KDEk Europar Batasunak software askea finantzatzen jarrai dezan eskaera sinatu du

Larunbata, 2024(e)ko uztailak 20


Europar Batasunak software askea finantzatzen jarraitu behar du

Initially publishead by petites singularités. English translation provided by OW2.

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Europar Komisioari gutun irekia

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission's Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLnet's calls).

Quite a few of KDE's projects have benefited from NGI's funding, including NeoChat, Kaidan, KDE Connect, KMail, and many others. KDE e.V. is a European non-profit with limited resources that relies on donations, sponsors and funding like that offered by NGI, to push the development of our projects forward.

However, this year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to supporting the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure. Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 million euros to:

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone countries as well as "widening countries"1, currently both a success and an ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages implementing projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can't afford this renunciation. Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.

This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.

1 As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are : Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands.

KDEri buruz

KDE nazioarteko teknologia talde bat da, mahaigaineko informatikarako eta informatika eramangarrirako software aske eta sorburu irekikoa sortzen duena. KDEren produktuen artean daude Linux eta UNIX plataformetarako mahaigaineko sistema moderno bat, bulegorako produktibitate eta talde lanerako suite osatuak eta ehunka software titulu, kategoria askotakoak, tartean, Internet eta web aplikazioak, multimedia, aisialdia, heziketa, grafikoak eta software garapenerakoak. KDE softwarea 60 hizkuntza baino gehiagotara itzulita dago eta erabilera erraz eta irisgarritasun printzipio modernoak gogoan izanda eraikitzen da. KDEren ezaugarriz beteriko aplikazioak bertako gisa exekutatzen dira Linux, Windows, Haiku eta macOS sistema eragileetan.

Marka-abisuak.

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Prentsarako kontaktuak

Informazio gehiago nahi baduzu, bidal iezaguzu e-posta: press@kde.org

2024 KDE(e)k CC-BY-4.0 lizentziapean emandako artikulua.