[HN Gopher] Igalia, Servo, and the Sovereign Tech Fund
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Igalia, Servo, and the Sovereign Tech Fund
Author : robin_reala
Score : 338 points
Date : 2025-10-10 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.igalia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.igalia.com)
| bestouff wrote:
| That's nice ! Servo is a good modern engine, it's a pity it's not
| used in a real browser.
| pabs3 wrote:
| There is Verso, but it is on hiatus right now.
|
| https://github.com/versotile-org/verso
| rob74 wrote:
| As the article says, they are currently planning to use it as a
| WebView component first - which makes sense, because
| applications using WebViews can work around possible quirks in
| the engine much better than browsers. Maybe Tauri
| (https://v2.tauri.app/) will be able to switch to Servo (or
| offer it as an alternative) soon?
| simonw wrote:
| Yeah, the great thing about applications that wrap a WebView
| is that they benefit from a fixed target - if Servo doesn't
| support some specific CSS feature the application developers
| can notice and just _not use_ that feature.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yes Tauri is keeping an eye on Servo
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| IIRC, Dioxus' next version will be based on Servo.
| gostsamo wrote:
| so glad about the accessibility part. it is a struggle sometimes.
| also, as far as both chrome and ff converged on the same
| accessibility architecture, I hope that the project will be using
| it from the very start and will have tangible results soon.
| Muromec wrote:
| It's mandated by law nowdays, so they just have to mention it
| (and do it) to tick all the boxes, especially if they take
| grants from EU.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I don't know why it matters to you, but if the end product is
| accessible, I don't care if it is an EU directive or a german
| one. Keeping in mind where the team are coming from, there is
| a high chance that the implementation won't be checking boxes
| for grand reasons only.
| pygy_ wrote:
| > Keeping in mind where the team are coming from [...]
|
| Oh... could you elaborate?
| gostsamo wrote:
| I don't know the exact details, but as far as I remember
| they are a employees owned collective with social
| improvement goals, working on open source, and they are
| involved in the Orca screen reader for Linux.
|
| Wikipedia and their about page give some more info, but
| they definitely have accessibility experience and the
| history of delivering stuff.
| Muromec wrote:
| I most certainly welcome laws like this, partly because I
| work in a place, where compliance always wins, and a11y
| being part of compliance makes it more of real requirement
| and less of "nice to have".
|
| That being said, I saw two approaches to this -- negative,
| when people get some kind of a tool and change things until
| the tool stops showing warning and positive, where
| accessibility is another part of UX and has to be
| _designed_ with positive checks on what actually works.
|
| I sincerely hope that the team behind it is doing it the
| second way, but I'm not in their heads and don't know
| whether this text war written as part of government
| relations to get the moneys or they actually believe it.
| It's customary to praise Communist party, God allmighty
| without meaning any of it in some places too.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Igalia has been able to push quite a few set of cool projects,
| nice to see Servo going as well.
| simonw wrote:
| https://www.sovereign.tech/faq
|
| "The Sovereign Tech Agency started in October 2022 as the
| Sovereign Tech Fund and is financed by the German Federal
| Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It is a subsidiary of
| the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND GmbH."
| rob74 wrote:
| Guess they should update their FAQ... according to the footer,
| they are now part of the (brand new) Federal Ministry for
| Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation. If as a
| 69-year-old chancellor, who has finally got his chance at the
| top job after being sidelined for years, you _really_ want to
| stress that you are into all that digital stuff, creating an
| entire new ministry dedicated to it is the way to go!
|
| (to prevent any misunderstanding: I don't like Mr. Merz, but
| the Sovereign Tech Fund - founded by the previous government
| BTW - is definitely a good idea).
| Muromec wrote:
| Ukraine has ministry of digital transformation since 2019,
| but for all I know the minister mostly goes around hyping
| Diia and larping CEO from cool places.
| riedel wrote:
| While the new ministry still has to deliver, the idea of
| creating a ministry with a dedicated budget is not that bad
| of an idea. Before often money was diverted in other places,
| ministries failed to synchronizes. Digitalization itself was
| part of the traffic ministry (as digital infrastructure, the
| ministry also has many agencies below such as the weather
| service, so it made sense a bit), however, most
| administrative procedures were part of the ministry of
| interior and citizen data often handled by the finance
| ministry. I am not a fan of the new government either, but I
| still hope that a bit of digitalization will finally land in
| Germany. Beyond sovereign tech fund, IMHO, the previous
| government failed to deliver regarding digitalization. To be
| fair the big problem in Germany remains the federal structure
| with tons of stuff implemented differently at state level and
| even worse at each municipality.
| rob74 wrote:
| Glad to see Europe (in this case Germany
| https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund) is doing something to
| support Open Source as part of its bid to make itself less
| reliant on the US tech giants. They could of course do more, but
| still...
| Tepix wrote:
| The Sovereign Tech Agency is doing a great job, I hope other
| countries will follow Germany's example and fund similar
| agencies. If we want to rely on Open Source software, we need to
| pay for maintenance.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...other countries will follow Germany 's example_
|
| Believe, the US government runs biggest such fund viz.
| https://opentech.fund/ (WireGuard & Tor being some of the past
| grantees).
| schubidubiduba wrote:
| You mean the US government _ran_ the biggest such fund, and
| is currently in the process of defunding it.
| pohl wrote:
| I never thought leopards would eat MY face, sobs open
| source advocate who...
| em500 wrote:
| A good initiative, but there seems to be nothing on the horizon
| that can limit the increasing dependence on iOS / App Store and
| Android / Play Store / Play Services in European citizens' lives,
| and Microsoft in European corporate and government desktops. If
| anything, policy makers seem to prefer to increase the
| dependence, e.g.
|
| https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
|
| https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/.github/blob/m...
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Please don't spread FUD. This is only _REFERENCE_
| implementeation of the specification: https://eu-digital-
| identity-wallet.github.io/eudi-doc-archit... which doesn't
| mention anything about being exclusive to iOS/Android.
|
| From the linked repository:
|
| > The EU Digital Identity Wallet Reference Implementation helps
| EU countries and stakeholders to build their own wallets. It
| consists of open-source code libraries, modular components, and
| a fully functioning reference application based on the ARF.
| em500 wrote:
| Sure, nothing strictly requires iOS/Android in paper specs
| and in presentations. But we all now that the only working
| practical implementations will be one iOS/Android. I mean,
| look at the actual code in the (Microsoft) github repo.
|
| The EU forced Apple to open NFC for third party payments,
| which is great. But all the banks in the Netherlands only
| have working card payments in Apple and Google Wallet.
| Including the largest bank (ING), that used to have
| independent in-app NFC payment on Android (where NFC was
| always open) but seems to have capitulated and now only
| offers it via Google Wallet.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Wero is launching phone payments via NFC in the Netherlands
| next year.
|
| At some point, it's legitimate that innovations are
| developed for platform that people actually use. It's good
| to be practical before being political sometimes.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| > Sure, nothing strictly requires iOS/Android in paper
| specs and in presentations. But we all now that the only
| working practical implementations will be one iOS/Android.
| I mean, look at the actual code in the (Microsoft) github
| repo.
|
| No, we don't know. You are projecting and again - spreading
| FUT.
|
| Did you do anything towards implemeting the specs on other
| platforms? Or are you only very vocal online complaining?
|
| In that repo they clearely stated, that they focus on
| Android/iOS as it's the most popular platform (contrary to
| what the IT bubble here may think) and want to reach the
| most user with the (initial) implementation.
|
| > The EU forced Apple to open NFC for third party payments,
| which is great. But all the banks in the Netherlands only
| have working card payments in Apple and Google Wallet.
| Including the largest bank (ING), that used to have
| independent in-app NFC payment on Android (where NFC was
| always open) but seems to have capitulated and now only
| offers it via Google Wallet.
|
| OK, again - you are projecting Netherlands issues over the
| UE. Surprisingly - in Poland I can pay with ING bank with
| NFC. Same in Spain with BBVA app.
|
| Just because something is broken in your corner of the
| universe doesn't mean it's the global fenomena :)
|
| Also - instead of complaining about the EU - maybe try
| persuaiding the entities to add support?
|
| Alas - I'm pondering ECI initiative to actually force "Open
| Android" (ie. withou Google Services being required) as a
| valid platform because I was fed up with Google imposing
| more and more overreach. Android is quite OK if it werent
| for the walled garden from google...
| btown wrote:
| How https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-
| engi... shakes out will be a critical part of this.
|
| The loopholes in this "commitment," e.g. allowing Apple to
| determine unilaterally whether, say, Servo has a well-enough-
| monitored software supply chain before giving it access to JIT
| capabilities, give Apple an iron fist over the ability to use
| this engine in practice in the EU.
|
| But there's also a world where Servo, with funding like this,
| can achieve these requirements and Apple (begrudgingly) follows
| the intent of this policy to avoid further regulatory action.
| And suddenly there's a new browser on the block that can push
| the boundaries of mobile web capabilities in ways that make the
| web better overall, and push standards forward as well so that
| maybe, just maybe, non-EU folks get the benefit of these
| innovations down the road. One can dream :)
| em500 wrote:
| A pipe dream. Android (with significantly higher market share
| in Europe than iOS) has no limits on alternative web engines.
| But all the critical mobile security and payments apps are
| built on Android/Play Services, not in mobile browsers.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| MicroG is also financed mostly by German public funds.
| ndom91 wrote:
| Webview API focus - I'm sure the Tauri folks are happy to hear
| that
| throawayonthe wrote:
| You can also donate to the Servo project on
| https://servo.org/sponsorship/
| ignoramous wrote:
| Sovereign's grant to Servo (fy 2025 & 2026) is EUR545,400.
|
| https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/servo / https://archive.is/kryIb
| daft_pink wrote:
| It's nice that someone is funding it :)
| shmerl wrote:
| Looking forward to Servo replacing embedded Chromium everywhere
| and getting rid of that pesky $HOME/.pki that Chromium project
| doesn't care to fix by using libnss correctly.
| amilios wrote:
| Is it just me or is the total amount of funding at the Sovereign
| Tech fund (https://www.sovereign.tech/faq) hilariously small?
| 11.5 mil eur right now? 17 mil next year? Better than nothing of
| course, but...
| spinningslate wrote:
| yes, though perhaps stating the obvious: it depends what they
| do with it.
|
| Ladybird currently has 8 full-time devs [1] and is making
| impressive progress on delivering a browser from scratch. Wise
| investment in small, focused, capable teams can go a long way
| if they're not chasing VC-driven Unicorn status (or in stasis
| as a Google anti-trust diversion).
|
| That's not challenging your point though: in the face of
| competing budgets at US tech giants, EUR17Mn still barely
| registers above noise level. Nevertheless, it's a start. We can
| only hope it grows and doesn't get shut down by some political
| lobbying by the aforementioned US behemoths. A modest budget
| might actually help there - not yet big enough to cause concern
| to incumbents.
|
| [1]: https://ladybird.org/
| umanwizard wrote:
| What is the point of a new browser engine? What will be the
| advantage over WebKit/Blink/Gecko?
|
| Sure it "isn't monetized", but nothing stops you from making
| non-monetized forks of chromium or Firefox. And nothing stops
| company from forking Ladybird and monetizing it, either.
| omnimus wrote:
| Hopefully new independent voice in the questions of
| platform features, development and future.
|
| Google could do pretty much anything with the platform if
| it were not for Apple and iOS. And that's a big if because
| if they align on something it will get to the platform.
|
| Firefox unfortunately seems to be infected by Silicon
| Valley people that seem to be quite obedient to the status
| quo.
|
| Ladybird is at least developed by people from all around
| the world.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| How does Servo compare to Ladybird?
| alex_duf wrote:
| Made in rust, started 10 years ago by the folks at Mozilla
| timeon wrote:
| Servo is mostly new tech (like new renderer).
| maxdo wrote:
| Advanced Economics 101: A Masterclass in Strategic Thinking
|
| Step 1: Construct a multi-billion dollar pipeline to your loudest
| adversary--the one whose state TV features nightly programming
| about your demise, complete with helpful educational segments on
| tactical operations.
|
| Step 2: Maintain this arrangement through 2025, because nothing
| says "learning from experience" like watching drones cross your
| border each morning while the gas meter keeps running.
|
| Step 3: When a leader suggests maybe--just maybe--turning off the
| tap, immediately trigger a constitutional crisis. After all,
| certain people have very important financial commitments to
| maintain.
|
| Step 4: When that same country that's been bankrolling defense
| budget for decades offers you a web browser, sound the
| sovereignty alarm! Finally, a hill worth dying on: digital
| independence through search engine nationalism.
|
| Priorities: perfectly calibrated.
| timeon wrote:
| This is pretty random.
| t_mann wrote:
| The best sovereign tech fund would be a robust commitment to
| 'public money, public code'. To think how many sponsored features
| in LibreOffice, GIMP, Nextcloud,... could be paid for by the
| money that the governments of the world are paying each year to
| MS, Adobe,... and it would create sustainable demand for OSS
| development.
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(page generated 2025-10-10 23:00 UTC)