News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by amelius on Sunday March 20, 2022 @07:42AM (#30741836)
I'd like to see FOSS funded in the same way as science.
Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by akvadrako on Sunday March 20, 2022 @07:48AM (#30741877)
I would not. Science funding is pretty terrible, decided by politicians or groups the politicians choose who suit their interests.

I would suggest something more distributed, like giving each citizen €100 a month they can allocate to FOSS.

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by sokoloff on Sunday March 20, 2022 @10:03AM (#30742668)
That would pivot a lot of those merch and drop-shipping hawkers on YouTube to “here’s how to make your own FOSS library and collect your friends’ €100!”

We’d get a lot more of “things that qualify for the €100”, but it’s not clear that we’d get a lot more useful FOSS.

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by Leherenn on Sunday March 20, 2022 @08:13AM (#30742009)
Your average citizen probably doesn't know what open source is, let alone could name one project.

So most likely most people would not give anything because they don't know/care, and a few marketable projects (like VLC) would get most of the rest, way more than they need.

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by goodpoint on Sunday March 20, 2022 @03:34PM (#30745827)
Not all science is taxed directly by governents based on politician's whims.

FOSS could be funded by global (non-national) consortium

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by rs999gti on Sunday March 20, 2022 @04:21PM (#30746227)
Normal people don't care about FOSS or even know what it is.

They would probably use that 100 on food or fuel.

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by saltcured on Sunday March 20, 2022 @03:28PM (#30745781)
In many ways it was (and is). Many research projects are government funded and produce FOSS. The entire industrial/academic space surrounding the development of Unix, sharing of source code tapes, and the emergence of RMS and GNU were running primarily on government funding. The long-running jokes about Linux and beowulf clusters were echoes of the actual government funding driving many activities where FOSS interface with computational science.

Now, you might have the mistaken idea that science or other R&D funding is easy to access like ticking a box on a tax form. No, you need lots of bureaucratic support and so to work under government funding is to get a job in a university or other research lab that is equipped to chase, win, and collect government funding. Your position is "soft money" and depends on either you (as a principal investigator) or your boss engaging this constant struggle to win the next contract that keeps you from losing funding and your position. Some of this money splashes around to student workers, graduate students, postdocs, or interns. A lot is spent on more permanent, full-time faculty and staff as well as other infrastructure and administration.

The big shift I have seen in my ~25 year career is that the industrial participants in this environment have shifted from being primarily government-contract focused to being consumer-focused. The whole cloud/internet revolution has brought these new corporations who no longer depend first and foremost on government grants from the science or defense research complex. Earlier, we also saw shifts with enterprise, B2B-focused corporations and vendors, but I think they often had more overlap with the traditional government funding sources and also blended in a little more.

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by jan_Inkepa on Sunday March 20, 2022 @08:23AM (#30742071)
Germany has government funding/grants available for open source projects. (I haven't looked into it in detail because of a dislike of paperwork).
Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by pabs3 on Sunday March 20, 2022 @08:52AM (#30742232)
I think you are talking about the Prototype Fund?

https://prototypefund.de/en/

NLNet also do grants, but the paperwork is minimal, just a short web form describing the idea.

https://nlnet.nl/

Re:FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging ... by BeFlatXIII on Monday March 21, 2022 @12:42PM (#30756266)
Via grant proposals that all include obligatory tenuous connections to the "big" issues of the day (anti-cancer research and green energy in case of the sciences)?