Rust Coreutils & Reproducible Builds Receives Funding From The Sovereign Tech Fund

[cen1]

Any money towards open source projects is good in my books.

[spicfoo]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

Lots of whining about how a literal gift is not going to your favorite projects. Top if off with making very confident and incorrect statements that nobody is using a project. How exactly did you make that determination?

[kalrish]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

First, as anda_skoa noted, this funding represents a tiny fraction of Germany's budget. For investments such as this one to run the German state out of money, they would have to reach such a magnitude that we would all be aware of them –and their technological dividends– without articles like this covering them. For (further) reference, 100K € are just enough to hire a developer based in Germany for about a year.

Second, if the German government lacks funds, it is not because it "throws them away", as you say, but due to a ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court that upended the 2024 budget mere months before it was to be ratified and thus prompted the government to "plug the hole", so to speak, by cutting expenditure and especially investment. In fact, if anything, Germany invests too little into digital infrastructure.

Third, even if "no one" used this Rust rewrite of GNU coreutils, as you allege, an investment would make sense — precisely to change that fact and develop these tools into something that eventually sees widespread usage.

[rene]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

Couldn't agree more. Really regret not applying with https://t2sde.org Did not expect they throw money away for even less important projects, ... :-/

[CochainComplex]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

As a German taxpayer, I don't understand this. I really appreciate that our government is spending money on FOSS. Too much money has been thrown into the mouths of Accenture, Microsoft, etc., even if coreutils are useless or even if GNOME receives more big corporate money. (btw I like GNOME more than KDE).

Any penny spent on FOSS is worth it. It supports the FOSS community.

[patrick1946]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

Actually the Fund made quite some good investments(e.g. GNOME). If you know about the shit show in other places you don't mind anymore about this peanuts of my taxpayer money. Yes, I am tired about some Rust hype but I hope it will improve C++.

German investments in public IT infrastructure are really really sad. It is so bad that I not only suspect incompetency but some corruption too. But mostly it has to do with our federal system.

[rmfx]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

I wish governments grand billions of dollars into open source rather than corruption bs projects that cost 2000x times more (like paying premium ++++ for inflated pharma bills, constructions sites nobody asked for, etc...).

Regarding KDE founding, if what you say is true, I completely agree. Germany licks the balls of the US for decades and it's disgusting.
Despite the fact I really dislike KDE, they should have got the money indeed rather than gnome :/

[hyperchaotic]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.

Also, gotta love how they gave a million euros to GNOME instead of KDE, when KDE is literally founded in Germany, and needed the money way more since GNOME gets so much corporate development already.

I believe the investment in GNOME is earmarked for specific purposes, most of which also benefits KDE and the community in general:

• Improve the current state of accessibility
• Design and prototype a new accessibility stack
• Encrypt user home directories individually
• Modernize secrets storage
• Increase the range and quality of hardware support
• Invest in Quality Assurance and Developer Experience
• Expand and broaden freedesktop APIs
• Consolidate and improve platform components

[domih]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/white-house-urges-devs-to-switch-to-memory-safe-programming-languages/

[oleid]

No wonder the German government has no money,

Germany has plenty of money compared to other nations with similar or even bigger GDP. Its debts are only ~ 60% of its GDP