KDE 签署请愿书，敦促欧盟继续资助自由软件

2024年 七月 20 日 星期六


欧盟必须继续资助自由软件

最初由 petites singularités 出版。英文译文由 OW2 提供。

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致欧盟委员会的公开信

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.

关于 KDE

KDE 是一个国际技术团队，为桌面和便携式计算创建自由和开放源码软件。KDE 的产品包括适用于 Linux 和 UNIX 平台的现代桌面系统、全面的办公生产力和群件套件，以及数百种软件，涵盖互联网和网络应用、多媒体、娱乐、教育、图形和软件开发等多个类别。KDE 软件已被翻译成 60 多种语言，在设计时充分考虑了易用性和现代可访问性原则。KDE 的全功能应用程序可在 Linux、BSD、Windows、Haiku 和 macOS 上运行。

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Linux 是 Linus Torvalds 的注册商标。 UNIX 是 The Open Group 在美国和其他国家的注册商标。
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文章作者：2024 KDE，使用 CC-BY-4.0 许可证发布。