Funding new development with EU grants

The GS5 port is already work-in-progress … would be cool to also have EU funding though :smiley:

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Don’t know how much we have to write up in the application. But sounds interesting, even if we miss this deadline. Not sure that they would be interested in supporting closed source SFOS. In this respect, SFOS wouldn’t be attractive alternative. So, would be great to have some more general goal that would be of interest for many. But that discussion looks to be under another thread :slight_smile:

Great that you found this opportunity and raised it over here!

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My strategy here is to highlight the opensource ‘aspects’. Small steps are better than standing still. Let’s begin with Interest to create a cooperative - #53 by dcaliste

Here, we have a mix, but SFOS pushes to upstream, aka KDE and co.

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Let’s list some of the ‘funding worthy’ aspects (just riffing):

  • ah, the sustainability angle
  • ah, the made in europe angle
  • middle class phone, relatively affordable (accessible)
  • multiple re-branders can offer an alternative OS (market synergies? anyone)
  • incentives for jolla (the private capital) to extend relations to other manufacturers.
  • the ubports / volla ‘building an ecosystem’ ‘vision’
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Thanks. I think the easy way to work around the closeness issue is to only attempt funding open components in the stack. Even components that are pretty close to the UI can be reused by other projects and benefit the whole Linux on mobile use case.

For example, postmarketOS uses the open Mer stack (postmarketOS + Glacier is IMHO the most usable alternative to SFOS right now).

My goal is also to have a completely free stack, from CPU to apps. In practice, I think most SFOS code is currently either free or de facto open source. There is of course room for improvement.

I was wondering if something like the work of making jails (fire/sailjail) safely use dbus would be a good internship project?:

Perhaps you can give us some more concrete examples that would fit? I tossed of a list: Interest to create a cooperative - #47 by poetaster

It just occured to me to ask @cypherpunks if he’d consider Music Explorer ‘fundable’. My take is that a few apps/platforms tend to dominate the exploration of music (spotify, youtube). Music Explorer goes some way to move the goal posts.

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Another grant, only for teams based in Germany: Prototypefund - We fund open source projects

They are funding GNOME shell on mobile: GNOME Shell on mobile: An update – GNOME Shell & Mutter

Another grant in Germany: https://sovereigntechfund.de/

About digital infrastructure and software in the public interest.

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Ah, this might be a good fund for a project like map-tiling-service license delegate (for lack of a better description). EDIT: looks like next year …

The pilot round will be announced in October 2022. Regular funding and further activities of the Sovereign Tech Fund will start in 2023.

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Accessibility improvements to existing apps would certainly qualify. A recent ticket: Important for mobility impaired people. Option for user to set the changeover time. · Issue #23 · poetaster/fahrplan · GitHub leads me to think I need to invest more time in these fundamental questions. What existing industrial processes encourage/facilitate designing for accessibility?

And, I finally have to admit I’m defeated.

I bit off a bit more than was chewable in the short time when trying to formulate a proposal for a license / api key service.

I should have chosen something more discrete. I’m not going to make the prototypefund or the nl deadlines. Sigh.

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There will be further rounds and opportunities where we now have a head start. Thanks!

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Yes! I’ll document what I’ve done so far on two applications and post it when I have a moment.

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There are again new deadlines approaching. See: NLnet; Open call for funding

I’m interested in taking any open component of the Linux/Mer stack SFOS is using and hardening it (e.g. verifying formally that it has no bugs).

Any ideas of some small and critical libraries that could be good to get going with this?

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Thanks for the reminder. I only have really (really) rough notes up, but I’ll see if I can get some work done on: https://keypeer.org/ That was the application idea I ran out of time on.

@poetaster: which way should I send a feedback regarding keykeeper.org?

It’s still so bare :slight_smile: Maybe a DM to start ? Thanks!

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GitHub - poetaster/keypeer.org: This is the repository of the keypeer project website. now contains the sources for the website. Anyone who has some time to elaborate on the skeletal ideas contained here, take a look at about.md … thanks in advance!

I’m offering this too: internships at our research lab that are related to privacy and security. Feel free to mail me or DM me on the forum. You can have a look at my profile on the university website, for some context. I’d be especially delighted to have someone work on (privacy-related components of) Whisperfish, but anything privacy-related on SailfishOS is a welcome proposal, and we can think together of something.

I think it would make a good project, but it should also fit the research lab, which it would not by a lot in my case :slight_smile:

I’m thinking mostly in Whisperfish context here, but for instance using Tor with context aware sockets for sealed sending would make a great topic, although that’s probably also a master’s thesis.