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At a time when The EU is seeking to cut FOSS funding to funds like @NGIZero

Perhaps we need to ask the EU to fund smaller, more communal projects, rather than seeking to create Unicorns.

"The report highlighted how 30% of EU startup businesses that had grown to be valued at more than €1bn – known as unicorns – had moved abroad, and mostly to list on stock markets in the US."

theguardian.com/world/article/

The Guardian · EU ‘needs €800bn-a-year spending boost to avert agonising decline’By Phillip Inman

@aral @NGIZero Perhaps they might listen with Draghi saying it.

😏

@aral @onepict @NGIZero >Furthermore, funding for a stayup must come with a strict specification of the character of the technology it will build. Goods built using public funds must be public goods. Free Software Foundation Europe is currently raising awareness along these lines with their “public money, public code” campaign. However we must go beyond “open source” to stipulate that technology created by stayups must be not only public but also impossible to enclose. For software and hardware, this means using licenses that are copyleft. A copyleft license ensures that if you build on public technology, you must share alike. Share-alike licenses are essential so that our efforts do not become a euphemism for privatisation and to avoid a tragedy of the commons. Corporations with deep pockets must not be able to take what we create with public funds, invest their own millions on top, and not share back the value they’ve added.

☝️All of this. I really wish the FSF stateside would adopt a similar campaign to its European sister organization. (Edit: with a requirement for copyleft, sharealike licensing; as Aral notes, the FSFE doesn't currently push for that important and crucial detail)

@aspensmonster @onepict @NGIZero And, just to stress, “open source” doesn’t cut the mustard. If the openness is not protected via “share alike” licensing (AGPL, etc.) then we’re talking about privatisation, where code created from the commons can be enclosed by corporations. The FSF in Europe doesn’t currently make this distinction (and has its own issues, just like the US one does in other areas).

the distinction you're making is not between free software and open source, but between copyleft and non-copyleft. free software tends to prefer copyleft because it aligns better with our values and goals of emancipating users, whereas open source often prefers non-copyleft because it's poorly disguised exploitation of developers, but both sharealike and non-sharealike licensing qualify as free software and as open source. the assumption that free software requires copyleft is a common misconception. please don't spread or reinforce it. defending the freedoms (like copyleft does) is not necessary to respect them, and the criterion is respect, not defense.

@aral @onepict @NGIZero

Can the EU parliament even amend the legislation it's considering?

I was under the impression that it can only approve or reject whatever the Commission hands it.

If the Commission are the only ones that get a say in the wording they are the ones that need to be convinced.

@InsertUser @onepict @NGIZero It can amend it (and the council can choose to reject the amendments) as well as approve or reject it over several readings/back-and-forths.

What it cannot do – and what essentially renders it somewhat of a toy parliament compared to other parliaments – is to propose new legislation.