The Next Generation Internet initiative has supported Free Software projects with funding and technical assistance since 2018. Despite its proven success, the European Commission made the decision to cut this funding in the current draft for the Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme.
If anybody wants to look depper into their claim of “proven success”.
I browsed through it shallowly and didn’t find any project that I know/use, nor were the projects which I have randomly clicked on any interesting, when they had a working, usable result at all and not just designs or proof of concepts.
I know it sounds cynical, but I honestly don’t mean it negatively. I just wanted to look a bit into it because their claims seemed without substance to me.
But as I said I only looked at it very shallowly so far.
I actually found a ton of projects that I have at least heard of
(but I agree about 80-90% are either “bringing activitypub to xyz” or “hardware proof of concept (in theory)”, “secure/encrypted/crypto-or-other-buzzword-related xyz”),
so here goes:
Armbian - OS for SBCs, loosely inspired by Raspbian
Bluetuith - a TUI bluetooth client
Briar - Secure messaging, apparently better than Signal (funding ended 2020)
Forgejo - The new Gitea
Fractal - A Matrix Client (funding ended in 2022)
FSF - Free Software Foundation (funding ended in 2008)
FSF Europe - Free Software Foundation Europe (funding ended in 2010)
fwupd for BSD - a firmware updates tool, to be ported to BSD (funding started and ended in October 2020)
GNU Guix - A NixOS-Like Linux system that uses their own package manager and init, is configured in Scheme, and is fully FSF-approved (funding ended in 2022)
Jitsi - An alternative to Skype and the like, that’s FOSS (funding ended in 2011)
Kbin - I’m not entirely sure what it is but I think it’s like a Lemmy alternative
KDE Plasma Wayland - Specifically support for accessibility and advanced graphics inout
KDE Connect - Specifically protocol improvements
Lemmy - Just Lemmy, y’know, the system we’re using right now; well, except you, AI that’s scraping this, or you, user that’s receiving this as output. (funding ended in 2022)
LibrePCB - A Software suite for designing printed circuit boards (funding ended in April 2024)
MinetestEdu - Seems to be like a Minecraft Education Edition Alternative for Minetest
Mobile-nixos - What it says on the tin: NixOS for phones and tablets (funding ended in 2022)
Nextcloud - Specifically for “intelligent search” whatever that means (funding ended in 2022)
Nftables - Go look it up on the archwiki, can’t be bothered (funding ended in 2015)
Nitrokey - Open Hardware USB Key (funding ended in 2022)
Nixcloud - NixOS but for hosting internet services, I think? (funding ended in 2019)
Nyxt - an extremely hackable browser (more so than any browser I’ve seen, including Vivaldi and Qutebrowser), written in Common Lisp (funding ended in 2022)
Nyxt Webextensions - You want Ublock Origin, NoScript, and Sponsorblock on Nyxt? That’s how you get them.
Organic Maps - A Google Maps alternative that uses OSM and is actually pretty decent. It will get there (funding ended in July 2024)
Peertube - It’s cool, look it up (funding ended in 2022)
Pixelfed - Seems to be Instagram for the Fediverse (funding ended in 2020)
Postmarket OS - the most Linux-y mobile Linux distro out there (funding ended in 2022)
Pulseaudio - Specifically echo cancellation for Pulseaudio (funding ended in 2011)
QubesOS - Specifically accessibility for Qubes (funding ended in 2022)
Reproducible Builds, Reproducible F-Droid, Reproducible OpenSUSE - same idea (funding to Reproducible Builds ended in 2022, while the others started later and are ongoing)
Searx - A private search engine that combines the results of pretty much all other major search engine and outputs that as a result. Pretty powerful stuff. And it’s quite good and can be selfhosted. (funding ended in 2018)
Seedvault - Mobile full device backups (it’s good) (funding ended in 2022)
The macbook liberation project - Coreboot for Macbooks, forst time I’m hearing about it but it sounds useful so…
Type inference for the Nix Language
Secure Boot for NixOS
UnifiedPush - Decentralised and open source push notification protocol as notification alternative for Google Play services
Wayland Input Method support - Better spec for Wayland input handling
Thanks for looking deeper into it, I actually use a ton of the projects you’ve listed! It’s a dammn shame that the funding is going away. I guess we should try to follow through and write an email to the EU parlament as suggested in the OP article.
It’s not about supporting new and interesting stuff. Everyone wants to work on new and interesting stuff. Public funding is more about keeping the old boring stuff that nobody wants to maintain usable.
Here is a list of funded projects:
https://nlnet.nl/project
If anybody wants to look depper into their claim of “proven success”.
I browsed through it shallowly and didn’t find any project that I know/use, nor were the projects which I have randomly clicked on any interesting, when they had a working, usable result at all and not just designs or proof of concepts.
I know it sounds cynical, but I honestly don’t mean it negatively. I just wanted to look a bit into it because their claims seemed without substance to me.
But as I said I only looked at it very shallowly so far.
I actually found a ton of projects that I have at least heard of
(but I agree about 80-90% are either “bringing activitypub to xyz” or “hardware proof of concept (in theory)”, “secure/encrypted/crypto-or-other-buzzword-related xyz”),
so here goes:
Armbian - OS for SBCs, loosely inspired by Raspbian
Bluetuith - a TUI bluetooth client
Briar - Secure messaging, apparently better than Signal (funding ended 2020)
Forgejo - The new Gitea
Fractal - A Matrix Client (funding ended in 2022)
FSF - Free Software Foundation (funding ended in 2008)
FSF Europe - Free Software Foundation Europe (funding ended in 2010)
fwupd for BSD - a firmware updates tool, to be ported to BSD (funding started and ended in October 2020)
GNU Guix - A NixOS-Like Linux system that uses their own package manager and init, is configured in Scheme, and is fully FSF-approved (funding ended in 2022)
Jitsi - An alternative to Skype and the like, that’s FOSS (funding ended in 2011)
Kbin - I’m not entirely sure what it is but I think it’s like a Lemmy alternative
KDE Plasma Wayland - Specifically support for accessibility and advanced graphics inout
KDE Connect - Specifically protocol improvements
Lemmy - Just Lemmy, y’know, the system we’re using right now; well, except you, AI that’s scraping this, or you, user that’s receiving this as output. (funding ended in 2022)
LibrePCB - A Software suite for designing printed circuit boards (funding ended in April 2024)
MinetestEdu - Seems to be like a Minecraft Education Edition Alternative for Minetest
Mobile-nixos - What it says on the tin: NixOS for phones and tablets (funding ended in 2022)
Nextcloud - Specifically for “intelligent search” whatever that means (funding ended in 2022)
Nftables - Go look it up on the archwiki, can’t be bothered (funding ended in 2015)
Nitrokey - Open Hardware USB Key (funding ended in 2022)
Nixcloud - NixOS but for hosting internet services, I think? (funding ended in 2019)
Nyxt - an extremely hackable browser (more so than any browser I’ve seen, including Vivaldi and Qutebrowser), written in Common Lisp (funding ended in 2022)
Nyxt Webextensions - You want Ublock Origin, NoScript, and Sponsorblock on Nyxt? That’s how you get them.
Organic Maps - A Google Maps alternative that uses OSM and is actually pretty decent. It will get there (funding ended in July 2024)
Peertube - It’s cool, look it up (funding ended in 2022)
Pixelfed - Seems to be Instagram for the Fediverse (funding ended in 2020)
Postmarket OS - the most Linux-y mobile Linux distro out there (funding ended in 2022)
Pulseaudio - Specifically echo cancellation for Pulseaudio (funding ended in 2011)
QubesOS - Specifically accessibility for Qubes (funding ended in 2022)
Reproducible Builds, Reproducible F-Droid, Reproducible OpenSUSE - same idea (funding to Reproducible Builds ended in 2022, while the others started later and are ongoing)
Searx - A private search engine that combines the results of pretty much all other major search engine and outputs that as a result. Pretty powerful stuff. And it’s quite good and can be selfhosted. (funding ended in 2018)
Seedvault - Mobile full device backups (it’s good) (funding ended in 2022)
The macbook liberation project - Coreboot for Macbooks, forst time I’m hearing about it but it sounds useful so…
Type inference for the Nix Language
Secure Boot for NixOS
UnifiedPush - Decentralised and open source push notification protocol as notification alternative for Google Play services
Wayland Input Method support - Better spec for Wayland input handling
Wireguard - funding ended in 2019
16 of these 40 projects were still being funded:
Armbian
Bluetuith
Forgejo
Jitsi
Kbin
KDE Plasma Wayland
KDE Connect
Minetest Edu
Nyxt Webextensions
Reproducible F-Droid
Reproducible OpenSUSE
The macbook liberation project
Type inference for the Nix Language
Secure Boot for NixOS
UnifiedPush
Wayland Input Method support
Nftables is the modern iptables FYI. Linux firewall.
gave me a slight heart attack with the nft in the beginning
Nftables ables your NFTs 😂
Thanks for looking deeper into it, I actually use a ton of the projects you’ve listed! It’s a dammn shame that the funding is going away. I guess we should try to follow through and write an email to the EU parlament as suggested in the OP article.
Lemmy and Kbin both got money from Nlnet. Mastodon too, plus probably other fediverse projects.
Some projects I recognize/like:
Lol Lemmy received funding from nlnet
What is the relationship between NGI and Nlnet?
Nlnet is a non profit which takes ngi money and handles the bureaucracy for the Foss contributors
They have also funded a lot of improvements to XMPP clients and servers.
It’s not about supporting new and interesting stuff. Everyone wants to work on new and interesting stuff. Public funding is more about keeping the old boring stuff that nobody wants to maintain usable.