As many people reading this probably know, NlNet has been driving significant funding to (mainly) EU citizens working on Free Code infrastructure projects, sourced from the EU Next Generation Internet project. Thanks to a TechCrunch article about Mastodon, I recently learned about the Global Chinese Community of Universal Digital Commons, which does the same thing for Chinese citizens working on Free Code. Given the national balkanisation of the net over the last decade or so, it wouldn’t surprise me if the US and other jurisdictions have similar funds that target development grants at their own citizens.
So … why doesn’t Aotearoa? How could we go about creating one?
A Free Code grant-making body for Aotearoa would aim to provide a fulltime living for developers (or part-time where that works better for them), for a period of months. Allowing them to complete a pre-planned piece of work as described in the grant application, as with NlNet grants. It would seek upsteam funding to add to its pool from every possible source; established Free Software and Open Source organisations, public grants, philanthropic donations, community groups, crowdfunding, etc. The more money it could raise, the more public goods it could fund, and the more developers it could help to cover their living costs while working on them.
Ideally, it would be independent, non-government, and vendor-neutral. But NGI seems to work fine as a government initiative. If we could get a nonpartisan consensus among politicians to fund an NGI-style initiative for Aotearoa for a decade or two, to ensure our digital sovereignty, fine with me. If politicians aren’t interested but a consortium of businesses want to fund it instead, or universities, or whoever, that’s fine too. As long as there’s an ironclad guarantee that the funding comes with no strings attached, other than generating Free Culture works.
Thoughts?
