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  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1741·
    4 days ago

    Why was the US funding FOSS projects? That strikes me as weird, inappropriate and suspicious.

    • Metz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      4 days ago

      Not that unusual. e.g. TOR started as a governement project. it was invented in the U.S. Naval Research Lab.

    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
      393·
      4 days ago

      If US uses FOSS software in its operations (it does, everyone does) it has a vested interest in keeping these projects alive.

      Also many of the sponsored projects help people circumvent authoritarian government overreach, which is something that until recently has been considered “good” for the US. The more freely information can flow the harder it is for authoritarian regimes to exert control.

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
        41·
        4 days ago

        FOSS is already stale for a long time by large corporations (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, X, etc), all of these with own developments of FOSS, these are not affected by this cuts for OpenSource proyects, but small startups, individual devs and small companies and oprganisations. It’s not against FOSS, it’s about control and clear against freedom.

        Fuck the US https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue

        • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          4 days ago

          Use it? The US invented it. The US has historically funded it as part of their human rights initiatives. Like I said:

          Also many of the sponsored projects help people circumvent authoritarian government overreach, which is something that until recently has been considered “good” for the US. The more freely information can flow the harder it is for authoritarian regimes to exert control.

          Given the nature of the Tor network, it’s likely any “official” use within the US government would probably involve things like communicating with people working undercover / informants, etc., and not be something broadly discussed.

    • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.spaceOP
      30·
      4 days ago

      Why was the US funding FOSS projects? That strikes me as weird, inappropriate and suspicious.

      A mixture of the elements within the US that actually believed the stuff about personal rights and democracy still existing behind the more sinister realities, as well as it being in the same pot of funded projects like Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty and the likes, which always were a mix of just outright propaganda organs, but also providing the scaffolding of free media access for some regions in the past.

      So, it’s complicated, ultimately rooted in a mix of the cynical US wanting to support dissidents in other countries, and the idealist US also having people actually believing in personal freedom and privacy, even within their government/state structures.

      Also, just in general, a lot of FOSS projects get funding from governments, US or otherwise. If I remember correctly ReactOS got a lot of funding from Russia, for example, because they saw a potential way to get away from Microsoft in it.

      From what I gather, there was no open influence wielded over those projects, I at least don’t remember the OTF forcing a backdoor onto Tor Browser for the CIA or something like that - thankfully the open source structure makes that easier to control - but the weakness becomes apparent now, of course, because funds could now be withdrawn, as the government turned fascist.

    • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
      17·
      4 days ago

      If it makes you feel better (or worse), thr NSA has contributed a great deal of work to the Linux kernel. In fact, they created SELinux, which you may be using at this very moment.