In theory, some of the rhetoric you mentioned reminds me a little bit of the FUTO funding. Some billionaire (Eron Wolf) I guess is giving funding to libre/free open source projects.
Eron Wolf, apparently made his billion(s) by "playing the game" in Silly Con Valley?
I've never met the guy. He apparently had an Amiga. I still have my Amiga 1200. Amigas were pretty groovy for their era.
I thought, years ago, maybe I would apply for a grant? I helped co-found Noisebridge (a 501c3 hacker space). I have been a contributing editor to undeadly.org (the OpenBSD Journal) from its inception (and I used to submit a lot of stories to deadly.org its predecessor). I have been contributing to various libre/free open source software projects for decades (the first BBS I was asked to Co-SysOp ran a Citadel variant, which thanks to Cynbe Ru Taren, had its source code in the public domain before the FSF even existed). Heck, my parents' church in Menlo Park, even today, still shares a parking lot with SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and I was blessed to befriend Doug Engelbart and Bill English and other luminaries before they passed away.
As a teen, I was repeatedly invited to toil on systems as nps.navy.mil (now nps.edu). Admittedly, not for pay (the "privilege" was getting to use hardware that cost more than the mortgage on my parents house); I wasn't credited either. One of my friends from that era, eventually got an M.S. from nps (he was in their VR lab); and I guess at some point was part of the team that helped give legs to the avatars at Meta? (Last time we hung out, he was working at Unity; and I guess helped with Unity support for Apple's Vision Pro. But he also worked at some other start up run by the guy who created Second Life.). I was a Co-SysOp of one of his BBSes too; but no money was exchanged, we were just friends. He wasn't charging folks for access, he wasn't making $ from that fun, why would he be paying anyone to help what was already a labor of love?
So I dunno, I never "played the game" like Eron Wolf. Neither did that friend from my teens, nor my other savvy friends from my teens and earlier. None of us are billionaires.
But I did email Louis Rossman and inquired about maybe getting a grant somehow?
He asked for more clarification on what it is that I did, and I emailed back and never got a response.
So I dunno. I've applied to other grants and jobs and whatnot, but I can't shake the feeling that those with the $ aren't really sharing it too freely?
At least, not with me.
Louis seemed enthused that I knew Mitch Altman. But oblivious that I know Mitch, because he would do Circuit Hacking Mondays classes at Noisebridge. That I've known Mitch, probably longer than Louis has, by some margin.
I probably know a lot of other folks like Mitch, but Mitch also isn't a billionaire. I don't know how to phrase things in a meaningful way I guess.
When I worked on Syzygryd, that was funded in part by a grant from the Burning Man organization. That's probably the only project to which I have ever co-contributed which had some grant funding, but I didn't write the grant application for that one. Moreover, of all the funding it received? I still sank who knows how many unpaid hours and thousands of dollars of my own money into it, and I was just one of maybe 60 some odd contributors who were all probably doing the same. I don't think the grant covered more than a mere fraction of what it took to co-create that giant interactive fire art sculpture/grid sequencer.
But I guess Ladybird got a $250,000 grant from the FUTO organization?
IIRC, the BM org grant for Syzygryd was $60,000 and we delivered, in under a year.
Ladybird I don't know when they will have public builds available. I tried to build the code from source, and was unsuccessful. I encountered use of Homebrew and vcpkg, both of which are spyware by default (they call their spyware "telemetry" but it has to be explicitly configured to be turned off) and when I raised concerns about that on a YouTube video about Ladybird? That comment was deleted in fewer than 24 hours.
Call me crazy, but a "privacy" focused browser, IMHO, shouldn't be using toolchains which have spyware. Alternatives exist, which don't, but I am not a developer in that project and based on my preliminary interactions with its codebase, it is a non trivial amount of effort to rejigger it into something that doesn't use such dependencies.
But it was eye opening as far as what was actually getting funding from one of those billionaires who "played the game".
Near as I can discern, they have a false perception of reality; over gamification. For many of us, this isn't a game and it isn't playful and it's really upsetting to see how they redistribute their wealth, while actively ignoring others who thought maybe there was a hope they weren't being disingenuous.
I guess I am accustomed to being let down and false promises? It still leaves an impression when encountering double speak though. As my divorce attorney once told me: "you are too honest for your own good."
Meanwhile, my perspective: truth and honesty are real goods, deviation from such precepts is a quick path to other hell realms.
Eron Wolf, apparently made his billion(s) by "playing the game" in Silly Con Valley?
I've never met the guy. He apparently had an Amiga. I still have my Amiga 1200. Amigas were pretty groovy for their era.
I thought, years ago, maybe I would apply for a grant? I helped co-found Noisebridge (a 501c3 hacker space). I have been a contributing editor to undeadly.org (the OpenBSD Journal) from its inception (and I used to submit a lot of stories to deadly.org its predecessor). I have been contributing to various libre/free open source software projects for decades (the first BBS I was asked to Co-SysOp ran a Citadel variant, which thanks to Cynbe Ru Taren, had its source code in the public domain before the FSF even existed). Heck, my parents' church in Menlo Park, even today, still shares a parking lot with SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and I was blessed to befriend Doug Engelbart and Bill English and other luminaries before they passed away.
As a teen, I was repeatedly invited to toil on systems as nps.navy.mil (now nps.edu). Admittedly, not for pay (the "privilege" was getting to use hardware that cost more than the mortgage on my parents house); I wasn't credited either. One of my friends from that era, eventually got an M.S. from nps (he was in their VR lab); and I guess at some point was part of the team that helped give legs to the avatars at Meta? (Last time we hung out, he was working at Unity; and I guess helped with Unity support for Apple's Vision Pro. But he also worked at some other start up run by the guy who created Second Life.). I was a Co-SysOp of one of his BBSes too; but no money was exchanged, we were just friends. He wasn't charging folks for access, he wasn't making $ from that fun, why would he be paying anyone to help what was already a labor of love?
So I dunno, I never "played the game" like Eron Wolf. Neither did that friend from my teens, nor my other savvy friends from my teens and earlier. None of us are billionaires.
But I did email Louis Rossman and inquired about maybe getting a grant somehow?
He asked for more clarification on what it is that I did, and I emailed back and never got a response.
So I dunno. I've applied to other grants and jobs and whatnot, but I can't shake the feeling that those with the $ aren't really sharing it too freely?
At least, not with me.
Louis seemed enthused that I knew Mitch Altman. But oblivious that I know Mitch, because he would do Circuit Hacking Mondays classes at Noisebridge. That I've known Mitch, probably longer than Louis has, by some margin.
I probably know a lot of other folks like Mitch, but Mitch also isn't a billionaire. I don't know how to phrase things in a meaningful way I guess.
When I worked on Syzygryd, that was funded in part by a grant from the Burning Man organization. That's probably the only project to which I have ever co-contributed which had some grant funding, but I didn't write the grant application for that one. Moreover, of all the funding it received? I still sank who knows how many unpaid hours and thousands of dollars of my own money into it, and I was just one of maybe 60 some odd contributors who were all probably doing the same. I don't think the grant covered more than a mere fraction of what it took to co-create that giant interactive fire art sculpture/grid sequencer.
But I guess Ladybird got a $250,000 grant from the FUTO organization?
IIRC, the BM org grant for Syzygryd was $60,000 and we delivered, in under a year.
Ladybird I don't know when they will have public builds available. I tried to build the code from source, and was unsuccessful. I encountered use of Homebrew and vcpkg, both of which are spyware by default (they call their spyware "telemetry" but it has to be explicitly configured to be turned off) and when I raised concerns about that on a YouTube video about Ladybird? That comment was deleted in fewer than 24 hours.
Call me crazy, but a "privacy" focused browser, IMHO, shouldn't be using toolchains which have spyware. Alternatives exist, which don't, but I am not a developer in that project and based on my preliminary interactions with its codebase, it is a non trivial amount of effort to rejigger it into something that doesn't use such dependencies.
But it was eye opening as far as what was actually getting funding from one of those billionaires who "played the game".
Near as I can discern, they have a false perception of reality; over gamification. For many of us, this isn't a game and it isn't playful and it's really upsetting to see how they redistribute their wealth, while actively ignoring others who thought maybe there was a hope they weren't being disingenuous.
I guess I am accustomed to being let down and false promises? It still leaves an impression when encountering double speak though. As my divorce attorney once told me: "you are too honest for your own good."
Meanwhile, my perspective: truth and honesty are real goods, deviation from such precepts is a quick path to other hell realms.