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Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

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Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#111

Post by trlphj »

ho_schi wrote: 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…

The STF is run by politologists with no clue. They fund flashy web apps that they "understand" and packaging.

All the industry money goes to packaging already. They should fund foundational small C/C++ projects that are not funded by the Linux Foundation etc.

Small C/C++ projects in general are treated like dirt. They get no funding but everyone relies on them. Occasionally champagne sipping SBOM industry shills draw a funny comic about the dependencies, cash in on their foundation salaries and treat the projects as "materials".

The whole OSS scene is dominated by grifters any hyenas.

The C/C++ projects should adopt the PyPI strategy: Insert exploits and segfaults, write huge mea culpa articles and then get industry funding.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#112

Post by trlphj »

xyzelement wrote: post #101
robin_reala wrote: post #66

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…

[flagged]

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#114

Post by j1elo »

danielheath wrote: post #45
alkonaut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Apps built with a toolkit which ships its own filepicker will immediately attempt to enumerate directories in `/`, `/home`, and probably a few other places. Apps with a config file will often try to read `~/.config/myapp` and also `~/.myapp/config` and maybe one or two other places. How many permission prompts will users tolerate?

The list of files that such app would try to access by default on initial startup would be finite and well defined. So, a Flatpak package of such app should already, if done "properly", (I'm just imagining here, not an expert) include allowed access to those paths by default.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#115

Post by onli »

nkmnz wrote: post #84
ho_schi wrote: 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…

> They don’t employ software-developers. No safety for the developers. No control over developers. Thank god they don't employ them. It would be terrible for everyone involved, especially for the developers. The government in Germany is a terrible employer for someone with high work ethics and a dedication to their craft. They crush your soul with bureaucracy and drain your spirit with rules and regulation. On top of…

The construction would be a private company that works with the government. That exists already - I had applied for one before - and the pay was completely competitive, for German salaries. 80K.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#116

Post by fph »

j16sdiz wrote: post #71
hattar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that you can't magic your way out of this. You can't eg. wait for the program to request access to a file before displaying a "Program wants access to this file. Allow/Deny" because the program doesn't know if this file exists, and the user wouldn't be able to navigate to it via the program's bespoke file browser since it doesn't have access to directories or their contents. What stops the OS from granting acc…

The "open panel" in macOS is actually a system service, run out-of-process, with different sandbox and permission.

This is the sane solution. And not unlike what Android does in the end, with the difference that they have a share panel instead of an open panel: so you initiate the process from the app that owns the file rather than the one that wants to access it.

But GUI apps on Linux are so fragmented that getting everyone to use the same open panel is hopeless.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#117

Post by fs111 »

trlphj wrote: post #111
ho_schi wrote: 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…

The STF is run by politologists with no clue. They fund flashy web apps that they "understand" and packaging. All the industry money goes to packaging already. They should fund foundational small C/C++ projects that are not funded by the Linux Foundation etc. Small C/C++ projects in general are treated like dirt. They get no funding but everyone relies on them. Occasionally champagne sipping SBOM industry shills draw…

> The STF is run by politologists with no clue. They fund flashy web apps that they "understand" and packaging.

That is complete nonsense. Where do you get this "information"?

https://www.sovereign.tech/tech lists OpenSSL, rusttls, Junit, pipewire, samba, varnish-cache, curl, Fortran, even friggin GNU coreutils and others. None of those are "flashy web apps".

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#119

Post by wowczarek »

nwellnhof wrote: post #74
ho_schi wrote: 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…

> They don’t employ software-developers. They actually do employ developers: https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fellowship > The projects need to apply repeatingly for funding. Still better than no funding at all.

>> The projects need to apply repeatingly for funding.

> Still better than no funding at all.

Exactly, plus no grantor I know operates on a blank check basis, its always budgeting, prioritisation, and new applications and grants are for a specific period, can come in tranches, etc. Just how these things work, Germany or not.

Re: Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak

#120

Post by carlosjobim »

hvb2 wrote: post #50
jimbob45 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What is so bad about letting real customers decide which companies need funding? Because human nature means you won't get paid when something is free. There's donate options but those are not a reliable source of money. Unless your software is big enough that you can make money through support contracts, I don't see how you can keep the lights on while being paid

Then charge a fair price for your work (ie the software you deliver). That's the completely fair solution for all sides of the equation. People who don't want your stuff don't get stuck with the bill and people who do want your stuff aren't taking it for free.
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