Seems to be a matter of aligning incentives and not a lack of skill, creativity or financial capacity.

Zeit das zu ändern!

Ich habe übrigens nicht downvoted.

In principle not incorrect, Europe has rough times ahead and a lot to do to catch up in defense and digital infrastructure, among others.

That said, it should be carefully investigated what leads to actual productivity increase. Just more hours may or may not do that. And compensation should increase accordingly.

It might sound kinda radical, but I feel that we need a culture shift to people paying for things, even if it’s small amounts, if we want to be truly competitive to „big tech“. Big tech uses venture capital to offer free stuff and thereby establish monopolies. We expect developers to work for free. It does work to an extent, but obviously it’s limited. And also people deserve being paid for their work.

Some work could be done in the area of how the funds are managed and presented, so it’s transparent and fair.

I’d be happy to pay for things like Ubuntu Touch to have quickly a viable alternative to Android and iOS. It’s possible to donate, but donations tend to not be reliable or make development viable at all. Paying for Open Source seems fine, as long as fund allocation is fully transparent.

Ich habe nie verstanden warum man sich hier so schwer tut, eigene vernünftige Software Plattformen zu entwickeln. Das ist keine Raketenwissenschaft…? Und zb könnte die EU existierende Projekte unterstützen, wie Ubuntu Touch, um eine Alternative zu Android und iOS zu haben.

There are a few competitive devices that even come with Ubuntu Touch preinstalled.

It doesn’t have 2 of the biggest corporations in the world funding it. Maybe something can be done at policy level to get it up to speed. With Linux at foundation we already have like 70%.

Ah yes, it should indeed not be strictly required to function. But there is a framework (why it’s called Ubuntu Touch in the first place)!

Running desktop programs on your phone requires some tweaking to work.

I‘m curious to see how Ubuntu Touch addresses this. Nowadays smartphones are just normal computers, so you have to wonder whether the historic restrictions of Android and iOS are still relevant. I‘m inclined to see it as a user-interface problem only (small screen, touch vs click), which is a fully solved problem on web, with responsive layouts. Not sure what happened to Windows, but that’s also quite old and maybe it was just not well designed.

Why not Ubuntu Touch? Linux is European from the ground up and is an extremely solid foundation, UT even has features that Apple and Google have struggled with forever, like full compatibility with desktop apps. It just needs polish and app developers, and that’s where EU funding would come in, as you’re suggesting for Android. From what I read it also has a working Android compatibility layer.

Indeed, though you still have some dependency on Google as lead of Open Handset Alliance, which is the official developer (might not have much practical significance within open source context), as well as have to develop your own „Google Services“ on top of it, to match the user experience.

Ubuntu Touch is a thing btw, if one is serious about supporting an European ecosystem.