the #EU is full of political interference, and not in a good way so this aproch has its own problems.

I have been working with them a bit for the last few years...

Funding is the issue. I however lean in the direction that software should be crowd funded. That way, actual people are in the control of the project as opposed to organizations.

We need a paradigm shift. We expect everything from the internet to be free. But we need to normalize to give back to creators. We need systems that makes it easy, secure, private and convinient to tip. In a way that preserves autonomy.

eh

good luck 🙄

The challenge is also very much political, as well as it is societal.

EU is not that far from openly asking for the same tools/level of control and means to track its 'users', once upon a time called citizens. Maybe not to make gigantic piles of money but that doesn't change their willingness to access and use the exact same tools. And have them developed if need be.

The tracking (as much as our willingness to live with it) is the issue, more than it being commercial or not. Imho.

You are absolutely right, funding is the most challenging part. And you need it for two things - one is development, the other is basically lobbying or campaigning. You can start with either, but will need the other eventually:

• if you secure initial funding, hire devs, and create a fork, you'll need to eventually invest in some form of monetization or marketing to convince EU citizens and/or politicians to fund the project.
• if you secure initial funding and use it for lobbying/campaigning, you might eventually have enough funds to maintain the project in the long run but will then need to start hiring devs.

In either scenario you'll also have to overcome the overall community's reluctance to invest in the marketing/campaigning/lobbying part.

If you want it to be a robust, sustainable project, it's more about organizing and leading the effort than forking the code.