I suspect quite a few of you might be keen on open-source 😀
Unfortunately, #opensource has a funding problem, and so a lot of people struggle to find time to commit to their projects.
In many regions though (esp the EU) there is money available to fund you doing open source full time! Particularly in a few different areas related to what the EU is calling "Next Generation Internet" (#NGI) tech.
All these are open for applicants either right now or imminently:
We have 4 new open calls for funding for projects that contribute to an open, trustworthy, human-centered internet. Projects must be free and open source and papers published as open access.
Themes
NGI0 Core: Internet architecture and digital commons
NGI0 Commons Fund: Reclaim the public nature of the internet
NGI TALER: Privacy-preserving digital payments
NGI MobiFree: More ethical and human mobile software
Happy to announce the (official) launch of Mobifree. The @mobifree NGI Pilot Project focuses on the development of ethical mobile software, prioritizing the digital rights of users, including privacy and freedom of speech. https://mobifree.org/
Part of the project's budget is reserved for funding third-party contributions. The current open call for proposals between 5 & 50k is open till June 1. (More open calls will follow this year.) www.nlnet.nl/mobifree/
Mastodon becoming a US entity with a neoliberal board of directors and the goal of growth über alles is the issue here folks, not whether Eugen and company are compensated for their work. Of course they should be and well too. Or is that a privilege reserved only for the mediocre yes-people at the Googles and the Facebooks of the world?
If, on the other hand, maybe we’d like more folks to contribute to the commons and maybe not even be captured by Silicon Valley how about this radical idea: Fund them so they can live (at least as well) as any mediocre yes-person at a mainstream tech company.
Webinar Announcement:
Open source CPU and SoC design tools
Through the lens of the SpinalHDL, VexRiscv and NaxRiscv projects, this webinar will introduce the kind of tooling which is involved in designing a CPU and deploying it on hardware, the related challenges, the similarities and differences between hardware and software open-source, how the industry interact with open-source hardware, as well as the difficulties that the scale of such project creates. https://nlnet.nl/events/20240411/index.html #NGI#nlnet
Meet Open Food Facts, the world's largest open-source food database. With 2.8M+ products, 2.9M monthly users, and 20K+ contributors, Open Food Facts shapes how we approach food:
Andrew "bunnie" Huang will give a webinar about his project IRIS (Infra-Red, In-Situ) inspection of silicon. A project to facilitate the non-destructive verification of silicon chips.
He'll give a short talk about the project but will leave most of the time for a Q&A as he is interested to hear what people think about IRIS.
Bunnie is an open hardware hacker, and an activist for digital rights.
Join us Thursday May 2, 11.00 CEST. https://nlnet.nl/events/20240502/index.html
Listen to the @projetslibres_podcast with Walid interviewing Lwenn Bussière, Technology Assessor at NLnet, about #NGI0 and NLnet.
Lwenn: "The Internet infrastructure that we know very well comes from free software and is based on an often invisible, often unpaid work of volunteers and enthusiasts. We fund people who actually build sustainable solutions for the Internet."
The podcast is in French with transcriptions in both French and English.
"Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within." https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/
Coming soon: it’s going to be trivial to deploy a different app on your Small Web server. Useful if you’re a dev and you’re playing around with different apps.
(Also, notice the speed at which deployment happens. I’m one step away from implementing this in Domain using pre-warmed Kitten instances – called toasty kittens – thereby bringing the time it takes to deploy your own Small Web place down to a handful of seconds.)
📢 Announcement for NGI funded parties only:
NGI Communication Training: 2nd Edition starts on 7 Feb!
Join the NGI Outreach Office training and enhance your digital communication skills! Master storytelling, SEO, analytics, and more. Register at: https://www.ngi.eu/training/ #NGICommunicationTraining#NGI
Hands up if you think public EU money being awarded by @NGIZero / @fsfe should be subject to a transparent process where we can see all internal discussions/comments/reasoning concerning funding decisions including who made them.
Apply for Summer of Nix 2024 to join one of four teams in making selected free and open source software (FOSS) projects work reliably on a whim using Nix and NixOS.
Deadline May 10.
Summer of Nix is a rare opportunity for students or early-career professionals with diverse technical skills and interests to practice disciplined software development with Nix while contributing to the public good and receiving some payment for it.