49 Free and Open Source Projects Receive NGI0 Core Grants

In the April 2024 round of the NGI Zero Core programme 49 projects have been selected to receive funding for research and development. The programme supports people and organizations who are contributing to an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all. Financial and practical support is offered to projects developing alternatives and improvements to core internet hardware, software and protocols.

NGI Zero Funding is open to all and in this round we are welcoming associations, SMEs, universities, individuals and collectives from 20 different countries. The projects cover all 10 layers of NGI technology stack: from trustworthy open hardware to services & applications which provide autonomy for end-users. We would like to thank them all for contributing to the Next Generation Internet.

Once more there is a significant number of open hardware projects, from electro-magnetic pens and contintuation of the exciting work on an open hardware wifi module, to high precision open hardware clocks using multi-mode crystal oscillators. Various teams are going to be working on independent browser technology (notably the Rust based Verso browser), but also on empowering users to verify independently that security features of browsers in general work as they should as well as making sure that proxies don't inadvertently leak data. Others will work on the practical implementation and deployability of next generation networking protocols such as SCION and Multipath TCP as well as mitigating the flaws of current generation protocols such as detecting forged-origin BGP hijacks. And of course there are many more interesting projects that venture by themselves deeper into specific areas few others go, such as the Galene videoconferencing server, the distributed versioning system Pijul, contributing to the standardisation of accessibility of web components and Shadow Dom and a new implementation of the decentralised content identifiers through ISO 24138/ISCC-CORE. The new ActivityPub tool Loops will allow sharing of short video clips as popularized by e.g. TikTok, while FOSS Warn will provide a global aggregate source of emergency alerts.

Meet the new projects!

(you can click or tap on the project name to fold out additional information)

Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing

• OpenEMSH — Automatic mesher for FDTD simulation

  OpenEMS is arguably the only free and open source FDTD solver out there that is usable out of the box for RF (Radio Frequency electromagnetics) design. Its main competitive disadvantage is that FDTD requires simulated models to be meshed according to specific rules, yet it does not provide an automatic mesher to create such meshes. Some facilities already do exist but meshing by hand is time-consuming and error-prone - enough to stand in the way of broader adoption. OpenEMSH aims to be a mesher for OpenEMS that makes it as simple to use as any proprietary solution.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenEMSH

• openPCIe2 Root Complex — Open hardware implementation of gen 2 PCIexpress in OpenXC7

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/openPCIe2-RootComplex

• openwifi: 802.11a/g/n maturity — Improved stability, data rate and reach of openwifi

  Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous in modern society. While many people might assume that the Wi-Fi chip in AP, mobile devices, and computers is a dumb device that merely sends and receives packets over the air, the reality is far more complex. Even the most affordable Wi-Fi chips are sophisticated heterogeneous computing systems, as highlighted by many researchers and hackers. These chips contain multiple types of firmware and silicon fabric working together. The lack of open-source Wi-Fi chips and the transparency of commercial Wi-Fi chips have raised many security concerns: The security threats over Wi-Fi have emerged for years. Openwifi (https://github.com/open-sdr) aims to address this issue. It is the first open-source soft-MAC Wi-Fi chip/FPGA design, initially released at the end of 2019, with 802.11n added in 2020. As more users, researchers, and hackers engage with the project, they have identified issues related to stability, data rate, and communication distance. This maturity-elevating project aims to tackle these issues through improvements in the Linux driver, FPGA, and RF control. The enhanced version will be comparable to commercial Wi-Fi4 chips, such as the ath9k series, and will be capable of operating in more realistic electromagnetic environments rather than just short-range, controlled environments. These advancements will facilitate broader adoption of the project and lay a solid foundation for future developments, including the creation of a real chip.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenWifi-maturity

• Patchouli — Arbitrary-sized open hardware EM pen products

  Patchouli is an open-source electro-magnetic drawing tablet hardware implementation, including a coil array, an RF front end built using commercially available parts, and digital signal processing algorithms. The design is compatible with most commercial pens from different vendors, offering an ultra-low-latency pen input experience for your customized hardware projects. The hardware is released under the CERN-OHL-S license, and the firmware/simulation code is released under the GPL3+ license.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Patchouli

• Spade — Standalone Hardware Description Language

  Spade is a hardware description language that draws inspiration from modern software languages to make hardware development more productive, more fun, and less error-prone. A big part of what makes this possible is the type system which helps prevent bugs and makes the code more maintainable.

  A common source of errors in hardware designs is clock domain crossing: signals should never cross domains accidentally, and when they do cross, it must be done correctly. Failures to correctly cross domains leads to intermittent problems that can take significant effort to find and fix. By making the language and compiler aware of clock domains through the type system, we will be able to detect and warn programmers about accidental clock domain crossings at compile time. We will to do this in an ergonomic way, where the user only has to specify clock domains on module inputs and outputs with the compiler being able to infer the rest. In addition, the default case of a module that only spans a single domain should not require any explicit domain information form the user to avoid unnecessary verbosity.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Spade

• Surfer Waveform Viewer — Analyse signal levels in simulated circuits

  Surfer is an open source waveform viewer, primarily aimed at debugging digital designs. It is built for flexibility, extensibility, and speed to operate on most platforms. Although fully operational for many tasks, there are features to be added to improve the usability further. This project aims to implement the most requested missing features and pave a way for additional extensibility.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Surfer

• uberClock — High precision open hardware clocks using multi-mode crystal oscillators

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/uberClock

Network infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPN

• 0WM — Measure and visualize Wi-Fi coverage

  Wi-Fi coverage is key in corporate and BYOD environments, as the mobility offered by wireless protocols often outweighs criteria such as speed and stability, offered by wired alternatives. These criteria are however critical to guarantee a suitable quality of service, and reliable options to help network operators are scarce and unaffordable to small organizations. 0WM will provide feature-rich tools to produce quality coverage maps, leveraging affordable COTS components, to quickly and efficiently identify coverage problems affecting end users.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/0WM

• Detecting Forged-Origin BGP hijacks — Probabilistic detection of BGP hijacking

  Hackers often exploit vulnerabilities in BGP, the primary inter-domain routing protocol (essentially the “glue” that connects all networks on the Internet), to hijack Internet traffic. Our project builds on our work in detecting forged-origin BGP hijacks, a specific type of BGP hijack that remains unaddressed by recent cryptographic efforts aimed at securing BGP. Our objective is to enhance the accuracy of our detection system, which relies on a probabilistic model to compensate for the lack of cryptographic tools, ensuring that no attack goes unnoticed. Additionally, we plan to share our data and improve access to our inferences by developing APIs. This will enable both network operators and the research community to benefit from our findings and apply them to improve the security of their networks.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/BGP-ForgedOrigin

• Improving the deployability of Multipath TCP, part 2 — Improve MPTCP support in the Linux kernel

  Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a standardised technology extending TCP and invented in Europe. TCP is one of the key protocols of the TCP/IP protocol stack, designed in the 1970s when hosts were attached to the network through a single cable. Today's hosts have several network interfaces, but TCP only uses one of them for a given connection. Multipath TCP solves this problem by enabling TCP connections to exchange packets over different network interfaces. With the current version of MPTCP in the Linux kernel, most of the features listed in the RFC8684 are implemented. Basic use-cases are supported but still it doesn't mean the solution is covering all needs and is easy enough to use. In short, MPTCP works well in controlled environments but there is room for improvement in heterogeneous ones. Some work is then still needed to cover more use-cases plus to improve the usability and performances in order to have Multipath TCP adopted by a broader audience.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/MPTCP-deployability-II

• LibreQoS 2.1 — Transactional Move System and improved APIs for LibreQoS

  LibreQoS is a Quality of Experience (QoE) open source platform that leverages the state of the art (and IETF standardized) Flow Queueing (FQ) and Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithm CAKE to help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) enhance their customers' internet connections. It effectively manages latency and bufferbloat over existing infrastructure. LibreQos ensures fair sharing of bandwidth, prioritizes critical real-time applications and promotes connection quality, equity and access.

  This project adds API functionality, which will make scaling LibreQoS to multiple servers much easier, allowing ISP operators to break the current 70 Gbps per server barrier. In addition, this project allows for a new Transactional Move System, which prevents any packet loss upon reload/refresh of shaper rules - allowing LibreQoS to scale to much larger ISP networks, improving internet connectivity for millions more end-users worldwide.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/LibreQoS-2.1

• reqwest — Memory safe HTTP client

  reqwest is the de-facto HTTP client for the Rust language, with batteries-included. In this project we will make many of its powerful features to be composable and reusable outside of reqwest. This includes converting its connection pool, proxying and redirection into middleware, and improving integration with existing middleware, such as retries. This ultimately enables two groups of people: some so they can use only the parts of reqwest they need. And others that want to use all of reqwest while inserting new middleware or customizing its default "stack".

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/reqwest

• Rosenpass Broker — Expanding the Rosenpass API's to enable easy integration in applications

  Rosenpass is a post-quantum secure cryptographic protocol, an implementation of that protocol in the Rust programming language, and a governance organization stewarding development of both protocol and implementation. When used with WireGuard, Rosenpass functions as a ready-to-use virtual private network with full security against quantum attackers. This project extends the current basic API in order to allow Rosenpass to double as a programming interface for other programmers to integration this functionality into their external applications.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Rosenpass-integration

• SCION Open Source Implementation — Performance improvements for SCION reference Implementation

  SCION Open Source is an implementation of the SCION architecture that allows trusted, highly resilient, and path-aware routing infrastructure to be built by ISPs, CDN/cloud providers and enterprises. It supports inter-domain multipath routing by discovering paths between participating Autonomous Systems that can be combined into selectable cryptographically validated end-to-end paths. This provides higher assurances that packets will follow particular paths which can prevent route leaks and hijacks, and allow data to be geofenced thereby ensuring compliance with legislation such as GDPR and NIS2. SCION also supports fast multi-path discovery and fast failover as its path discovery process does not rely on BGP iterative convergence or forwarding table updates. Having a performant and robust open source implementation ensures there’s a viable alternative to commercial and closed source implementations which is pre-requisite for some large potential adopters.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SCION-1M

• SocksTrace — Ptrace based proxy leak detector

  Proxy leaks are a class of software vulnerability in which network traffic intended for a proxy (e.g. Tor) is instead sent without a proxy, risking the deanonymization of the user. Auditing software for proxy leaks is presently nontrivial, e.g. tools like tcpdump and Corridor generally require invasive privileges, cannot audit for stream isolation leaks, and provide limited diagnostic capabilities. SocksTrace is a proxy leak detection tool, suitable for CI testing or manual QA testing, that utilizes the ptrace feature of Linux to detect socket syscalls that would bypass a proxy. If a proxy leak is detected, SocksTrace can respond by (among other things) denying the syscall, redirecting the connection to a proxy, or logging a stack trace. SocksTrace is written in Go, making it memory-safe and securely bootstrappable.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SocksTrace

Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs

• BrowserAudit — Test common security standards and features in browsers

  The web depends on security standards to safeguard your data as you navigate online. The effectiveness of your browser in protecting this data depends on how well it implements these standards. BrowserAudit is a free, open-source tool designed to assess your browser’s compliance with common security protocols. By running hundreds of tests, it generates a detailed report highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your browser's security. This report can help you select a more secure browser, notify developers of potential issues, or, if you’re a developer, address these vulnerabilities directly.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/BrowserAudit

• FastScan — Performance improvements for ScanCode Toolkit/ScanCode.io

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/FastScan

• Pijul Hybrid — Hybrid patch-based/snapshot-based system for distributed versioning

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pijul-Hybrid

• Pimalaya PIM — Memory-safe emails, contacts, calendars, tasks and more

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pimalaya-PIM

• Zip linting and bzip2 in Rust — More secure handling of popular archive formats

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/ZipLinting

Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation

• Firmwire full-system 5G baseband emulation — Easier testing of 5G baseband modems with FirmWire

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/5G-baseband-emulation

• Free and open source NPU Drivers — Libre drivers for Neural Processing Units

  As of today, companies that sell components that include accelerators for machine learning workloads (NPU, TPU, DLA, etc) are generally engaged in vendor lock-in practices that interfere with the ability of their customers to freely choose their partners and adapt their software components to their own needs.

  This project aims to incentivize providers of accelerating hardware to move to more fair practices by reverse engineering their hardware and writing open source implementations of the corresponding software stack, for interoperability purposes. These drivers become part of projects such as the Linux kernel and the Mesa project, and will become available to users via existing distributions such as Debian, Fedora and NixOS.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Rockchip-NPU-driver

• Integration of Waydroid on mobile GNU/Linux — Run Android apps in Linux containers on mobile devices

  Waydroid lets the user run Android within a container on a regular GNU/Linux system, bringing access to countless existing Android applications. This particular project aims to research and implement tighter integration between the Waydroid container and its host system in terms of hardware access (sensors, location, telephony, cameras) and desktop environment (notifications, media controls), while keeping the user in control of what and when is shared with the Android container.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Waydroid-linuxmobile

• Ironclad — Hard real-time capable kernel written in SPARK/Ada

  Ironclad is a partially formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses, written in SPARK and Ada. It is comprised of 100% free software, free in the sense that it respects the user's freedom. By providing a UNIX-like interface which ensures an easy porting process from Linux and BSD distributions, Ironclad aims to be a solution for developers searching for a security-first, resilient platform with the smallest barrier to entry.

  This project will work on expanding hardware support for x86_64 Intel and AMD based systems, bringing Ironclad to RISC-V 64 bit based platforms, expanding several areas of the kernel, and work on Ironclad-based distributions.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Ironclad

• Multisoni — Modern and efficient real-time audio playback engine

  Multisoni is a versatile audio engine for all creative uses. For demanding real-time uses (such as video games, VR, live installations) there is a lack of free/libre audio authoring tools to map playback and effects to trigger events and interaction parameters, suitable for industrial purposes.

  Multisoni is designed to meet this need: it manages many input sources - either samples or synthesis, with support for input plugins - source and effect patching, and rendering for a variety of output systems ranging from binaural stereo to complicated multichannel setups, drawing on existing open-source solutions for audio hardware abstraction and raw audio stream management. One of its main objectives is to put creative users - sound designers, composers - on an equal footing with developer users.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/multisoni

• Opensource VoLTE support for Qualcomm based phones — 4G/VoiceOverLTE support for open source mobile OSes

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/VoLTE-Qualcom

• Verifying and documenting live-bootstrap — A reproducible, automatic, complete end-to-end bootstrap

  The goal of the live-bootstrap project is to compile the necessary tools to compile Linux from a minimal binary footprint to avoid the possibility that a (binary) compiler could be used to introduce back-doors into the Linux kernel. As a user of the live-bootstrap project, one should be able to trace and review all steps and sources used. The goal of this project is to facilitate this.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/live-bootstrap

• Verso Views — A Functional Browser Based on Servo

  Verso is a web browser based on Servo web engine. While Servo hasn’t been treated as a fully functioning browser, it is possible to build one based on it already. We plan to expand this into a formal and stable application release, eventually implementing the features, making it not just a general browser application but also a webview library for embedding purposes.

  There are some missing features we still need to push into Servo. And there are also other works that require time and resources to make a barebone web engine into a stable application. We hope to take this project as a chance to finally make an individual repository using Servo as a dependency. In this way, Servo can focus on issues and features of the web engine itself. In the meantime, other chores related to the application itself can be off-loaded to other repositories and organizations.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Verso-Views

• Webview library with Verso for Tauri — Refactor parts of Verso into a WebView library

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Verso-WebView

Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling

• 0WM — Measure and visualize Wi-Fi coverage

  Wi-Fi coverage is key in corporate and BYOD environments, as the mobility offered by wireless protocols often outweighs criteria such as speed and stability, offered by wired alternatives. These criteria are however critical to guarantee a suitable quality of service, and reliable options to help network operators are scarce and unaffordable to small organizations. 0WM will provide feature-rich tools to produce quality coverage maps, leveraging affordable COTS components, to quickly and efficiently identify coverage problems affecting end users.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/0WM

• badkeys — Detect compromised cryptographic public keys

  Public key cryptography is an important building block of Internet security through protocols like TLS or SSH. Key generation vulnerabilities in cryptographic implementations can compromise the security of these mechanisms. The tool badkeys allows identifying public keys affected by known vulnerabilities. The project will implement improvements to badkeys' coverage of known-compromised keys and regular monitoring of public keys in TLS certificates, DNSSEC, and DKIM for known vulnerabilities.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/badkeys

• Detecting Forged-Origin BGP hijacks — Probabilistic detection of BGP hijacking

  Hackers often exploit vulnerabilities in BGP, the primary inter-domain routing protocol (essentially the “glue” that connects all networks on the Internet), to hijack Internet traffic. Our project builds on our work in detecting forged-origin BGP hijacks, a specific type of BGP hijack that remains unaddressed by recent cryptographic efforts aimed at securing BGP. Our objective is to enhance the accuracy of our detection system, which relies on a probabilistic model to compensate for the lack of cryptographic tools, ensuring that no attack goes unnoticed. Additionally, we plan to share our data and improve access to our inferences by developing APIs. This will enable both network operators and the research community to benefit from our findings and apply them to improve the security of their networks.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/BGP-ForgedOrigin

• Firmwire full-system 5G baseband emulation — Easier testing of 5G baseband modems with FirmWire

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/5G-baseband-emulation

• rrdnsd — DNS based load balancing and high availability

  rrdnsd implements DNS-based load balancing and failover in order to increase the reliability of geographically-distributed Internet services. It is designed to both scale up to managing hundreds of services but also scale down to small scale deployments. Written in Rust, it prioritizes resilience, ease of deployment and hands-off maintenance - without depending on 3rd-party services. It provides distributed connectivity monitoring using a quorum protocol. This allows detecting partial network outages without causing false positive alarms.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/rrdnsd

Middleware and identity

• LDAP Synchronization Connector — Synchronize data from/to various data sources with LDAP

  LSC (LDAP Synchronization Connector) is a community open source software designed to get rid of all customized scripts developed by system admistrators to sync their files or databases to maintain accounts and groups in an LDAP directory. LSC works with one configuration file and can connect to any database, LDAP directory (including Active Directory) or REST API. It solves use cases like "create an account for every new people hired in the company", "lock this account in Active Directory because it was locked in OpenLDAP", "create a group for all people of this department" or "push accounts to this application API". The project will refresh all the dependencies, and add new features such as allowing javascript in LDAP filters.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/LDAP-Synchro

• Maintenance and portability of sudo-rs — Make sudo-rs available cross-platform

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/sudo-rs

Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger

• Pijul Hybrid — Hybrid patch-based/snapshot-based system for distributed versioning

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pijul-Hybrid

Data and AI

• FastScan — Performance improvements for ScanCode Toolkit/ScanCode.io

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/FastScan

• ISCC-CORE typescript implementation library — Decentralised content identifiers through ISO 24138.

  The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/ISCC-CORE-ts

Services + Applications (e.g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration)

• Cross-root ARIA — Standardisation for Accessibility when using Shadow DOM

  ARIA is a technology used by developers to add accessibility attributes to web-based user interfaces. Web Components are a set of tools which allow developers to create components which can be used in a framework-independent way across different websites. Due to the way Web Components provide encapsulation, using Shadow DOM, some parts of ARIA have become incompatible with Web Components. This project will contribute to ongoing efforts to provide web developers with mechanisms to make these technologies work together. Our goal is to contribute to the relevant specifications, as well as implementing and shipping the proposed solution in one additional browser.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Cross-root-ARIA

• Enhancing Firefox for Linux on Mobile — Mobile native feature-complete Firefox

  Enhancing Firefox for Linux on Mobile aims to offer a privacy respecting alternative to Chromium-based browsers by improving the user experience (UX) of Firefox on small form factor devices (mobile, tablet) running Linux. We will update the Firefox codebase, primarily the user interface (UI) and the rendering engine. Additionally, we will collaborate with Mozilla to ensure that our modifications are included in Firefox to reduce the maintenance burden by sharing a common codebase across the different projects. As a side effect, our modifications will benefit all Firefox Desktop users including Windows when the Firefox application window is not maximized.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Firefox-linuxmobile

• Galene — High quality libre videoconferencing server

  Galene is a complete self-hosted videoconferencing system that has been designed to be easy to install and to manage, to preserve the users' privacy, and that uses very moderate server resources. Galene has been continuously used in production to host university lectures and staff meetings since September 2020, as well as to host a number of international conferences during the COVID pandemic. The goal of this project is to improve Galene to make it use state-of-the-art networking and video algorithms, to improve its management features, and to add a number of user-visible features, such as background blur and automatic subtitling.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Galene

• HTML export for Typst — Markup based typesetting for multichannel publishing

  Typst is a markup-based typesetting system that is designed to be as powerful as LaTeX while being much easier to learn and use. Currently, Typst outputs documents only as PDF, yet there is strong demand for generating HTML. We want to extend Typst such that it can create high-quality HTML and PDF versions from the same document, which is currently not possible with comparable programs. As a result, Typst could be used in a variety of new scenarios, such as the generation of websites and e-books. Furthermore, this will improve the accessibility of the output documents.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Typst-HTML

• Loops — ActivityPub based sharing of short video clips

  Loops is an innovative Fediverse platform inspired by TikTok and powered by the decentralized ActivityPub protocol. It aims to deliver personalized short-form video content through a "For You" recommendation algorithm, enhancing user engagement and discovery. The platform supports interactive features like comments and video remixes, fostering a creative and collaborative community. By connecting with the Fediverse, Loops gives users more control over their data, better privacy, and the ability to interact with other platforms—making it an exciting new way to experience social media in our ever-changing world.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Loops

Vertical use cases, Search, Community

• FOSS Warn — Aggregate source of emergency alerts

  The FOSS Public Alert Server lets clients receive Push Notification (via UnifiedPush) about official emergency alerts worldwide. Besides infrastructure like sirens, radio, and Cell-Broadcast, CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) alerts are another way of alerting the public. CAP alerts are used for a wide variety of emergencies. From alerts about extreme weather to alerts about contaminated drinking water to pandemics. Our server bundles over 280 official CAP alert publishers worldwide and can easily extend to more sources. This project aims to bundle the underlying alerting infrastructure into a single trustworthy source of information, not to replace it.

  Having a shared global public source of information reduces the user's dependency on local emergency apps - which are often only available for the two largest mobile platforms. Furthermore such a converged effort makes it much simpler to develop clients for devices other than cell phones (like desktop PCs or smart speakers). Thirdly it can make traveling safer. Finding and installing the right local emergency apps to receive emergency alerts when traveling is quite the hurdle. With our solution, it would suffice to install one app for the world. One such app is FOSS Warn, an Android app that for now receives alerts for Germany and Switzerland. Within this project, FOSS Warn will be extended to work worldwide with the new server infrastructure.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/FOSS-Warn

• LO/CODE Book project — Professional typography inside LibreOffice

  The project enhances readability of text documents by adding highly customizable paragraph-level line breaking and microtypography to the LibreOffice/Collabora Online Writer word processors. It creates a new type of software, with the print quality of proprietary DTP programs and with productivity of word processors. It saves paper and screen area with a compact paragraph layout and readable multi-column pagination. It should result in proposals to enhance the OpenDocument format standard (ISO/IEC 26300) which will be submitted for standardization, encouraging future standards to support enhanced readability, especially for people with reading difficulties.

  ▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/LO-Bookproject

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Still hungry for more projects? Check out the overview of all our current and recent projects...

Inspired? If you are working on a project that contributes to the Next Generation Internet you can submit a proposal. The next deadline is December 1^st.

Acknowledgements

NGI0 Core is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101092990.