GitHub is still American, not European et al. so naturally if the EU is to stay true to the intent of establishing a European Open Digital Infrastructure, it has to establish something other than GitHub which is controlled by a European entity.
I suggest this is Microsoft's initial attempt to try and stay relevant to the world outside of America, it needs the world to use GitHub, so it can train CoPilot etc.
Single place for funding?
Why not suggest the UN instead? That way every country has decent opportunity to contribute ... Oh, that's right, Trump would get pissy at that idea. Can't suggest that until he's out of office.
Re: Single place for funding?
... which will be when he dies, although he may pass the throne down to Donald Jr.
Borkzilla begging for money
Hey, Redmond, you bought GitHub.
You pay for its maintenance.
Re: Borkzilla begging for money
Read the article again. They are recommending that people pay, not for GitHub, but individual open source projects, and not just those who host on GitHub.
Re: Borkzilla begging for money
However, having a sovereign fund would facilitate MS charging a cloud style subscription to opensource projects for the use of GitHub...
Better option: hire and pay developers...
.... in most ot the EU that also means you will get a pension when you retire. And paid holidays and sick time. Exactly what the "industry" wish to avoid.
Open source is aking to slavery and serfdom - lots of unpaid workers, and some peanuts for those who helpo to keep the others enslaved.
Re: Better option: hire and pay developers...
In your mind, and the minds of certain money-grubbers, but, of course, that is merely a subset of FLOSS.
Re: Better option: hire and pay developers...
No, you've been brainwashed by those who are making a lot of money, that open source is the anointed way to develop software. So they can exploit a vast availability of unpaid labour, or little paid one. A jump back of two hundred years, the worst of the industrial revolution.
Taking advantage of the freetards' greed, those who want everything without paying other's labor - and should be the first to find themselves without a pay.
Sure, there are some who can code for free because they have free time and another paid job, but that's not how you can support a whole industry.
Note that it's Microsoft - that just fired a lot of developers despite billions of profits - telling someone else has to pay them.
Open source it's just a way for large companies to avoid hiring and paying developers - and we're seeing in which direction the world is steadily turning. Some rich people feeling endowed with the right to exploit others at will. You may like it, I don't.
Re: Better option: hire and pay developers...
That's certainly a point of view. I don't particularly agree with it.
In the end FLOSS simply formalises a particular philosophy for creating and releasing code for others to use and develop as they choose. If they do so under a formal license then they are expected to abide by the terms of that license.
Whether, or not, money is made off the back of that usage is another matter entirely.
Re: Better option: hire and pay developers...
"Open source is aking to slavery and serfdom - lots of unpaid workers"
Quite a lot of opensource software is written by people paid to do so (as part of their job) - look at the likes of the Linux kernel and you'll see a very large percentage of it is written by RedHat, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD etc employees.
Re: Better option: hire and pay developers...
"Open source is aking to slavery and serfdom - lots of unpaid workers"
You may want to look up what slavery and serfdom is. Last time I checked, people are not forced to work for free on Open Source projects.
Your logic would imply many charity workers are also enslaved.
How about an alternative to github? Like all Microsoft products, the security is shit.
Yep. Github is now a dead man walking.
Who's going to run it? Especially all that CI stuff.
GitLab is still open source and I use Heptapod, which is a fork that supports Mercurial, kindly run by some bods in France.
More importantly, that won't help the actual development itself. Might be possible to use the fund for some kind of EU-wide indemnification…
M$ can STFU
They can their money where there mouth is or STFU.
Re: M$ can STFU
EU-STF is that MS for STF EU?
Companies making a profit...
...from open source software could perhaps fund it.
Re: Companies making a profit...
They use and sustain open source exactly to cut investments and hire less people. Why should they pay them, when tax payers (which of course exclude rich people with highly skilled tax consultants) can pay them instead?
FUTO
Eron Wolf has said this for a while. Open Source is Open Source but if you can afford it, pay for a license.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82tSWPUhBo
I use their GrayJay app that YouTube is constantly fighting to kill. Spotify are actively banning accounts they see using it via GrayJay (which should be made illegal for them to do as its surely anti-monopoly). I use the Android keyboard they use that doesn't collect any data. Starting to also look at Immich to replace Google Photos to host yourself. I have Bitwarden and although I don't, you can host that yourself.
Digital sovereignty
The EU should declare Linux Mint a core part of its digital sovereignty and support it with tens of millions of euro's a year. The goal should be to supplant Windows as the main desktop operating system in Europe. Let's see how favorably Microsoft responds then.
Their current stance seems positive but people need to understand that Microsoft greatly benefits from open-source too since many parts of its Azure Cloud are based on it.
And I'm somewhat irked by the fact that they're calling on Europe to fund it whilst they themselves don't spend a penny on it.
Re: Digital sovereignty
"Microsoft greatly benefits from open-source too"
From well before the open source explosion.
The orIginal Windows network (TCP/IP) stack might have been lifted from BSD Net/1 or Net/2.
Re: Digital sovereignty
Originally the statement was: "Every operating system out there is about equal, We all suck."
That was Microsoft senior vice president Brian Valentine describing the state of the art in OS security, 2003. Thank God it wasn't an AI statement (icon).
Cui bono?
A lot (if not the majority) of Open Source Software is hosted on Microsoft-owned GitHub (directly or indirectly), for free. This is because a lot of OSS is unfunded.
Microsoft is decrying that OSS is unfunded and is suggesting that OSS should be funded.
Because then OSS is no longer unfunded.
And then Microsoft can say "you have money now, you have to pay for GitHub, no more free for you".
So that Microsoft makes even more money, now also off of OSS.
This is about Microsoft getting more money. This is not about OSS getting funded.
GitHub, owned by money-bags
GitHub, owned by money-bags Microsoft, has called upon the European Union to create a publicly funded "Sovereign Tech Fund" (EU-STF) to boost the open source software ecosystem.
And git-hub owned m$ can fuck right off ...
16bn to snaffle throught open source projects the world over should have paid enough dividends to maintain the devs they "ripped off" .... or have they spaffed all their money on ai snake oil
Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure
The report ‘ [1]Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure : The Economic, Legal, and Political Feasibility of an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF)’ provides a roadmap for establishing an EU Sovereign Tech Fund to secure and maintain critical open source technologies essential for Europe’s digital sovereignty, cybersecurity/cyber resilience, and competitiveness.
[1] https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/