5mo ago

F-Droid has received funds from US Congress (via OTF), just like Signal

F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund’s FOSS Sustainability Grant | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

F-Droid @lemmy.ml

testman @lemmy.ml

5mo ago

F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund’s FOSS Sustainability Grant

f-droid.org /2025/02/05/f-droid-awarded-otf-grant.html

Android @lemdro.id

Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.zip

5mo ago

F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund’s FOSS Sustainability Grant

f-droid.org /2025/02/05/f-droid-awarded-otf-grant.html

Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org

noodle (he/him) @lemm.ee

5mo ago

F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund’s FOSS Sustainability Grant

f-droid.org /2025/02/05/f-droid-awarded-otf-grant.html

34 comments

I swear this community is as bad as a flat earth one when the government gets brought up. why change the title from the original to imply that congress (other than deciding the federal budget) had anything to do with it? That is at best irresponsible and misleading and at worst actively malicious. Yes government entities do sketchy things, but that does not mean something can't be trusted because a government entity interacted with it.
- Well said. And I think there's more. In the Anglosphere and the USA in particular, government and state are often conflated, but they really are two different things. The former is the cockpit, the latter is the airplane.
  Things are different in European cultures. In Latin languages, for example, the government is understood to be the body of politicians in control right now, whereas the state is a sort of expression of the people's will and therefore has much wider legitimacy. Two very different things. I believe it's similar in German.
  I sometimes wonder if this semantic quirk has exacerbated the general skepticism of English-speakers towards collective action.
  
  I understand that "Regierung" (government) = executive branch "Parlament" (parliament, in the US congress+senate) = legislative branch
  "Staat" (state) is an imprecise word as it can mean different things https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity) (see Definition)
- Whatever fed 😉
- why change the title
  As I mentioned, I felt it was more transparent to say where the money comes from and let people draw their own conclusions. Of course there will always be dissenting opinions no matter which title is used, I think that just comes with the territory, and I'm ok with that; I don't think there is a single right or wrong answer. I'm sorry that you disagree with my choice. I encourage you to make similar posts wherever you'd like with your own desired title.
  Thank you for your perspective.
  
  The only "territory" that deliberately manipulating a title comes with is that of misinformation. For what other reason would another application be wedged in? Why are other grants left out? It's all very plain.
  
  it isn't more accurate though, you are lying about where the funding came from. congress only approved the budget for the government, they didn't have a say in who got the money that was being handed out. there is a single right answer and it is to not change the titles of news articles to suit your own opinions. if you want to present your opinion, you do it by making your own post. posting a news article is for sharing the article, not for lying about it's contents to suit the story you want to tell.
  
  where the money comes from
  Well you failed because it comes from the taxpayer.
  
  OTF receives the majority of its funding from the U.S. government via the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Funding is appropriated for OTF through the annual Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations and provided to OTF via a grant agreement from USAGM.
  For FY 2023, Congress allocated $90.5 million for programs to promote Internet freedom globally, representing a $13 million increase from FY 2022. Of the funds allocated for Internet freedom, $40 million was designated for OTF. Per the appropriations, all Congressional funding provided to OTF is used to support “programs to promote Internet freedom globally.” In addition to helping to further OTF’s mission, this funding increase is also further recognition of the increasing need for the tools and technologies OTF supports.
  In addition to funding from USAGM, OTF also accepts funding from other mission-aligned donors for discrete Funds, Labs, or Fellowships. For example, OTF’s FOSS Sustainability Fund is supported in part by funding from Schmidt Futures’ Plaintext Group, Okta for Good, and the Github Foundation.
Huz-fucking-zah. Independence from corporations like Google in the technologies we depend on is important, and F-Droid provides an unmatched service in support of that goal.
F-Droid needs to be audited to make sure no backdoors have been installed. Otherwise funding FOSS is one of the few good things any government can do.
I mean, Fdroid has problems but funding from government is the absolute least of them.
- Depends what the funding is for. If it’s payment for compliance with CALEA (which has become a major revenue stream for big tech), then it’s compensation for building backdoors.
Do they also have a warrant canary?
- I don't consider those to be useful anymore because a court can compel them to keep the canary up in secret, and I'm pretty sure that's already happened more than once before.
  
  That's never happened in history
Noob question: are tye people saying "gov funding = NSA" mostly American?
Cool
Original title was "F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund's FOSS Sustainability Grant". Not trying to be tinfoily but I thought it would have been even more irresponsible to not make it clear where the money really comes from as I think most people aren't aware.
Either way, please do your own research and draw your own conclusions and I promise I have no intentional agenda in reporting this... besides transparency.
- I don't think your edited title is that clarifying, and in fact, muddies the water by glossing over some key details. Chiefly, Congress doesn't fund the OTF, they fund the US Agency for Global Media, which in turn uses some of their money to fund the nonprofit OTF; the OTF then uses their money to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies," per their 501(c)3 non-profit mission statement.
  OTF has its own board, and they operate independently from the government, though their operations are tied in a roundabout way to how Congress decides to allocate funding.
  That F-Droid got a piece of that pie is a good thing, especially in light of the current regime and how they're basically giving the middle finger to Congress.
  
  Yeah, the edited title is implied to be unburying the lede, but there was nothing being hidden by the original title.
- I think you will find that almost all grants either come from a corporation or a government. Crazy isn't it? A very small amount comes from non-profits and often those nonprofits are majority funded by governments and corporations.
- Don't worry, it's libre software, we control it.
- I want to share that My brain first interpretation from the title is that they are receiving money to do dirty things. And reasoning about it , Nothing to do with reality of course I didn't even read the article . End of message.
- Why change the title??
- Thanks for this clarification. Certainly something to be aware of and pay attention to, but a little less instantly alarming than the OP title.
If this is the equivalent of Germany's STF, then I'm all for it.
Oh no, I're received funding (welfare) from the governemnt, guess I'm a CIA asset now... 🤷‍♂️
/s

34 comments