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@glent The Internet Archive on the other hand could really use a funding boost.
@LaChasseuse @glent OpenStreetMap as well, could use some funding. I met someone last week involved with OSM who pointed out the massive difference in the funding Wikipedia gets vs OSM, and it was quite a bit.
HackW/E@LinuxHotel @alpinegreg Cna confirm. OSM operates on a shoestring budget. It has like 3 employees, that's it.
@amapanda @LaChasseuse @glent Indeed, the #OpenStreetMap books for 2023 showed they ran on less than £500k. Which is fairly impressive considering the service they provide.
@alpinegreg @amapanda @LaChasseuse @glent shocking really when you consider that OSM data is the basis of basically every non-google commercial provider
@tonyfinn I've thought for a long time that digital resources such as search motors, online interactive maps, social media platforms and the actual hardware of the internet should be seen as essential infrastructure, "owned" collectively at the international level, and free to use, like roads are. Sadly, governments have been too timid in addressing this.
@LaChasseuse @tonyfinn @alpinegreg @amapanda @glent "Too timid" is an understatement. Most of those asswipes would privatize and monetize every single human interaction if they could, let alone infrastructure.
@Natanox I think there is a hesitancy in many governments when it comes to "owning" things.
First: when something goes wrong, they get the blame,
Second: some do it via so-called "arm's length" management (eg, Edinburgh's bus service) as the gov't may not actually have the expertise in-house to operate certain types of services.
@LaChasseuse @tonyfinn @alpinegreg @amapanda @glent Were there ever other solutions that got explored? Like, governmentally supported non-profit coops or sth like that for these fundamental things (that got a clear purpose & order what to do when created)?
I mean, their main goal should be to be *good* and safe in every aspect.
@Natanox I lived in Sweden for a long time, just when they were transitioning from being a socialist country to being much more of a mixed economy. The Swedish state would heavily subsidize things like adult learning schools, daycare centres, non-commercial cinemas, publishers, most of the arts.
Slowly people began to perceive this as rather "old fashioned", esp after the fall of the Berlin wall, and a lot of these institutions went private.
@LaChasseuse Yeah, that's the sort of thinking i like!
However I will point out that governments have, traditionally, owned & provided mapping services. In the UK, the Ordnance Survey has existed for, what, 150 years?
And we still had to create OpenStreetMap to free geo data.
Even the USA, with more liberal copyright/database laws, didn't have a very different outcome.
@tonyfinn They have quite a number of corporate members who support them starting at €750 - up to €30,000 per annum. I had to look REALLY HARD through their website to find a way to make an individual contribution. They don't seem very interested in small sums? But here's the link:
https://supporting.openstreetmap.org/
@LaChasseuse @tonyfinn @amapanda @glent I definitely agree that OSM should make it easier to donate. Then again, Wikipedia probably has a budget to do their donations website that's equivalent to the total of the funding that OSM has.
@alpinegreg @glent Good point, I always forget about them. Will send them a fivver.
@alpinegreg @LaChasseuse @glent or people posting with #MutualAid hashtag, struggling to pay for food and rent
@cybertailor I've been a bit wary of that, because of the presence of grifters among them. I used to send a bit of money once in a while to an Inuit fellow in the north of Canada, who was having a hard time - or so it seemed.
Eventually others informed me that the "wife with cancer" didn't exist, that he had a decent state pension, and that on other forums he laughed at all those he'd duped.