Are you working on a project that makes the internet better for everyone? We support projects like yours both financially & practically. The next deadline for our rolling open calls is October 1.
Applying is simple, just fill out the one-page form. You can request between €5 000 & €50 000 euros. Open source, open data, open hardware & open standards projects are welcome. All outcomes must be published under an #opensource license & papers as #openaccess. https://nlnet.nl/news/2023/20230801-call.html #FOSS#funding
EU leaving Fediverse (Mastodon & PeerTube) because no one wants to operate the servers
“In recent years, a total of 40 institutions have opened an account with EU Voice, including the EU Data Protection Supervisor, the European Court of Justice and the EU Commission. The video platform, on the other hand, was used by six institutions … the EU institutions were thus the largest group of public institutions in the Fediverse worldwide.”
So what do we need, ideally? The equivalent of VC but for tech for the common good.
Pick ten organisations working the common good and give them €5M each. Let them experiment. Let them pivot. Let them cooperate. The only thing you don’t let them do is exit. You can’t sell. Build something for the commons that will live on for the next ten, twenty, fifty years… if not more.
I said as much 5 years ago at the European Parliament:
"The University administration respects all student protests, just not this one. Students have fought for many important causes over the years, and their right to protest is sacrosanct. In this case, however, we must arrest and slander them.
“We will not look back and regret this decision. Although we were wrong about not admitting women, abolitioning racial quotas, US involvement in Vietnam, and divesting from apartheid South Africa, we are confident that this time is different."
You might have heard of fedi.monster, a self-titled "anarcho-communist collective"
These people help 140 instances (including mine) operate by providing managed hosting to people who don't have the technical backing (or in my case, spoons) to run an instance by themselves.
They've just moved to using OpenCollective for their funding to be upfront about their finances.
Their one sysadmin is looking to take a permanent break and they're aiming to hire people to fill the role; if you know of people with those talents, and who are looking for some work - please get in touch with them at hello@fedi.monster
Otherwise, if you can spare money and want to donate to keep fedi.monster going; you can do that on their OpenCollective page here:
It's been really liberating being able to have my own little corner on the internet and not having to worry & faff with all the associated costs that come with running a Mastodon server.
I really appreciate the work of the people at FediMonster and I hope that they can keep going and providing such a valuable service to the community 💙
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to lose about $1.3 billion in funds as a result of last month’s federal debt ceiling negotiation that were initially allocated through Covid-19 supplemental funding, the agency shared with CNN.
Just got an email saying Kitten’s been rejected for funding by Sovereign Tech Fund. No reason given.
I don’t even know why I try anymore, really.
We’ve never received a single penny of public funding for our work even though everything we make is free and open source and all our work is for the common good.
We do have a group of folks who support us via patronage – thank you all so much. It doesn’t pay the rent but it means a lot.
So did I mention that no company or government pays me for the work I do?
But you can support my work if you want to live in a world where we have the Small Web as an alternative to the Big Web of Google, Facebook, and other people farmers.
I have been invited to show some of my #Photography work with a group #exhibition at the start of December. I have a collection of ten #photographs for it.
From this I applied for both #ArtsCouncilEngland & local council funding to help cover the costs of professional printing & framing, this is just under £3,700. The printers have a 4-week turn around with exhibition work, however the ACE & local council won't let know whether I'm successful with the applications until the end of November. Therefore I am now stuck in a rut & having to seek #CrowdFunding / #CrowdSourcing / #Funding for help.
May I therefore ask if anyone out there would like to assist me via my #Kofi page perchance? This is the first time I have been asked to show my work and it was already extremely daunting without having to ask for help.
📌 Statement by Norway’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Espen Barth Eide, on the UN Works and Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). ⤵️
Job opening at NLnet
(Junior and senior) technology assessors
"NLnet is looking for enthusiastic, knowledgeable and people oriented technology assessors. For you, libre technology is a labour of love. If so, this is a unique opportunity to take things one level up. As assessor, you have a critical role at the cutting edge of free and open source software & hardware, open standards, open data and open science."
Last month, Open Source Stories participated in Maintainer Month, an initiative to celebrate open source maintainers (🎉). I published a recap and shameless request for support. Read on below!
For my 40th birthday, I'd like for you to consider donating to one of these things that regularly makes me happy or one of these causes that are worth supporting:
A must-read re: #dementia, #funding, #caregiving, & the madness, the cruelty of our #healthcare system. "nothing has opened my uncovered-by-insurance eyes to the sadism and untenability of our for-profit health-care system as much as sharing a home and a life with a man caring for a wife with Alzheimer’s. It is untenable to expect family members of those living with Alzheimer’s to either bear a yearly six-figure burden for memory care, quit their jobs, or get a divorce." https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-to-families-with-alzheimers-youre-on-your-own
Our latest blog post dives into the funding of the Snikket project. Funding open-source is rarely easy. Grants, donations, sponsorships - we've tried them all 🙂
Following @jrf_nl's lead, I've halted maintenance of a #PHP library of mine that is clearly used by a number of company/agency businesses, unless #funding is found.
Just because it's #OpenSource doesn't mean the maintainers should work for free.
On the Internet, public space is not a place like Facebook or Xitter. It is the sum total of the interconnections between individually owned and controlled places.
This is why I’m designing the Small Web to enable everyone to have their own place on the web.
Feel free to join. We support up to 10k post characters and offer both MastodonBirdUI and TangerineUI.
Also, we have not yet reached our funding goal, currently at 15/100$. If you appreciate what we're doing, please consider contributing a few bucks. It makes a significant difference!
If I had money-money, I might create a VC that funded #opensource start-ups with contingency pressure to remain 100% open source. Not open core. Not Source-available. All these short-sighted VCs keep ruining good things in search for a quick buck that they themselves might never get out of it.
CDC facing major funding cuts, with direct impact on state and local health departments | CNN (www.cnn.com)
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to lose about $1.3 billion in funds as a result of last month’s federal debt ceiling negotiation that were initially allocated through Covid-19 supplemental funding, the agency shared with CNN.