Open Internet Stack
Scaling and maturing digital infrastructure commons
More about: Coalition partners | Support services | European Dimension |Acknowledgements
The Open Internet Stack (or OIS) is a new multi-year initiative from the European Commission, which ties into their Open Source Strategy which is itself part of the Tech Sovereignty package.
OIS is an umbrella initiative, consists of a series of independent R&D programmes run by different organisations that together work towards the larger ambitions. NLnet Foundation leads several of these programmes, where we provide financial and practical support to free and open source projects that contribute to a robust, trustworthy and sustainable open internet stack. We offer R&D grants and (together with a network of trusted partners) provide complementary support services from experts to improve the quality and maturity of projects and support the communities behind them.
Grant programmes
Current grant programmes within OIS
- Restack
Building a healthy open internet stack
Small and medium-sized R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro, with the possibility to scale up. Available to both individuals and organisations of any type. You can apply at any time in the rolling open calls with a deadline every two months. - CodeSupply
Strengthening software supply chain security
Pilot programme with a specific scope, funding available for open source efforts that align with the CodeSuppy's main objectives.
Within these programmes, we work with a mission-aligned coalition of partners with strong ties to the free and open source ecosystem. Our work builds on the strong foundation of NGI Zeroi, a series of very successful R&D programmes within the European Commission's Next Generation Internet initiative led by NLnet — supporting well over a million hours of free and open source development on hundreds of digital commons.
Support services available within Open Internet Stack
Depending on the programme you submit to, we are able to offer a variety of support services to improve the quality and maturity of open technologies. In order to deliver technology that is useful to the widest possible range of users, projects can request support with accessibility, security, open source licensing compliance, packaging, translation and standardisation. Other services aim to support the sustainability of the project and the well-being of its community such as diversity and inclusion management, community building, mentoring, and advise on governance and new business & sustainability models.
Background information
The Open Internet Stack is a new multi-year initiative from the European Commission, part of their Open Source Strategy. Software and services within the Open Internet Stack share three important characteristics that distinguish them from what is available elsewhere in the market: they are production-ready digital commons, the building blocks can be deployed anywhere and by anyone without restrictions (so there is no lock-in/dependency on proprietary platform technologies but a level playing field), and the software supply chain is fully transparent and reproducible all the way down to the source level. There is a clean technical separation between who creates and controls the development, evolution and innovation of the software building blocks and who designs and runs the physical infrastructure.
That means the Open Internet Stack allows individuals, organisations and even whole geographic regions to regain digital sovereignty and minimise overall risk, offering consumer choice through service and data portability as well as full operational control and agility and economic agency. Every aspect of the Open Internet Stack can be scrutinised and improved upon near-instantly, for instance in terms of energy efficiency, security and accessibility — for instance by consistently adding post-quantum cryptography, compliance with regulatory frameworks or adding support for new chip architectures. By streamlining towards a common delivery mechanism instead of vendor-controlled APIs, protocols and formats, we engineer for scale and interoperability.
Software and services within the Open Internet stack are not tied to specific infrastructure. Current users of other stacks can use as much of the open stack as they want within their current environment. This allow parties that are currently tied to a restrictive vendor environment to already transition parts of their current stack to the unencumbered building blocks of the Open Internet Stack.
Acknowledgements
Open Internet Stack is an initiative led by the European Commission, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology as part of the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme — under grant agreements No 101299072 (Restack), and 1101298846 (CodeSupply).
