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Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

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101–110 of 144 posts

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#101

The Soverign Tech Agency are currently hiring for a Director of Technology. Definitely a dream job for someone. https://www.sovereign.tech/jobs/director-of-technology

"Director of Technology (all genders)"

I guess I hadn't looked at German want ads ever. Is mentioning the gender as the most important qualification - literally in the headline - standard practice?

Also I guess Berlin is cheaper but seeing 99.5k EUR as the upper bound salary for a director role is a bit jarring.

I guess it's just the "otherness" of it but the DEI statement is shaped oddly to an American eye too. Please tell us if you are black or disabled but not if you are old or married.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#102
post #17
post #2

I never understood why a program installed in Flatpak is not just a directory on disk. When you install something via Flatpak, it still changes data in god-knows-what places on my disk. And the software itself has read/write access to god-knows-where on my disk. The answer is probably "convenience and efficiency". But I would much prefer a "An application is a directory and by default cannot access anything outside o…

Isn't that exactly how it's supposed to work, though? When I install a flatpak app for my user, it gets put into a standard location as a directory and by default has no access to filesystem other than the apps own config and data dirs (can't remember the paths). The fact that many apps choose to require excess permissions and can then bypass standard locations is a different matter

> The fact that many apps choose to require excess permissions and can then bypass standard locations is a different matter

It's not when that choice is never presented to the user.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#103
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would much prefer a "An application is a directory and by default cannot access anything outside of that directory" approach. That makes sense if the application is the only program that needs to interact with the data. For example: If you have a drawing or photo editing program. You might have downloaded an image from the internet or from your camera. Then you make some edits. Afterwards you want to send the…

Can't it request and be granted that permission, transparently to the app? E.g. the app does EnumerateDirectories("~/photos") then without requiring modification to the app, the call is interecpted, the user is presented with a permission request UI, and once granted, the app continues? At least that's how I'd thought it would work. Perhaps this isn't viable?

[deleted]

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#104
post #39

I’m thankful for the STF. Germany is one of the few countries doing something. But it is not strategic software-development. * They don’t employ software-developers. No safety for the developers. No control over developers. * It is only temporary. * The projects need to apply repeatingly for funding. Wasting time and resources and chausing worries. The how planet needs Linux, BSD, cURL, ffmpeg, Flatpak. We need to en…

We do all this self-congratulation around funding OSS companies and then end up with OSS companies that exist only thanks to government subsidization. Why? Isn’t governmental control over funding what we hate about Microsoft? What is so bad about letting real customers decide which companies need funding?

The idea of democracies is that the government is answerable to its people, though the idea may seem quaint in this day and age.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#105
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. Would it make more sense if this Sovereign Tech Agency behaved less like a Sovereign Tech Fund and simply hired the developers? Or is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy?

> is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy I see two problems here for Germany. First, the salaries of civil servants are regulated, and might be not what most developers, even German ones, expect. In addition civil servant status is bundled with privileges and duties that make it painful to lay it down. Most developers are used to job flexibility though, especially as, as I said, the salarie…

I agree on the second point. I assume we all know that this weird EU free market religion is harmful. The EU would be 1000% better for us, without the economy stuff it was originally build upon.

Free markets are dysfunctional and never fair. How we now? Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta proof it every day. The US and China don’t even care about fairness. Why they should?

Someone mentioned above the limited money STF has. I agree. I did not considered it noteworthy.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#106

The Soverign Tech Agency are currently hiring for a Director of Technology. Definitely a dream job for someone. https://www.sovereign.tech/jobs/director-of-technology

"Director of Technology (all genders)" I guess I hadn't looked at German want ads ever. Is mentioning the gender as the most important qualification - literally in the headline - standard practice? Also I guess Berlin is cheaper but seeing 99.5k EUR as the upper bound salary for a director role is a bit jarring. I guess it's just the "otherness" of it but the DEI statement is shaped oddly to an American eye too. Plea…

The “(all genders)” bit is probably just based on the fact that they translated the German job ad (in German you have to be more explicit with the male/female/all versions of titles, because the default is usually just the male form). So, it’s not a qualification, but just a way to be inclusive to applicants of all genders (we have a diversity problem in our industry).

The salary is bound to the limits of the public salary bands (collective agreement), that’s where the maximum comes from. (And, you can live quite well in Berlin with ~100k € per year.)

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#107
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy I see two problems here for Germany. First, the salaries of civil servants are regulated, and might be not what most developers, even German ones, expect. In addition civil servant status is bundled with privileges and duties that make it painful to lay it down. Most developers are used to job flexibility though, especially as, as I said, the salarie…

I agree on the second point. I assume we all know that this weird EU free market religion is harmful. The EU would be 1000% better for us, without the economy stuff it was originally build upon. Free markets are dysfunctional and never fair. How we now? Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta proof it every day. The US and China don’t even care about fairness. Why they should? Someone mentioned above the limited money…

[dead]

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Director of Technology (all genders)" I guess I hadn't looked at German want ads ever. Is mentioning the gender as the most important qualification - literally in the headline - standard practice? Also I guess Berlin is cheaper but seeing 99.5k EUR as the upper bound salary for a director role is a bit jarring. I guess it's just the "otherness" of it but the DEI statement is shaped oddly to an American eye too. Plea…

The “(all genders)” bit is probably just based on the fact that they translated the German job ad (in German you have to be more explicit with the male/female/all versions of titles, because the default is usually just the male form). So, it’s not a qualification, but just a way to be inclusive to applicants of all genders (we have a diversity problem in our industry). The salary is bound to the limits of the public…

Thank you!

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#109
post #13

Waste of money. "For Modal, a robust app sandboxing story is essential to creating a Free Software OS that is competitive with modern mobile platforms." Why? Focus should be desktop, not mobile. We have enough mobile stuff that creeped in already.

I don't think the point is to create mobile apps, rather than reaching the same level of sandboxed separation between the apps and other components of the OS that exists on iOS and android. Including easily handling permissions for apps etc.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Director of Technology (all genders)" I guess I hadn't looked at German want ads ever. Is mentioning the gender as the most important qualification - literally in the headline - standard practice? Also I guess Berlin is cheaper but seeing 99.5k EUR as the upper bound salary for a director role is a bit jarring. I guess it's just the "otherness" of it but the DEI statement is shaped oddly to an American eye too. Plea…

The “(all genders)” bit is probably just based on the fact that they translated the German job ad (in German you have to be more explicit with the male/female/all versions of titles, because the default is usually just the male form). So, it’s not a qualification, but just a way to be inclusive to applicants of all genders (we have a diversity problem in our industry). The salary is bound to the limits of the public…

Yep, the German version’s heading is a bit of a mouthful:

Technische*r Direktor*in (m/w/d/x)

Wir suchen eine*n technische*n Direktor*in, der*die die Technologie- und Forschungsstrategie der Sovereign Tech Agency federführend gestaltet und vorantreibt.

https://www.sovereign.tech/de/stellenangebote/technische_r-d...

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