NLnet announces funding for 67 more open-source projects | Hacker News Reader

NLnet announces funding for 67 more open-source projects

nlnet.nl

141 pointslaurenth30 comments

A lot of thaler related projects. Nothing wrong with that, but it suggests that something (the EU digital independence drive?) is making people on the board interested in funding digital cash related stuff.

Thaler presumably winds up having to have a clearing house function, which is a public utility question: Maybe NLNet foundation is thinking about the long history of the dutch engagement in fintech, back to the 17th century?

there is a dedicated fund for taler, that alone explains why there are so many projects. now why there is a fund for that is the real question to ask. i guess the people behind the next generation internet initiative giving money to the foundation thought it is an important topic.

I have a feeling the nlnet fund is bunch of nerds who have autonomy over the budget (ie: they are funding namecoin development). I don’t think they represent either the EU or Netherlands position when it comes to privacy.

Nothing I said was meant to imply they represented either the EU or the Netherlands as a government. I said they are interested in the space, and I was trying to say I thought it reflected on trends I see. That's all. That's why I said "interested in" and "thinking about"

On reviewing who is on it, I know several members of the board. I would not call them "nerds" in the pejorative sense they're serious people with decades of experience in the ICT sector. If you didn't mean it disparagingly, they are certainly nerdy, but they are not only a "bunch of nerds"

>Nothing I said was meant to imply they represented either the EU or the Netherlands as a government.

the sentence you are referring to said (pay attention to the italics): "I don’t think they represent either the EU or Netherlands position when it comes to privacy.

Good point. I should read carefully before firing off at other people. I also had focussed on the fintech digital currency and EU independence view of things and not the privacy issue.

> I would not call them "nerds" in the pejorative sense ... disparagingly ... but they are not only a "bunch of nerds"

Not sure what got you fired here? This is hacker news, not a lawyers' forum. Also, personally, it was just a hunch from their continued namecoin support. I didn't even check the profiles of the committee.

But back to re-explain my point, I think these individuals were acting on their own volition rather than a directive or planned strategy from the EU/NL.

the funds are listed here: https://ngi.eu/opencalls/

i think nlnet is only the executor.

NGI is a European Commission initiative. that's pretty close to a EU strategy i think.

> an ambitious DHT project

https://nlnet.nl/project/FogDHT/

links to a completely empty repository and the project name has zero hits outside of NLNet announcements -- what's going on here?

https://codeberg.org/FogDHT/FogDHT

NLNet is a wonderful organization. They have supported two Pion projects!

I am grateful the code got written, but even better people got careers out of it/learned new stuff. If you are on the fence about taking on a project I encourage you to do it!

Totally! It’s an organization that has done a great deal of good over the years.

Unlike those commercial FPGA companies that haven't open sourced their FPGA Architecture source code, VitaSetLLC has, available on https://github.com/VitaSetLLC/VitaOS-Libre under a permissive open source license.

Also the Vita FPGA Architecture Logic and Memory Blocks are bug-free.

Also I have applied to ask them to add my project to their NGI Fediversity Fund. Here's what I entered:

1. Proposal Description:

  The Vita FPGA Architecture Subproject is licensed under The VitaSet License.

  The VitaSet License is a permissive license which does not offer any implied warranties and patent grants and does not require the inclusion of this license's text on binary and hardware forms of the source code that is licensed under this license.

  This is to prevent executables and computer chips from wasting resources on including license text, but for source code to keep copyright attribution, so that when source code access gets interrupted, no claim of copyright infringement can be made towards the developers, as the claimant would have the copyright header of this license.

  The Vita FPGA Architecture Verilog files VitaFPGAArchLogicBlock.v and VitaFPGAArchMemoryBlock.v are bugfree.

  Any Vita FPGA Architecture Logic Block can act as though it is an Vita FPGA Architecture Interconnect Block. Thus, any possible truth-table can be expressed with enough Vita FPGA Architecture Logic Blocks, Vita FPGA Architecture Interconnect Blocks and Vita FPGA Architecture Memory Blocks. Thus, any integrated circuit could run on the Vita FPGA Architecture, given enough Vita FPGA Architecture Logic Blocks, Vita FPGA Architecture Interconnect Blocks and Vita FPGA Architecture Memory Blocks are available.

2. Proposal Title:

  Vita FPGA Architecture Chip and Toolchain Investment Proposition

3. Former Contributions to the Open Source Space:

  I am the Founder and CEO of VitaSet LLC.

4. Former and current financial beneficiaries of your project, if any:

  Over $400 have been donated by my relatives to me during late 2023. No other funds have been raised.

5. Are there any open source projects that are similar to yours? List any that you know of that exist.

  https://github.com/efabless/clear - The Open Source FPGA ASIC. A open source Apache 2.0 eFPGA + VexRiscV CPU Chip that only sold a couple hundred physical computer chips before they stopped selling anymore through Tiny-Tapeout. I did not read their source code, my Vita FPGA Architecture was designed exclusively by me entirely from scratch. I have however read the GitHub Issues of the Clear FPGA Project and I see someone asking about the bugginess of the reset circuitry. My Vita FPGA Architecture is bug-free and permissively licensed under an open source license.

6. What Technical Challenges has your project overcome and might overcome in the future? List all that apply.

  Reducing the environmental waste caused by upgrading computer hardware, as simple software updates can be issued to update the FPGA Bitstreams instead of manufacturing new physical computer chips.

  Also, people can take advantage of the Vita FPGA Architecture to code up and use Hardware Accelerated Programs when computer chip transistors stop getting smaller.

7. How compatible is your open source project with the open source ecosystem?

  The Vita FPGA Architecture is synchronous clocked logic with an synchronous reset, so unlike the incompatibility of asynchronous integrated circuits, it will be compatible with the synchronous clocked ecosystem of commercial integrated circuits.

8. Upload your PGP Key (optional):

  https://github.com/VitaSetLLC/VitaSet-LLC-Asymmetric-Cryptographic-Public-Key

Edit: No A.I. was used by me.

Very low interest and investment in the AI-related projects. I wonder if it is because there has been no strong contenders or is it because it is not part of the strategy. In any case it looks a bit awkward because I am sure there's many people who are building stuff in that domain.

Yeah LLMs/GenAI is the current hype but it's just a tiny fragment of the general landscape.

I find this a very weird way of formulating this. Even if AI keeps its promises and is the future of computing (hopefully without destroying the environment), should it not be applauded that there are still organizations funding work in non-AI related technology? You can say many things about AI, but a lack of funding is not an issue at all I would say. Meanwhile all that other stuff still needs maintenance and development, or would you consider anything not focussed on AI wasted?

Lack of funding on the European ground, yes, I do see and NLNet seems to be yet another example of it. If my peers had the idea to develop some PoC, and they don't run the startup, how else would they get some pocket money to survive the year of development? All other funds are reserved for bigger and already established companies and/or organizations. And if there's one funding that the individual or few of them had a chance to get it is the NLNet. If there's more than NLNet then I'd like to hear about it.

Also, from the project list it reads as if they're anti-AI - only 3 "AI" projects selected out of 67. Considering the AI development trajectory through the course of couple of years, and especially in the last 1-2 years, it is highly likely that the largest output and innovation will exactly be in the AI domain in the next years to come. So IMO it seems like a lack of vision as I am pretty sure that there are strong individuals with great ideas but for which they lack financial support.

Could it be that there’s simply less options in the open-source AI space compared to ALL of open-source?

I don't think the open source is the differentiator here. I'm sure there's plenty of solid ideas. It would be interesting though if nlnet would open source the contributions they received in which case we would have a solid understanding how many of them have been AI or not

i have been considering whether i could apply with my project. i am unsure because until now i am working alone and because of financial difficulties work is stagnating since i need to focus on earning money. i posted about the project here if anyone is curious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42159045

i have difficulty to judge whether this project is suitable for a grant, and i don't know how much effort it takes to apply and whether i can afford to spend that time instead of focusing on finding other paid work.

Maybe you should make a video explaining what you're working on. I spent a few minutes trying to figure it out and didn't get very far. It's a fork of ... looks like Google Docs, but German, and 25 years old?

(Also it looks like most of the repos haven't been touched in a long time. Which repo is relevant?)

apply. you have nothing to lose, and the bureacracy/burden is very small. I'm a big NLNet fan.

I missed seeing DeltaChat on there from past grants, but I'm glad to see new projects I've never seen before.

I'm sorry, how many??

It's six-7

Mox not there?

European "institutional" projects are always so brain fucked...

If you look "how to apply they say": We've kept the application form short so as not to waste your time.

They you see the form... https://nlnet.nl/propose/

ok, getting thousands of euros deserve a little bit of paperwork, but let's not call that form "short".

But what triggered me is the following field of the form: Which model did you use? What did you use it for? Please submit the dates of the prompts, the prompts themselves and the unedited output in this text field.

Then you can see the "AI" policy that is attached: https://nlnet.nl/foundation/policies/generativeAI/

And in my modest opinion, that is another perfect example of the bureaucratic stupidity nightmare.

I would understand to ask details about your intended usage of LLMs for the project. Also to ensure that LLMs is only used as an assisting tool but not to do the work autonomously.

But imagine listing the "dates" and "prompts" that you used, for example to ask the llm to correct your badly written sentences to fill the stupid fields of their form?

And then, recording every time you used a LLM (coding or not) for whatever for the project... Assuming that the recipient of the grant will not lie anyway. This record doesn't give any proof that the code is not "stolen", "copied", or "contaminated".

Just have the delivery evaluated. Independently or by the project receiving the change. Judge on results for once instead of getting orgasms based on the paperwork trail. In the end, why should we care if the author had to use a LLM, a code editor, a spreadsheet, a marabout, or whatever else? If we can confirm that the result is there, in satisfactory condition (clean and safe code, good performance, ...) and without apparent "copyright violation".

I think the point of funding this stuff is not just to produce projects but also invest in the people building them, and to encourage a more resilient and open internet. So it seems entirely understandable if they'd want to prioritize funding people developing skills to understand and work with certain technologies, over funding people who will mainly send the money to some foreign AI giant for an AI that at any point may be taken away (see Anthropic Fable 5 export restrictions), get some specific use case suddenly restricted or quietly sabotaged (see Anthropic Fable 5 on LLM development), or get its price hiked beyond what's viable for an open-source project.

Also, the prompts and dates is for writing the grant proposal itself, and not for coding. Maybe they receive too many AI generated proposals. It feels rather rude anyway to be asking for 5,000 to 50,000 euros funding for your project if you can't even fill in the six free-form fields yourself.

That's the point that is the worse for me to ask that "for writing the grant itself"...

I don't see why it ,would be rude. Only if the proposal is of bad quality!

These grants are for humans writing good old-fashioned free software. If you're looking for someone sponsoring llm-tokens, then NLnet is not the right place.

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