This announcement was originally published in the website of the NLnet Foundation.
We are happy to announce that 45 projects have been selected for NGI Zero Commons Fund seventh open call. We congratulate all the grantees and thank them for their contribution to a free, open, resilient, secure and human-centered internet. In a world increasingly in the grip of proprietary technologies and those who control them, we think it is important to be supporting people who are working on the digital commons: shared digital technologies that serve not the few but are available to everybody.
Toward a digital commons
The NGI Zero Commons Fund provides grants to people who help build the digital commons. Because all projects are free and open source technologies, all outcomes can be freely used, studied, shared and moderated by anyone. Together they provide the building blocks for a information and communication infrastructure that promotes digital autonomy and serves the common good.
Stacking up building blocks to reclaim the digital commons
So far 272 projects have received funding in the seven rounds of the NGI Zero Commons Fund. A new call opens every two months, the current call closes December 1. NGI Zero, the coalition of 16 non-profits led by NLnet foundation, has been responsible for five other funds besides the Commons Fund. Over all, the coalition has supported over one thousand Free and Open Source projects. The NGI Zero Commons Fund is financed by the European Commission as part of the Next Generation Internet initiative.
Meet the new projects!
Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing
- Borg - European Graphics Processing Unit — Foundational workflow for an open-source GPU
- Open Beam Interface Lite — Generic interface for high end scanning and patterning devices
- Open Logic - Signal Processing Elements — Standard Library for FPGA development
- Open-source accelerator platform for large FPGAs — Low cost hardware accelerated workloads with open toolchains
- OpenCartoCam — 360-degree camera with hardware-accelerated object detection
- Pinbot — Design and deploy test jigs for electronics
- TerosHDL usability — Open source IDE for FPGA/ASIC development
- Torch Lens Maker — Open-source optical systems engineering
- uberDDR4 — High-performance, standalone DDR4 memory controller.
- uberWAVE — Full featured live interactive waveform viewer
Network infrastructure including routing, P2P and VPN
- Improving asynchronous execution in libgnunetutil — Add synchronous processing to GNUnet
- Enhancing vula and related libraries — Automatic local network encryption for IPv4/IPv6 with PQC
- Porting the Lucid Language to Open Platforms — Make writing high-performance data-plane software easier
- Reach — Cryptographic Infrastructure for Anonymous Communication
- schc-rs — Faster low power networking for constrained devices
- SecurEAP: Secure Enterprise Wi-Fi on Linux — Improve Wi-Fi security and privacy
- wcoord (wireless-coordination) — Easy configuration of wireless networks
Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs
- iOS support for AccessKit — Cross-platform abstraction over accessibility APIs
- minipgp6 — Lean implementation of modern OpenPGP
- Parley - rich text layout library — Cross-app rich text copy/paste for Parley
- Porting the Lucid Language to Open Platforms — Make writing high-performance data-plane software easier
Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation
- Open-source firmware for modern AMD boards part 2 — Extending coreboot support for AMD Phoenix SoC to AM5 socket
- p2panda System Service — Real-time collaboration, private sharing and unified local storage of desktop apps
- Secure Apache PLC4J — Unified interface to PLCs and industrial devices
- TouchUp — Enhance the GNOME Shell User Experience on Touch Devices
Middleware and identity
- Authlib — Reliable OAuth and OIDC handling in Python
- C/C++ Package Registry — Common registry for software written in C/C++
- Multitenant CAS — Better scalable Single Signon Enterprise Authentication
- SimpleX relay server implementation in Rust — Scalable intermediated P2P messaging system
Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger
- Distributed object programming in Dart — Easily create peer-to-peer and federated software
- E2EE OCapN Federated Relays — Add relays to OCapN's capability-based networking
- Enhancing vula and related libraries — Automatic local network encryption for IPv4/IPv6 with PQC
Data and AI
- claim.li — Decentralised annnotation tool based on Dokieli
- Open-source accelerator platform for large FPGAs — Low cost hardware accelerated workloads with open toolchains
- Spacylize — Use LLMs to train more efficient and reliable NLP models
Services + Applications (e.g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration)
- Converse XMPP Chat on Mobile — Embeddable XMPP client for mobile usage
- CryptPad Notes — E2EE collaborative rich text editor
- CryptPad Scalable Server — Improve the architecture of CryptPad
- Fidus Writer modularisation — Semantic word processor for collaborative writing and structured documents
- Graphite 2D graphics editor — Keyframe animation and vector editing intuitive UI enhancements
- IronCalc for Nextcloud — Embed IronCalc spreadsheet engine into Nextcloud
- Macaw Instant Messenger Web/Desktop — XMPP client written in Rust
- Manyfold; Printing, Customisation, and Versioning — ActivityPub-powered tool for storing and sharing 3d models
- New data types for GNU Octave — Advanced data analysis workflows in GNU Octave
- Support for Microblogging and Social Feeds to Converse — Add social networking functionality to Converse
- Sylk Contacts — Cross-protocol real-time communications client
Vertical use cases, Search, Community
- claim.li — Decentralised annnotation tool based on Dokieli
- EVQI — Unified data exchange for electrical Vehicle charging
- TBD DSP toolkit — Open hardware audio processing module
Still hungry for more projects? Check out the overview of all our current and recent projects...
Inspired? If you are working on a project that contributes to the Next Generation Internet you can submit a proposal. The next deadline is December 1st 2025.
If you applied for a grant
This is the selection for the June call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund fund only. We always inform all applicants about the outcome of the review ahead of the public announcement, whether they are selected or not. If you have not heard anything, you probably applied to a later call or a different fund that is still under review.
Acknowledgements
The NGI0 Commons fund is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (grant agreement No. 101135429). Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).