There's a reason why there's no United States version of NLNet - that'd encourage public services built by people using public dollars. That'd run counter to organizations like Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, Amazon and the like who make money by siloing government infrastructure and forcing citizens to accept sub-par solutions (that other groups have to hack around).

That being backed by venture capital puts us in this vicious loop where if you can't afford better options, you HAVE to accept these broken machines. Bringing this to the open social Web, if I can avoid it, I'd opt for funding from people directly whenever possible. I say this fully knowing where I work this is not the case, but to sit in it as the "acceptable" solution does not map with my hope for this work to be something that can be owned by the people.

That means (and isn't restricted to) avoiding explicit wealth extraction from the people, full transparency around how money is spent and used to run services (beyond what the US demands - that's not enough in this age, hasn't ever) and allowing people to view and maintain the use of the tools on their own terms (aka either viral licensing like AGPL and friends or something flexibly permissive like the tools at artlessdevices.com. If what you build mimics the same lock-in we have, it's not worth me promoting as I'm eager to find a more open world and refuse to commit people into another vat to be stuck in.

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