Projects can be submitted through https://NLnet.nl/propose, please check this page as well as the guide for applicants for this programme before you start writing a proposal - this might save you a lot of work.
Anyone can apply, including private individuals and organisations of any type. Project proposals should be in line with the NGI vision and should have research and development as their primary objective. Proposals should be complete and concise (no longer than the equivalent of two pages for the main application, see the submission form). Proposals should have a clear European dimension.
Projects are scored on a 7 point scale on three criteria: technical merit (30% weight), strategic relevance to the Next Generation Internet and expected contribution to the goals of NGI Fediversity (40% weight) and overall value for money (30% weight). The key objective is to deliver potential break-through contributions to the objectives of NGI Fediversity and bring easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability (based on functional packaging) and personal freedom at their core to everyone. Projects will need a total weighted score above 5.0 (out of 7) in order to be selected.
The following types of activities qualify for financial support, provided they are cost effective and have a clear link to the topics directly relevant to NGI Fediversity and the objectives set out in the call:
- scientific research
- design and development of open source software and open hardware
- validation or constructive inquiry into existing or novel technical solutions
- software engineering aimed at adapting to new usage areas or improving software quality
- formal security proofs, security audits, setup and design of software testing and continuous integration
- documentation for researchers, developers and end users, including educational materials
- standardisation activities, including membership fees of standards bodies
- understanding user requirements and improving usability/inclusive design
- necessary measures in support of (broad)er deployability, e.g. packaging
- participation in technical, developer and community events like hackathons, IETF, W3C, RIPE meetings, FOSDEM, etc. (admission fee, travel and subsistence costs)
- other activities that are relevant to adhering to robust software development and deployment practices
- project management
- out-of-pocket costs for infrastructure essential to achieving the above
All scientific outcomes must be published as open access, and any novel software and hardware created is to be be published under a recognised free and open source license in its entirety.
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Our software supply chains are a silent miracle, the result of millions of hours spent every year packaging, compiling and distributing software. From this vast firehose of bits come the apps and services we depend on every day. Subsequently, billions of hours are spent by users on dealing with everything from simple updates to complex system administration. This vast effort is necessary to keep oneself abreast of the never-ending supply of potential vulnerabilities that arrives with just a slight delay. Users that fail to responsively track new releases of every deployed service and each of its dependencies, are bound to land themselves or others in trouble sooner rather than later.
Deploying internet based services is much tougher than we can afford. No matter how user friendly or well-written software is, enabling the community at large to maintain internet services by themselves at scale has proven to be consistently challenging. Achieving high availability scenario's is even more of a dark art. No wonder, people just give in and surrender their data.
Fediversity is a comprehensive effort to bring easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability and personal freedom at their core to everyone. It wants to provide everyone with high-quality, secure IT systems for everyday use. Without tracking, without exploitation, in a way that runs everywhere and scales effortlessly. Fediversity is based on NixOS, a disruptive Linux distribution with a unique approach to package and configuration management. Built on top of the Nix package manager, NixOS is completely declarative, makes upgrading systems reliable, and has many other advantages. Because it is reproducible, it is ideally suited for complex deployment scenario's where consistent behaviour, stability and configurability matter.
One such "complex" deployment scenario is running state-of-the-art services for the Fediverse, like PeerTube, Mastodon, Owncast or Lemmy — especially if you want to for instance add services like live chat or transcoding. But even running more traditional services like modern e-mail servers with possible whistles and bells can be daunting. The same holds for deploying a VPN, private cloud storage, wiki, etc. Fediversity will enable all of these use cases, and more — finally bringing these to the market in a way that is as conveient as using a hosted service.
Fediversity will deliver an ambitious development effort, but this is a vast domain with many more challenges than what any preconceived effort could tackle by itself. This is why we invite your contribution to help us reshape the state of play, and together create an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all.
This is your opportunity to make a real difference. You tell us how your project can help Fediversity go harder, better, faster, stronger. In order to enable you to make such contributions, we will award 450 000 euro in small to medium-size R&D grants towards solutions that bring the next generation of mobile solutions closer. We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro's — which should get you on your way. If the project works out well you can subsequently scale up in other programmes funded by NLnet such as NGI0 Commons Fund. Noteworthy fact: many projects which are to be deployed inside Fediversity were themselves bootstrapped on precisely such a grant from NGI, and now it is your turn.
