January 16-17, 2024

The Hague (the Netherlands)

A new EC-funded NGI project, which has been conceived and organised with an ambition to ensure integration and alignment with national and European digital/internet commons policies, was officially launched last week at the project kick-off meeting held in The Hague.

NGI Commons is a three-year Coordination and Support Action (CSA) answering to the HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01-04 Call: Next Generation Internet Commons Policy (Call). In the next 36 months, the project will be elaborating on a long-term strategy for digital/internet commons, which are critical for Europe’s sovereignty and trust. The project will help overcome fragmentation and close the gap between grassroot commoners’ initiatives and top-down sovereignty policies. This will serve the purpose of creating a more coherent European funding landscape across both public and private sectors. As stressed by the representatives of the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission who attended the kick-off meeting, the importance of the NGI Commons project lies in its potential to shape the way NGI will evolve in the future.

What are digital/internet commons? Project scope and ambition

Digital/internet commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of information resources and technology. Examples of digital/internet commons include open-source software, open hardware, open design, open licensing, open standards, and open data. Over the last few decades, digital/internet commons have become essential components supporting sovereignty, trust, democratic values, and fundamental digital rights and principles, such as privacy and data protection, open knowledge and participation, user control over personal data, decentralisation, inclusiveness, and a green transition, among others. Their economic and geopolitical importance has been growing exponentially, gathering increasing momentum across several communities, in line with the Digital Decade principles. But while digital/internet commons are critical in our digital life, their importance is not fully reflected at the strategic level with little representation of the communities involved, lack of structure, gaps between grassroot commoners and top-down sovereignty policies, and a fragmented funding landscape. The NGI Commons project was established as a response to the above-mentioned points. The project will contribute to the following outcomes expected by the Call:

• stronger integration of the NGI initiative and its vision and ecosystem with the digital/internet commons policies at the national and European levels,
• a long-term strategy for digital/internet commons based on a clear mapping of existing communities of commoners and commons,
• smooth articulation of bottom-up activities of European commoners’ communities and top-down policy priorities (e.g., reuse of commons, avoiding overlaps), and
• a more coherent funding landscape integrating national and European dimensions from public and private sectors.

As outlined by Monique Calisti, the CEO of Martel Innovate, “the NGI Commons project has been built on a clear comprehension of the technological, research, socio-economic, legal, and policy-related factors relevant to the broader NGI ecosystem, and the planned activities have been designed to not only facilitate access to the NGI resources and funding to grow digital commons/internet commons initiatives but also generate value for the wider group of NGI stakeholders.” 

This value-generation-driven approach will be supported by the consortium’s in-depth understanding and privileged access to the NGI tools and mechanisms, a thorough understanding of the European policy landscape, and the partners’ direct involvement in the European digital/internet commons and open-source scenes. By liaising with bottom-up initiatives in the digital/internet commons and open-source scenes and engaging with top-down policy and regulatory efforts and experts, the ambition of the NGI Commons project is to pave the way for digital/internet commons as core building blocks of Europe’s digital sovereignty.

Who’s in

Led by Martel (the Netherlands), the NGI Commons consortium comprises experts, including Paul Keller, Open Future Foundation (the Netherlands), who, together with his team will map digital sovereignty policy initiatives of relevance, injecting into the development of a strategic agenda for support to the digital/internet commons ecosystem and investment in public digital infrastructure; Astor Nummelin Carlberg, OpenForum Europe (Belgium) who will engage experts to identify priorities for further development of digital/internet commons, curate synergies with relevant initiatives, and provide support to commoners to navigate the EC funding opportunities; Mirko Boehm, Linux Foundation Europe (Belgium) who will measure the leverage effect of NGI funding and identify efforts, technology blocks, projects, and results of past and ongoing NGI projects feeding into digita/internet commons initiatives; Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, CNRS (France) whose team will map relevant initiatives and elaborate on governance models for future digital commons; and Monique Calisti, Martel Innovate (Switzerland), who, taking advantage of her experience, position, and deep understanding of the NGI needs and evolution will lead the effort of engaging experts to analyse the NGI portfolio.

The post OFE Participates in NGI Commons: Aligning National and European Digital/Internet Commons Policies appeared first on OpenForum Europe.

The benefits of technology for society

The fund supports exclusively independent software engineers and researchers who develop digital commons – building blocks which can be used, studied, shared and modified by everyone. “The NGI0 Commons Fund is a strategic impulse for Europe’s digital independence, as much as it is an investment into our European economy”, says Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet and program leader of the new fund. “People are looking for fairer alternatives to existing proprietary digital services. Yet it is still unclear how to go about it. Fostering digital commons through these investments will render technologies more accessible and the internet less dependent on proprietary services with unclear legal conditions. And, a more resilient internet is a clear benefit for society”

Agile R&D granting process

Unique to NGI0 Commons Fund is that it recognizes the importance of grassroots efforts as drivers for change. This is why the fund enables a large number of carefully curated small grants (between 5 000 and 50 000 euro), effectively at a human scale. “If an investment of that size was good enough to bootstrap the development of the entire World Wide Web itself at the time, we believe it makes sense today to see what else we can bring into the world when there is no pressure from venture capital – but only talent that puts the public good at the center”, says Leenaars. The programme is open to both individuals and organisations of any type – but the project outcomes must be publicly available under a free and open license. For projects with high potential, a scale-up programme is available.

The scope of the open calls is broad, meaning that those working on technology commons across the entire technological spectrum can apply: from libre silicon chips to privacy-friendly augmented reality & AI, from alternative mobile operating systems to open office suites, and from end-to-end encrypted messaging applications to community-curated open data repositories.

“Making the internet human centric is part of the core mission of the Next Generation Internet initiative”, states Fabrizia Benini, Head of unit within the European Commission responsible for the NGI initiative. “The European Commission is making a strategic investment into free and non-proprietary open software and hardware as well open standards, open data policies and publicly accessible science. These new building blocks of digital commons will make the internet more trustworthy, helping to overcome the dependency issues Europe is facing today.”

First call opens February 1, 2024

The first open call is scheduled for next month, to be followed by new opportunities every two months until the budget is fully allocated. Besides financial support grantees can count on a range of support services to improve the quality, maturity and deployability of their efforts. Practical services like security, accessibility audits and packaging help to improve the quality and promote adoption of the projects, while services like mentoring and diversity management aim to strengthen the communities behind them.

About NGI Zero

NGI Zero is a dynamic coalition of not-for-profit organisations that together fund and support the development of technology commons as building blocks for the Next Generation Internet initiative in various ways. Since 2019, NGI Zero has been reshaping public funding of technology with one of the most ambitious and productive funding programmes of its kind — providing bottom-up grants to create digital commons with a pipeline of tailored support to help mature the technologies in question. So far well over five hundred projects have been funded, ranging from formally verified VPN tunnels, open app stores, privacy-preserving analytics to decentralised social media – and many more.

The team behind NGI Zero Commons Fund includes the following European partners: NLnet Foundation (NL) (program lead), OW2 (FR), Free Software Foundation Europe (DE), Open Forum Europe (BE), APELL (BE), NixOS Foundation (NL), Tolerant Networks (IE), Radically Open Security (NL), HAN University (NL), Association for Progressive Communications (ES), Center for the Cultivation of Technology (DE) and Commons Caretakers (NL). Additional funding for the Swiss partners (Free Silicon Foundation and Internet Society Switzerland chapter) is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). An overview of earlier and ongoing programmes such NGI0 Entrust and NGI0 Core can be found on https://nlnet.nl/NGI0.

About the Next Generation Internet initiative

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) was initiated by the European Commission, with the overall mission to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet for the third millennium and beyond to shape a value-centric, human and inclusive society for all. The programme is supported by the European Commission’s DG CNECT. 

The post OFE will support the NGI0 Commons Fund awarding grants for the development of open digital technologies appeared first on OpenForum Europe.

For immediate release: 4/12/2023

EU Cyber Resilience Act Takes a Leap Forward: 

Further Clarifying Responsibilities for FOSS Next Step

Major improvements with regard to the scope of applying the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) to free and open source software were made by the co-legislators when agreeing on the final text. The 2022 proposal raised concerns that “commercial” would be interpreted broadly and then all acts of publishing and sharing software and source code would trigger legal questions, obligations and the risk of fines. However, the Commission, Parliament and Council have now agreed to a crucial clarification that “the provision of free and open-source software products with digital elements that are not monetised by their manufacturers is not considered a commercial activity”.

This is in addition to the clarification that “The mere circumstances under which the product has been developed, or how the development has been financed should therefore not be taken into account when determining the commercial or non-commercial nature of [making free and open-source software available on the market].” This wording will give clarity to a lot of contributors, both commercial and non-commercial, and will prevent the obligations from extending to certain areas where they could be counterproductive.

While we welcome these improvements, it’s important to recognise that the CRA still presents a regulatory challenge for businesses involved in monetising software. For the vitality of the free and open source software ecosystem, and the robustness of the European IT infrastructure that heavily relies on open source, it’s essential that these businesses remain sustainable. Moreover, for the EU’s cybersecurity and digital sovereignty, keeping development within the EU is crucial.

In the coming months and years, efforts are needed to further clarify the CRA’s obligations and to establish efficient, cooperative processes. These will ensure ease of compliance while maintaining the right to modify, share, and commercialise the software.

With the legislative phase drawing to a close, attention now turns to the development of implementation standards as required by the regulation. Concurrently, discussions will commence in the business community to facilitate a smoother compliance process.

OpenForum Europe would like to express its appreciation to the officials and staff of the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission for their engagement in discussions with representatives of the free and open source software community. We also acknowledge the hard work of the free and open source software stakeholder representatives, whose collective efforts have been vital in reaching this outcome.

For further information please contact:

Ciarán O’Riordan, Senior Policy Advisor
ciaran@openforumeurope.org and CC euteam@openforumeurope.org

The post EU Cyber Resilience Act Takes a Leap Forward appeared first on OpenForum Europe.