[HN Gopher] The European Union must keep funding free software
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       The European Union must keep funding free software
        
       Author : ZacnyLos
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2024-07-15 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ow2.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ow2.org)
        
       | ManuelKiessling wrote:
       | The European Union, in my unqualified opinion, must fund free
       | software with billions, and make all its governments run on it,
       | the same way the countries that today make up the EU have spent,
       | in the past, the equivalent of today's billions to base their
       | societies on state-owned water, gas, and electricity networks and
       | providers.
        
       | lofaszvanitt wrote:
       | Nop, this is the wrong approach. Create a system that separates a
       | default sum from the paycheck of every individual in the EU (and
       | US could adopt this strategy too). A small sum, like 5 euros,
       | whatever. So you visit sites and at the end of the month you get
       | a summary from your browser showing you which sites you
       | frequented and which of those sites have the headers showing it's
       | up for funding. So you wouldn't send money to google, but would
       | send money to individual creators.
       | 
       | End of the month the browser shows you how it shared that 5 bucks
       | among the sites you visited based on visits, time spent reading,
       | whatever metrics. You can maybe also assing a part of this sum to
       | sites you have a preference of. Let's say you love Momma's baking
       | corner, and allocate 10% more to that site.
       | 
       | This is your payment for the services of the people who create
       | web pages on the Internet. You have no control over that 5 euros,
       | you can only spend it on sites you visited. There you go,
       | everyone pays at least a small sum for what is consumed.
       | 
       | Same approach can be applied to Open Source projects. Since for
       | example Github just doesn't want to implement a proper payment
       | system for the projects they host and exploit.
       | 
       | Problem solved. Companies can have even bigger war chests for
       | this purpose...
       | 
       | As an added plus site owners-creators can show what open source
       | projects they use to run their sites, so those can be also funded
       | with this approach.
        
         | phiresky wrote:
         | This is exactly the idea Brave was built on. They even had
         | pretty great "get the ball rolling" methods like by default
         | collecting funds even for not-yet-signed up creators, and then
         | redistributing those funds to the other creators after 3 months
         | if the creator didn't sign up.
         | 
         | But people hated it because if you only spend 10 seconds
         | looking it sounds like yet another cryptocurrency scam.
         | ("attention token? what BS)
         | 
         | I never used it, but the approach seemed like a great idea to
         | me.
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-15 23:02 UTC)