Funding for free and open source software (FOSS) initiatives under the EU's Horizon program has mostly vanished from next year's proposal, claim advocates who are worried for the future of many ongoing projects. 

Pierre-Yves Gibello, CEO of open-source consortium OW2, urged EU officials to re-evaluate the elimination of funding for the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative from its draft of 2025 Horizon funding programs in a recently published open letter. Gibello said the EU's focus on enterprise-level FOSS is essential as the US, China and Russia mobilize "huge public and private resources" toward capturing the personal data of consumers, which the EU's regulatory regime has decided isn't going to fly in its territory. 

FOSS software, Gibello argued, is key to protecting European interests from the data-guzzling economy that's grown up elsewhere, which is why he's perplexed at the decision not to fund NGI. 

"We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiative," Gibello said. 

"Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations," he added. 

The NGI initiative has taken to its own defense as well, releasing an impact report on the program last week which aligns with Gibello's claims. 

According to NGI's examination of more than 1,000 "grassroots open source projects" it has funded with Horizon cash, 57 percent offer "viable alternatives to existing market solutions," and 74 percent continue to operate post-funding, "showcasing their sustainability." 

In addition, more than a third of NGI programs involve supporting compliance with the EU's GDPR law and its Cyber Resilience Act, while a further 23 percent are involved with implementation of Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act rules. 

In other words, not all NGI funding is for fun stuff like EU-made RISC-V-free laptops - some of it's important for helping the EU implement laws around digital goods and services. Without necessary funding, such implementations could be imperiled.

Gibello told The Register in an email exchange that NGI, being a program run by the European Commission, has no alternative source of funding. 

"Alternatives may come from the civil society or local authorities, but it would probably be smaller budgets," Gibello said. 

Open source funding? Not on the Horizon

The funding that Gibello is concerned about losing comes from the EU's massive Horizon program that kicked off in 2020 to fund technological and scientific research in the bloc, of which NGI is just a small portion. 

Horizon funding has been doled out multiple times since the program began. NGI has received tens of millions of euros over the past few years under Cluster 4 of the program, which doles out cash for digital, industry and space projects.

Gibello told us that NGI is mentioned in two sections of the 2025 Horizon Europe Maine Work Programme, which is still being hammered out and isn't publicly available: Driving the evolution of the internet toward "open and interoperable Web 4.0 and virtual worlds," and support for the Virtual Worlds Partnership and Web 4.0 initiative.  

"The new proposal says nothing about community building, commons, and civil rights. And has no ambition with regards to the overall internet infrastructure," Gibello said in an emailed statement. "It is just 'Horizon as usual,' with always the same large academics and companies obtaining grants - then pouring a few nuts to feed the ecosystem monkeys." 

Those monkeys being "the ones who provide them their infrastructure software and collaboration tools," Gibello added. 

Most of NGI's budget is allocated to third parties' work that covers the whole scope of the internet, Gibello noted. The lack of future funding "leav[es] many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe," he said. 

Gibello told us the new plan intends to fund 15 projects using the EC's "cascade funding" model, with around €2 million allocated for projects with a "really limited" and "somewhat fuzzy" scope, the OW2 CEO said. 

"If you look at [the previous work plan], €27 million were allocated …ten times more," he said, adding that the programs in previous years had a broad scope that's gone in the latest plan. "We are talking about €20 million - almost nothing with regards to the Horizon budget, but a huge effort from a FOSS community point of view."

NGI told us it's still unable to share too many details, but said it was being funded in 2025 under the web 4.0 and virtual worlds area, as well as 3C networks and Open Internet Stack. The initiative didn't share any monetary specifics, and said that will have to wait until the European Commission publishes the Work Programme. 

The 2025 strategic plan describes itself as being built on lessons learned in the first four years of the program to provide more focused funding for the final three (Horizon is scheduled to end in 2027) and it significantly consolidates Horizon's research focus.  

The previous strategic plan included four "strategic orientations" of promoting the development of key and emerging technologies, sustainable management of European natural resources, taking the bloc carbon-neutral and building a more "resilient, inclusive and democratic" EU. 

This year the list is far simpler, with "the green transition," "the digital transition" and the aforementioned more resilient, democratic EU listed as priorities. One could argue that FOSS has a place in all three of those categories, as does an open internet, but EC officials may disagree. 

"Our French [Horizon national contact point] was told - as an unofficial answer - that because lots of budget are allocated to AI, there is not much left for Internet infrastructure," Gibello said. 

The European Commission declined to comment on the matter. We're told that the 2025 Horizon Work Programme is still under development, with formal adoption not planned until the second quarter of next year. 

Gibello said ongoing projects at NGI will continue for now, with funding still available under NLnet's NGI Zero Commons Fund for the next few years, but that cash will still dry up before long.

"NLnet foundation has its own budget, and some countries already fund [their own] initiatives," Gibello told us. "Either we are successful at lobbying for NGI in 2026 and later, or there will be (almost) no more funding - or outside EU programs." ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/17/foss_funding_vanishes_from_eus/