This report looks fantastic; thanks for sharing it!
A fun fact; I also thought this was a new initiative, but when I went to the home page, it looked very familiar: https://sovereigntechfund.de/en
Then I realized that this is the same initiative that we found a couple of months ago, which had a different name and domain back then (Digital Infrastructure Fund): https://infrastructurefund.de/en
I plan to share this thread on my Twitter, so let me share my remarks/questions here.
Can the recipients be outside of Germany/Europe?
Last year in FOSSBackstage, Julia Reda said that “There should be no restrictions on the nationality of the people who can apply” as one of the principles of this fund. However, I couldn’t see any clear criteria in this report.
Although it would be wonderful to establish a global public fund immediately, I expect we probably will go through a “national public funds to local open source ecosystem” phase.
Flexible/agile funding is crucial.
If we want to achieve scalability, our funding models should reflect the nature of software development.
The current models can be perfect for single and long-term projects, but they turn into bottlenecks for these new digital public goods (similar to the Waterfall vs. Agile struggles we had in the past).
It should be much more efficient to look past success (number of dependents, installations, etc.) instead of allocating resources by judging future promises.
In other words, in the long run, we should use those “metrics” not only to find the projects but to distribute the fund itself, with minimum paperwork and bureaucracy.
How to keep these public funds continuous?
The report mentions a lump sum of ten million euros for this fund, which would be an excellent start.
On the other hand, a limited budget cannot permanently fix this problem. Hence, eventually, we need to answer how to generate revenue for these funds to make them continuous.
On what to do next
- @benjam Do you think Open Collective could play a role in distributing the funds since you already have a strong community and infrastructure?
- @RichardLitt Probably you already thought about it, but it would be great to invite them to Sustain podcast?
I’m in!