I think we're at an awkward place where governments worldwide have been slow to understand the importance of the global infrastructure that has sprouted, largely due to open source software...
Given that browsers are essential to access information, I think they shouldn't be developed behind a business model, but rather as part of a global digital infrastructure fund.
There should be some independence guarantees in order to make that organization not have to bow to pressure from governments to sacrifice privacy due to funding threats.
I agree in ways, but I think a single global fund is a bit far-reaching and over-centralized, thus prone to corruption.
I think it would make sense for, say, the US, EU, and BRICS (with maybe China as a separate entity) to each have open-source funds for OSS digital infrastructure, and cooperate on global web standards. So if one fund goes rogue/corrupt or is crippled by Republican-types, the world still has two (or three) backups.
Having worked in the non-profit space my whole career, I've always thought having government funding for OSS would be a great use of money. It's a really underutilised resource.
States invest in cultural production, e.g. by film grants, software grants would be a great way to attract talent and solve problems.
I would be shocked to learn if it weren't already happening, just frequently through several layers of obfuscation. But also, just generally. The NSA, to their minimal credit, has rather leaned in to making itself part of the OSS community by facilitating the development on a lot of the security and reverse-engineering products they use themselves. Unsurprising, considering the provenance of the internet, computers, and much of the underlying tech is deeply interconnected with the US DoD and NASA.
All that said, I do think a more open-ended "US public endowment for software development" is a great idea.
You don't need a global infrastructure fund. We already know that projects can be run where people and groups come alongside each other in the context of an open source license and work together. Some people will create "releases" of this project, and some of them will become more and less popular over time, but we don't have to have any one global entity blessing any particular team or aspect of development.
Look to how the Linux kernel is developed, and look to its full history, including forks large and small, alternate releases for alternate reasons, alternate releases by different people and teams, and so on. It's not a hypothetical, it's the organization of one of the largest software projects in the world.
And it's a good thing we don't need a global fund, because trying to start at such a high level is basically asking for this to take the next 15 years to even get started. By contrast, anyone can start a new fork of Chromium or Firefox today... which, again, is not just me theorizing, but is a thing that has happened, several times over. Making it so "getting started" is something that can happen in a distributed fashion without having to get some "global" organization to sign off or be created is superior, which is sort of softballing it a bit because it's honestly the difference between possible and impossible.
If someday that develops into a "global organization" or some set of such, hey, that's fine. But trying to get "someone else" to start it at that level... and it has to be "someone else" since none of us could even hardly start doing that ourselves... is impractical to the level of impossible.
There's too much money on the line if there is a lack of standardization and rendering/features are all over the place. I don't think it will turn that way as most users will converge on a small number of browsers.
If there is no global infra fund, there will be some type of ad-hoc board composed of some independent entities, but a lot of entities backed by large businesses. If not US then other countries as in many countries there are large tech companies aligned with government interests.
>but rather as part of a global digital infrastructure fund.
How do you ensure it’s not just laundering money with little or no work into the problem.
I think it’s messed up Google essentially funds all browsers but putting it in the hands of politicians isn’t going to help, would be better to try and have more companies funding it so at least the dependency on Google is less.
The Linux Foundation is funded by a large number of companies for which Linux is very critical to them. These companies themselves have their own developers.
> but rather as part of a global digital infrastructure fund
Sounds like a backdoor way to add a kill switch or censor filter to browsers from a central, unelected authority that does not respect the sovereignty and speech and media laws of the individual users' home countries.
No thanks, I'll take an open source, corporate controlled browser 10/10 times.
> I'm not exactly sure why I should find a corporate entity any less centralized or unelected or not respectful of rights than a government
Because corporate entities and government entities operate under radically different frameworks.
The domain of government is force. This isn't a bad thing, it is necessary. Government is the recognition that we, as human beings, can interact with each other in two fundamental ways: force or reason/diplomacy. That when reason/diplomacy is chosen life flourishes. People create, produce, trade, freely associate and basically build civilization. When force is chosen you get war, destruction, poverty, misery.
Government's primary role in society, in my opinion, is to remove the element of force from civil existence so that all interpersonal relations are consensual (there are edge cases - the parent/child relationship or the extremely ill etc. but I need to scope cap somewhere).
The concept of rights derives directly from this concept. They are the recognition that rational people can cooexist peacefully if certain aspects of the human experience are recognized and protected. Those aspects being that in order to survive as a human being your tools are reason and action; you need to be able to think freely and you need to be able to act in accordance with your rational judgements. The infringement of a person's rights is fundamentally interference in either the ability to think (freedom of expression / conscience) or the ability to act (freedom to own and acquire property, freedom to travel, freedom of association etc.)
This means that government's entire domain is force. It is the entity that gets to determine the rules around when the application of force is allowed. It is the entity that gets to step in when you and I can't agree on what the definition of "assault" is and one of us calls the cops.
Businesses ought to exist entirely outside of the domain of force. Business is what happens when you remove force from society and people are able to think, create, develop, produce and trade freely without gangs and thieves and thugs interfering.
Where things get blurry is when you marry government and business. But always remember that business operates under the rules that government creates. The more incentive there is for business to care about political policy, the more lobbyists and corporate interest groups you will create but that's the framework you're creating. Government forces it through laws. Business is just playing by the rules that you voted for.
Governments are elected every now and then by large sums of people as a package deal for handling a number of issues, and only one is in place. Products and companies exist in multiples and regardless of how big they are, they're still more targeted, and you the consumer get to choose directly and every day.
> With the Sovereign Tech Fund, we invest globally in the open software components that underpin Germany's and Europe's competitiveness and ability to innovate.
Not globally funded, but does invest globally.
However, they say:
> The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in open digital base technologies that are vital to the development of other software or enable digital networking. We invest in projects that benefit and strengthen the open source ecosystem. Examples include libraries for programming languages, package managers, open implementations of communication protocols, administration tools for developers, digital encryption technologies, and more. (...) We are currently not looking for user-facing applications, such as messaging apps or file storage services. If this changes, we will announce it here.
So, a browser wouldn't qualify, but an HTTP(S) library does, and perhaps even a browser engine would..?
There are several other programs like STF funded by the EU (often mediated via NLNet), and for example Servo gets some amount of its funding via NGI (an EU Commission initiative): https://nlnet.nl/project/Servo/
Be careful, there's some people who actively don't understand what a public good is and are hostile to it very existence, let alone suggesting a government could practically ensure it's viability.
They're also completely blind deaf and dumb to modern society having never had to suffer.
Many believe the market is the best vector to deliver public good. It's not a mystery why this perspective exists, and it's not obviously wrong, and it's ridiculous to think that government is the universal cure-all for suffering when they're the source of so much.
Okay, given your theory that Google control equals government control... Wouldn't the anti trust now be against their interest of controlling the browsers?
I'm not privy to the plan, but what was right at one stage (funding a company to gain a monopoly position on search) need not be right at a later stage. Perhaps now a different strategy is unfolding. Perhaps it is obvious that government and corporations work in tandem, and the optics require that it appears that government acts against monopolists to regain confidence.
Alternatively, maybe there is no master plan by some cabal pulling all the player’s strings. Maybe you have multiple powerful entities acting in their own interest, which can sometimes align and sometimes be at odds. Apple is a good example, as they are cozy with governments on many things, but push back hard against building backdoors into their systems because they know that eventually “bad guys” will figure out the backdoor and that hurts their bottom line.
How can one know what is real and what is choreographed optics?
Maybe there is no master plan, sure. But this is not something you or I will ever know.
We are told that there are secret courts, that produce secret orders.
Trust in government is misplaced, when it is in the design that you will not be told all the information. Alternatively stated, these are lies of omission - you don't know what you don't know. This is part of the design of the system - it's not a quirk or accident.
If the governance system were a person - ie someone you know is a liar but you have no means of ascertaining the truth of what they say - I suspect you would not deal with them. However, when it comes to the governance system, everyone thinks this is normal and acceptable. Everyone is an apologist. Because the other option is unbearable to consider, it seems - that the governance system is not there to help. Even though 'government' the name tells you everything : 'govern minds'.
Its a successful system of control and people love it.
As far as I can see, nobody said anything that could conceivably be interpreted to imply otherwise, so sure?
I am really unsure what your argument even is, gymbeaux - and how it relates to verisimi's previous point. You're not trying to argue that it was Google's masterplan all along to get the anti-trust ruling, right?
This has to be true in any country with anything approaching a free market? Even if it's not blatant and closer to Inversion of Control you see it reflected in national economic policy all the time.
Given that browsers are essential to access information, I think they shouldn't be developed behind a business model, but rather as part of a global digital infrastructure fund.
There should be some independence guarantees in order to make that organization not have to bow to pressure from governments to sacrifice privacy due to funding threats.