Big Tech’s disregard for privacy laws and individuals’ personal data has become a matter of national security. As news of willful mismanagement fill the headlines on an almost daily basis, the world is beginning to turn away from expensive and insecure spyware-riddled software imposed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple, et al.

The investment will be used to strengthen the structural reliability and security of KDE’s core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services.

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    711·
    4 days ago

    As much as I love Valve, I am actually grateful that such a huge money income is not coming from a company. So there are no need to “please” them. This is very important to stay independent.

    As a non-profit, KDE has no shareholders to serve, no quarterly earnings to grow. KDE charges nothing for its software or its licensing. There are no subscriptions, no spying on users, no disclosure or resale of data that users choose to voluntarily share with KDE, and no secret training of AI models with said data.

    I want to focus on the part of shareholders here. This is extremely important in todays world, because shareholders dictate what to do and they don’t need to please them to grow for their survival (instead for the needs of the community and its users). So there are no short term decisions involved, its a long term community project for community.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      19·
      4 days ago

      it’s nice to see the sovereign tech fund continuing to support this effort rather than something like google.

    • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I tend to agree that company backed projects go to shit after the shareholders get involved, but while there is nothing stopping Valve from doing an IPO in the future, they are currently a privately held company. This means they have no irrational share holders to appease. I surmize that this is the main reason why the Valve does nothing and wins meme exists because unlike most other corporations, Valve has the luxury of doing nothing.

      • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 days ago

        Yes, that is from Valves perspective. But my argumentation was from KDE’s perspective. In my points above I talked about two issues, one about the shareholders of KDE and the other of Valve not funding the project. It is important to make the distinction. While Valve has no shareholders and if they would invest huge funds to KDE, this could create a huge dependency towards Valve, even if it is not formally. Something similar to a position of Firefox depending on the funds of Google in example.

        • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          I understand what you were saying now, when I read it before, it presented as one point(“please the share holders”) rather than your intended meaning.