Future of Europe & Open Source

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Dear sustainers,

It’s been a while since I posted here; I hope everyone’s doing well out there!

There’s a new initiative from the EU called the Conference on the Future of Europe. Through their platform, they will collect & review ideas from EU citizens in the coming months.

As a long-time advocate, I took the opportunity to share two complementary ideas on how to expand and finance open-source software :point_down:

Even if you’re not an EU citizen, it would be great to hear your feedback :pray:

Merci beaucoup! :v:

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@pkafei created a Twitter poll to see people’s thoughts about the “Universal income for open source maintainers” proposal.

It was a great way to get some proper feedback, and so far, ~65% favor the idea. Of course, it’s not an overwhelming success, but still, I will take reaching a qualified majority as a pretty good sign.

By the way, four people registered and endorsed the idea on the platform after starting the poll. So, it’s almost in the Top 10 proposals in 300+ ideas, under the Digital transformation topic :rocket: Thanks again!

It’s going to end soon but feel free to cast your vote and share your opinion:

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No worries, I’m glad that I can help! Also congratulations on being on of the top 10 proposal- we really need more people to come up with actionable ways to sustain open source projects.

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We created this experimental infographic about the Open Source Subsidy Program :tada:

Open Source Subsidy Program
Open Source Subsidy Program2048×1024 393 KB

Since the discussions here primarily focus on existing open-source initiatives, it might be better to give some background information on why I’m proposing this.

One of the main reasons I’m interested in open-source software is because I’m helping companies build proprietary software for almost twenty years. My experience is that companies potentially spend substantial resources developing similar solutions due to the habit of working in silos.

I genuinely believe if we could push companies to build their solutions as open-source and increase reusability in the software industry, we should save/pool resources significantly.

Some figures to support this picture from OpenForum Europe open-source impact study, which currently I’m reading:

  • “Taking all employees in the computer programming sector in the EU, slightly more than 0.5% of their time contributes to OSS.”. I translate this as proprietary vs. open-source ratio is ~99% vs. ~1%.
  • “The analysis estimates a cost-benefit ratio of [open-source is] above 1:4.” “Overall, the benefits of Open Source greatly outweigh the costs associated with it. These benefits relate mainly to openness (including standards and independence) and labour cost savings rather than to additional revenue generation.”

So, can we create incentives for the companies to develop their, especially non-essential, solutions as open-source by setting up a dedicated subsidy program (e.g., tax breaks) for the private sector?

The goals:

  • Expand the open-source ecosystem and the culture.
  • Save resources by increasing the reusability of the solutions.
  • Maximize innovation in the software industry.

If you wish, you can find more details here: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/dbvA2U0lhmRPGcyQFCIf-vISR7iF4-8XfaH16zFzvqE/

Please feel free to let me know what you think! If you wish, I’d also be happy to arrange a call to discuss it in detail.

To be clear, working on these ideas/proposals is mostly an individual effort, next to a full-time job. So, any feedback or assistance is greatly appreciated :pray:

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