The Open Social Network | Display

Aral Balkan

2 Jahre her • •

Aral Balkan
2 Jahre her • •

What do we have to do to set up an *independent organisation* in Europe with an endowment from our (EU taxpayers’) money to maintain a free/open, private-by-default web browser that we legislate must be included in all operating systems made available in the EU?

#freeTheBrowser

#freeTheBrowser

kravietz 🦇 mag das.

teilten dies erneut

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Arne Babenhauserheide

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

If you manage to reach someone from Igalia, that could be a good avenue for that, because they already have experience and they are strong free software advocates (and a workers cooperative). I know them via Andy Wingo, a maintainer of GNU Guile.

https://www.igalia.com/

Igalia - Open Source Consultancy and Development

Igalia is an open source consultancy specialised in the development of innovative projects and solutions.

^Igalia

kravietz 🦇 hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

We would likely fork Firefox, remove all the Silicon Valley/commercial bullshit, and hire engineers from Mozilla and elsewhere who want to work somewhere where they have the freedom to work on a browser for the common good without any Silicon Valley/commercial interference.

kravietz 🦇 mag das.

teilten dies erneut

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

The challenge here isn’t technical; it’s funding and independence.

To succeed, any such organisation must be free of political interference and its funding must be guaranteed via an endowment and not privy to the whims of short-term political posturing.

Torsten mag das.

teilten dies erneut

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Admin

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

the #EU is full of political interference, and not in a good way so this aproch has its own problems.

I have been working with them a bit for the last few years...

vagabond hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Admin

kravietz 🦇

Als Antwort auf Admin • 2 Jahre her • •

Ahem, an independent organisation lobbying for a public-funded web browser is technically just as much “political interference” as Google lobbying for the opposite. Any government or international structure such as EU is the sum of political interferences, and it’s only a problem when these are not balanced or some stakeholders are not represented.

:gnu: bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf kravietz 🦇

xro

Als Antwort auf kravietz 🦇 • 2 Jahre her • •

Exactly. That's why this idea has great potential as a much needed counterweight to the current interessts tugging on webbrowsers, as they are mainly driven by the ad industry.
@witchescauldron @aral

@Aral Balkan @Admin

kravietz 🦇 mag das.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

aiquez

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

sth like the financing of the public broadcasting system (in GER). but without politicians in advisory board but technical and social experts for #sufficience

#sufficience

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Vegard (Hårfagre) Fjeldberg eo

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

Funding is the issue. I however lean in the direction that software should be crowd funded. That way, actual people are in the control of the project as opposed to organizations.

We need a paradigm shift. We expect everything from the internet to be free. But we need to normalize to give back to creators. We need systems that makes it easy, secure, private and convinient to tip. In a way that preserves autonomy.

vagabond hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Vegard (Hårfagre) Fjeldberg eo

Aral Balkan

Als Antwort auf Vegard (Hårfagre) Fjeldberg eo • 2 Jahre her • •

If only there was a concept where we could all give a portion of what we make to crowdfund things for the common good… I don’t know, we could call it Raxes? Saxes… ? Something like that ;)

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Abbie Normal

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

look, I think I understand you argument

but it's a purely theoretical arguments

We all knwo what taxes are, this soesn't make this idea more feasible

This is something that needs to be hacked through, I'm afraid

there are no shortcuts

Sorry if I sound pessimistic

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Abbie Normal

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

eh

good luck 🙄

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Yal 🦄🎲✏️🏳️‍🌈

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

The challenge is also very much political, as well as it is societal.

EU is not that far from openly asking for the same tools/level of control and means to track its 'users', once upon a time called citizens. Maybe not to make gigantic piles of money but that doesn't change their willingness to access and use the exact same tools. And have them developed if need be.

The tracking (as much as our willingness to live with it) is the issue, more than it being commercial or not. Imho.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Arcaze R0

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

You are absolutely right, funding is the most challenging part. And you need it for two things - one is development, the other is basically lobbying or campaigning. You can start with either, but will need the other eventually:

if you secure initial funding, hire devs, and create a fork, you'll need to eventually invest in some form of monetization or marketing to convince EU citizens and/or politicians to fund the project.
if you secure initial funding and use it for lobbying/campaigning, you might eventually have enough funds to maintain the project in the long run but will then need to start hiring devs.

In either scenario you'll also have to overcome the overall community's reluctance to invest in the marketing/campaigning/lobbying part.

If you want it to be a robust, sustainable project, it's more about organizing and leading the effort than forking the code.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Vegard (Hårfagre) Fjeldberg eo

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

I'm not sure where to stand on this. Is forking the best option? Are there design baggage if we use firefox code? Wrong assumptions about how the browsing experience should be?

Perhaps by developing a browser from scratch we will have a better understanding of how the browser can be developed further?

If so, then in the long run it might be better to start from scratch.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

lord pthenq1

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

Who is we?
Do they have $$$?

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

digiEDU

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

There is already some kind of fork, called #LibreWolf. I'm using since couple of months. It seems to be much more friendly in terms of privacy. And I think is European

#librewolf

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

tSatty

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

I'm with you almost all the way; right up until the "law that requires specific named software to be installed on countless computers". That's a security timebomb if I ever saw one.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

aiquez

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

@digitalcourage
would be nice if you support development and raising awareness in public opinion
@fsfe
#public_digital_infrastructure
https://sdeps.eu/
.
also nice if you would make it possible to make a clean net-adress-space (don't know if that is technically possible or senseful) where #no_dark_patterns and #no_excessive_cookies are used #httpc-c_as_clean

SDEPS – Shared Digital European Public Sphere

^sdeps.eu

#httpc #no_excessive_cookies #no_dark_patterns #public_digital_infrastructure @Free Software Foundation Europe @Digitalcourage

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Matias

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

That would be amazing! Could it be worth a try to create some kind of petition, collect signatures and send them to the EU?

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Sebastian Gallehr ☮️

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

#freeTheBrowser great and important idea. I don't know how, but count on me.

#freeTheBrowser

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Torsten

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her •

@ar.al I remember how Bewelcome managed to organize an alternative to couchsurfing (which became a commercial stock company some years ago) by establishing a legal non-profit association organisation. Thus they can ask for donations (both private and public.

@Aral Balkan

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

André Ockers

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

It's already here, at #Trisquel
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/abrowser-help
cc @digitalcourage

abrowser-help | Trisquel GNU/Linux - Run free!

^{trisquel.info}

#Trisquel @Digitalcourage

Als Antwort auf André Ockers

Aral Balkan

Als Antwort auf André Ockers • 2 Jahre her • •

Oh, excellent, how large is the endowment and when can we start hiring Mozilla engineers to start moving the fork in a different direction? :)

(As I said, the problem isn’t technical. I can fork Firefox in the next minute. And many forks exist. This is about building a browser for the commons from the commons. For that we need an independent organisation funded from the commons. That’s the challenge here.)

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

Aral Balkan

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • 2 Jahre her • •

It can very easily be worded so that it applies only to commercial operating systems to ENSURE that a free and open browser that protects freedom is included by default.

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Gert V 🇵🇸

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

We will have to start somewhere..

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan

Moritz Strohm

Als Antwort auf Aral Balkan • 2 Jahre her • •

Why should the EU support the creation of another browser, funded by taxpayer money? It is a lot cheaper to regulate existing browsers. The "digital identity framework" is a current example:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/eus-digital-identity-framework-endangers-browser-security

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/what-duck-why-eu-proposal-require-qwacs-will-hurt-internet-security

EU's Digital Identity Framework Endangers Browser Security

If a proposal currently before the European Parliament and Council passes, the security of HTTPS in your browser may get a lot worse.

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

George Dorn

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • 2 Jahre her • •

Except that Waterfox sold out to an adtech company in the end. This is why setting up the right governance is critical, to prevent the project from being co-opted.

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

Aral Balkan

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • 2 Jahre her • •

This is exactly why Greenpeace is funded by ExxonMobil today.

Oh, wait…

⇧