Re: Sovereign Tech Fund application?

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Paul,

This looks interesting!

I know about the SPRIND program from consulting a startup but wasn't aware that there is a special open source subprogram.

And from a first glance it appears as if they are supporting base technologies (not applications) so that GNUstep could indeed fit well.

One factor is the influence on society so that it appears to me that the technology must help to prevent dependence on an oligopoly of big companies...

"The two factors most important for our evaluation and discussion are the relevance and undersupply of a project,"

Well, "undersupply" could become an issue as there are several FOSS alternatives to GNUstep (even if we consider GNUstep as superior)

"we look at how well the planning for the project is laid out. Are the activities well-structured, appropriate and feasible? Another criterion is the people or team behind the project – does the application state clearly that the teams or organizations proposed here are suitable to implement the activities requested? Is there a community behind the technology?"

The intersting thing is that although it is a German funds it is not regionally limited. And there are essentially no limitations of the legal form (company, society, informal work group etc.).

What is important is to clearly define who will work for the project and estimates of the work packages and 8 hours working days.

Generally I interpret that in this way:

- it needs a well defined project and a convincing plan

- Greg or FSF (?) could apply

- there could be funding for a handful of full-time developers (freelance mode)

- project plan requires at least (yes, not max.) 150.000€ funding

BR,

Nikolaus

Am 11.11.2023 um 15:20 schrieb wmlive@rumbero.org:

Hello everybody,

thanks to a notice on Hacker News at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38211405 about public funding for GNOME i found out about the German "Sovereign Tech Fund" at https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/.

Apparently this is a very laudable initiative to fund OSI-approved or FSF Free/Libre license based projects. This obviously applies to GNUstep even more than to to GNOME due to its added cross-platform advantage.

In my humble opinion, the only thing that still hinders GNUstep from fully thriving is the lack of developer time to properly polish both the underlying framework and the associated software relying on it. It would thus be great if the Sovereign Tech Fund would be a viable option to finance dedicated developers to allow for full time focussing on GNUstep completion and polishing.

Please have a look at https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/applications/ in order to verify if this might be helpful for the GNUstep project.

Regards,

Paul