Celebrating Five Years NGI Zero :)
Today five years ago, the NGI Zero coalition went live with a clear mission: to make a better internet for everyone. A mission that by its nature is a collaborative effort which is why we have a distributed approach to fixing the internet. We invite anyone who has a good plan to develop fundamentally better technologies to come and “work for the internet”. And over these five years many have done so. Next week the 500th NGI0 project will start its important work.
Call for participation
To celebrate this distributed effort we invite everyone to our call for participation. Send us your cartoon, meme, sound bite, ascii art, essay, one-liner, text-based game, picture, 8-bit video, gif, infographic, letter, drawing, LLM prompt, recipe, ..., to share your vision of a better internet for everyone. Anything goes, you may want to encompass the entirety of the network of networks or zoom in and celebrate your favorite NGI0 project.
You can send in your contribution up and until December 7. By e-mail ngi0-party@nlnet.nl or on the fediverse.
We'll publish all the contributions. On the internet, of course, and maybe in other formats too. You contribution may become a sticker or a T-shirt. (Unless you tell us you don't want yours published, then we won't.)
Prizes for everyone
Everyone who participates receives a picked selection of our ever-growing collection of hex stickers. (If you have specific stickers you’d like, do let us know). There will be six extra prizes: five T-shirts and one money prize of 250 euro. To be honest, we do not have criteria (yet) for distributing the extra prizes. We might just do a blind draw.
How it started
On November 1, 2018 NGI0 launched with two funds: NGI0 Pet (Privacy and trust Enhancing Technologies ) and NGI0 Discovery (Search and Discovery). Running until 2021, over 11 million euro was granted to independent researchers and open source developers. In 2022 NGI0 Entrust powered up to support projects working on trust and data sovereignty on the internet with a total granting budget of 9,6 million. In that same year NGI0 Review was established to support the quality and maturity of the digital commons. NGI0 Core, started in 2023, supports projects that upgrade the open Internet architecture with a total budget of 8,8 million euro. All three funds will run until 2025.
Where we're going
We are happy to announce the new NGI Zero Commons Fund which will start at the beginning of 2024 and will last until mid 2027. The goal of the new fund is to strengthen the digital commons by supporting the entirety of free and open source software and hardware, open standards and open data projects. And the good news does not end there. We’re also welcoming several new partners to the NGI0 coalition who will contribute their specific expertise: OW2 and APELL (business advice, help with governance), OpenForum Europe and Internet Society Switzerland (policy strategy, community outreach and end user engagement) and Free Silicon Foundation (libre silicon toolchains).
Big big thank you's
After five years there are many thanks to go around. First of all we want to thank all the people and communities who decided to come and work for the internet. There are nearly 500 NGI0 projects, each of which is a building block for a better internet for all.
Next we want to thank each and every person who uses free and open source software and hardware. Sidelining proprietary soft- and hardware and abandoning walled gardens is the surest way to an open internet.
Thanks also to every partner of the NGI0 coalition: Association for Progressive Communications, The Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology, Center for the Cultivation of Technology, Commons Caretakers, Free Software Foundation Europe, HAN University of Applied Sciences, NixOS Foundation, NLnet Foundation, Petites Singularités, Radically Open Security, Tolerant Networks, Accessibility Foundation, Translate House, ifrOSS, TIMIT, Network Security Group of Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. It would not have been possible without you.
And last but not least we would like to thank the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology which is the organisational home of the Next Generation Internet Initiative.
