Welcome to NLnet Foundation
When it comes to important ideas that can help improve our society, there really are no boundaries. The challenge is to turn those opportunities into reality. Great ideas just come, but they are gone in a breeze as well. Lets make good use of them.
Since 1997 NLnet foundation (after its historical contribution to the early internet in Europe) has been financially supporting organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It funds those with ideas to fix the internet. The procedure is fast, competitive and open to anyone. The articles of association for the NLnet foundation state: "to promote the exchange of electronic information and all that is related or beneficial to that purpose".
NLnet has contributed funding to many important and very visible projects around fundamental standards from securing the core routing protocols and the domain name system of the internet to safer email, vendor-independent videoconferencing, more reliable wireless networks and private instant messaging - all based on open standards and verifiable open source software and/or hardware. It spawned the world-renowned NLnet Labs, and supported great open source projects like Jitsi, ARPA2, WireGuard, NoScript, Tor Hidden Services, GPLv3, GNUnet, and webODF. And many more ....
Have a great idea?
Perhaps we can help you turn it into reality. Find out what NLnet can do for you.
There are many ways in which you can help out , even if you have limited time.
If you are interested in learning about new technology that respects your privacy and helps to make you and everyone else more secure on the internet — take some time to browse through the many awesome projects we are currently supporting. There is an entire parallel world to discover that ranges from videoconferencing applications, collaborative editors, alternative search engines, social networks, reproducible software tooling, vpn technologies, and secure messaging - all the way up to open hardware laptops, smartphones and dumbphones, fully transparent computer chips, new internet routing mechanisms, alternative web browsers, operating systems and even entire mobile networks and satellites. >> Check out our currently supported projects...
Active programmes
NGI Zero Core is a grant programme with a focus on modernising the internet. It funds free and open source technological building blocks and developing and delivering new internet standards to users — working towards a more resilient, trustworthy and sustainably open internet for all.
We want to contribute to a free and open information society
. Technology is something we critically depend on — but not always in a healthy way. We believe in technology commons, and want to empower users to take ownership and control of every aspect of technology people need to have better lives. It is people that design and build the internet from top to bottom, that operate it and that create the hardware and software we use.
We believe that tomorrow's internet is a future we should be working on today.
NGI Zero Commons Fund is a grant programme to strenghten the trustworthiness, openness and security of the internet. It invests in technology commons such as e.g. robust and reliable software applications, open standards that promote freedom of choice and interoperability, all the way up to open hardware devices that can be verified from the bottom up.
In addition we run the NGI Zero Review programme, which supports projects within the larger Next Generation Internet initiative to improve their quality and inclusiveness — for instance by hardening security and privacy, improving accessibility, tackling open source licensing compliance issues and through standardisation. >> more...
We invite you to have a look at the Next Generation Internet pilots: NGI Fediversity (creating a reproducible hosting stack), NGI TALER (privacy preserving digital payments) and NGI Mobifree (an effort to further open up the mobile ecosystem). And if you are working in these domains, we might be able to onboard your project through a grant.
You might also be interested in some of our older programmes such as NGI Assure and NGI0 Entrust (which are in a concluding phase) and other thematic programmes such as NGI Zero PET (direct to projects) and NGI0 Discovery (direct to projects). Inspired? Propose your own project...
Want to help but no money to spend? Help us by protecting open source and its users.
