Is it just me or is the total amount of funding at the Sovereign Tech fund (https://www.sovereign.tech/faq) hilariously small? 11.5 mil eur right now? 17 mil next year? Better than nothing of course, but...
yes, though perhaps stating the obvious: it depends what they do with it.
Ladybird currently has 8 full-time devs [1] and is making impressive progress on delivering a browser from scratch. Wise investment in small, focused, capable teams can go a long way if they're not chasing VC-driven Unicorn status (or in stasis as a Google anti-trust diversion).
That's not challenging your point though: in the face of competing budgets at US tech giants, EUR17Mn still barely registers above noise level. Nevertheless, it's a start. We can only hope it grows and doesn't get shut down by some political lobbying by the aforementioned US behemoths. A modest budget might actually help there - not yet big enough to cause concern to incumbents.
What is the point of a new browser engine? What will be the advantage over WebKit/Blink/Gecko?
Sure it “isn’t monetized”, but nothing stops you from making non-monetized forks of chromium or Firefox. And nothing stops company from forking Ladybird and monetizing it, either.
spinningslate|4 months ago
Ladybird currently has 8 full-time devs [1] and is making impressive progress on delivering a browser from scratch. Wise investment in small, focused, capable teams can go a long way if they're not chasing VC-driven Unicorn status (or in stasis as a Google anti-trust diversion).
That's not challenging your point though: in the face of competing budgets at US tech giants, EUR17Mn still barely registers above noise level. Nevertheless, it's a start. We can only hope it grows and doesn't get shut down by some political lobbying by the aforementioned US behemoths. A modest budget might actually help there - not yet big enough to cause concern to incumbents.
[1]: https://ladybird.org/
umanwizard|4 months ago
Sure it “isn’t monetized”, but nothing stops you from making non-monetized forks of chromium or Firefox. And nothing stops company from forking Ladybird and monetizing it, either.