NLnet announces 60 projects strenghtening the digital commons

NLnet Foundation and its partners in NGI Zero are happy to announce that 60 new projects have been awarded grants in the eleventh open call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund (deadline February 2026). This round was very competitive: these free and open source projects were selected from 599 proposals. This round has projects working in a rich variety of areas, ranging from personal information management to secure encrypted communication, independent mobile operating systems, trustworthy open worthy hardware, and end-user facing applications. This brings the total of grantees within the programme to 494 projects. There are still two more calls currently under evaluation for the programme.

Toward a digital commons

The NGI Zero Commons Fund provides grants to people who help build the digital commons. Because all projects are free and open source technologies, all outcomes can be freely used, studied, shared and moderated by anyone. Together they provide the building blocks for a information and communication infrastructure that promotes digital autonomy and serves the common good. NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organisations led by NLnet that provides practical and financial support to projects fix the internet. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission.

Radio communication and opening up modern wheelchairs

Among the granted projects there is an interesting cluster of activity around radio communication and the physical transport layer: from encrypted communication using TETRA, ad-hoc networking with IETF's MANET, Lora, wifi mesh networking and even satellite communication and optical/quantum networking. Various other projects tackle the creation/liberation of hardware and silicon (such as FabCNC, the OpenFlexure microscope, the Nitrokey security token, a libre GPU, tooling to help design PCB's — and even an effort to tackle the proprietary protocols used in modern wheelchairs.

There is upcoming work on new internet protocols such as SCION, and the GNU Name System. And of course some web related work such as a proposed new CSP directive and continuation of the work on the Servo webbrowser. The privacy-enhancing browser extension SurfJS will instrument and replace privacy-sensitive JavaScript APIs with surrogate APIs. There are also some Fediverse-related tools (Fedipub, ActivityBot).

Lots of work on reverse engineering and optimisation for new architectures and platforms, from graphics drivers, optimising for RISC-V to a variety of mobile chips and SoCs. Another ambitious project tackles the creation of a framework for Digital Forensics & Incident Response (DFLARE). The programme continues to invest in cross-platform declarative UI toolkits (such as Slint).

There are also some end user facing projects as well — such as a form server, software for personal information management (MirageOS PIM and Pimalaya), creative tooling (Ruido), collaborative editing of documents and sharing files within teams. One project will develop software in support of the NeTEx standard for vehicle planning within public transport, federated virtual reality, several maps related projects (e.g. Allmaps and OHM-Mapreader). PubDex will allow for libre publication tracking system for scientific publications. The digital campaign software Mautic will improve its own privacy posture, better protecting the rights of consumers. The creative tool FlockXR is to expand its work to data science.

And much more — read for yourself: an introduction to the projects is found below.

If you applied for a grant
This is the selection for the February 2026 call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund fund only. We always inform all applicants about the outcome of the review ahead of the public announcement, whether they are selected or not. If you have not heard anything, you probably applied to a later call or a different fund that is still under review.

How do I find out which call round I applied to?

You can see which call round you applied to by checking the application number assigned to the project when you submitted the proposal. The number starts with the year and month of the call, so 2026-02- in the case of the February 2026 call. You see that same number featured in the emails we send you (It should not happen, but if you did apply to this call and did not hear anything, do contact us)

Meet the new projects!

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

Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing

• Borg: Conformance + Scale-Out — Libre silicon Graphics Processor Unit

  Borg is a fully open-source GPU, from the Chisel hardware description, through synthesis and place-and-route, to a real Mesa Vulkan driver. It closes a transparency gap that even open CPU projects rarely address for graphics hardware, where microarchitecture and toolchains are normally locked behind NDAs. In its first phase, Borg grew from a single floating-point unit into a complete, autonomous tile-based-rendering pipeline with texture mapping, multi-lane SIMT fragment shading, and a native Vulkan driver that runs the unmodified Khronos vkcube demo on a $100 FPGA board — and it reached real silicon with a taped-out ASIC (IHP 130nm), to our knowledge the first open-source GPU design to do so. Borg II continues this work towards genuine, reproducible openness: growing the driver's Vulkan conformance test coverage well beyond its current early results, extending the shading hardware with additional parallel shader units, and re-taping-out the design periodically so the whole open EDA flow stays validated against real silicon. The outcome is a complete graphics stack — hardware, toolchain, and driver — that researchers, educators, and hobbyists can inspect, modify, and build on without a single NDA.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Borg-GPU

• FabexCNC — Generate CAM toolpaths for CNC machines

  FabexCNC is an open-source solution for generating CAM toolpaths for CNC machines. It uses the same CAM library (opencamlib) as FreeCAD but instead is available as an Extension for Blender. This gives users the design tools of Blender, access to its thousands of extensions, and broad platform support. FabexCNC allows users to create their own 2D or 3D designs, and import existing 3D, image (vector and raster) and text files; calculate toolpaths or multi-job chains for 3+ Axis machines (including time and cost estimates); simulate the jobs and export them as Gcode files to be run on a CNC. With a large variety of post-processors, milling strategies, cutting tool options, CNC machine and job presets and the option to create your own presets, strategies and post-processors, FabexCNC gives users the freedom to completely customize their tools to fit their shop and workflow.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/FabCNC

• foaHandler R/W — Read and write OpenAccess files

  Commercial CAE programs still dominate the community that designs electronic circuits. One of the most widely used file format in the space uses the OpenAccess API controlled by Si2. Unfortunately, this API is available only for members of the OpenAccess coalition. This project aims at creating open-source tooling for reading and writing OpenAccess files. Their internal data structure will be investigated by reverse engineering. Then, routines will be created that make it easy to import and export OpenAccess files in open-source programs like circuit simulators, layout programs etc. This makes it possible to exchange schematics, component symbols and layouts between libre and proprietary/legacy EDA applications.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Foahandler-RW

• GPUPCB — Interactive 3D simulator of electromagnetic fields for PCB

  This project develops an interactive, live-updating 3D simulator of electromagnetic fields for PCB working entirely in GPU, simulating transient states using finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) and frequency-domain response finite-difference frequency-domain method (FDFD). Users will be able to visualize and measure placement and intensity of physical fields (electric, magnetic, current density, power dissipation, Poynting vector fields). This will allow users to inspect the impact of high-speed phenomena, including skin effect and proximity effect, and find causes of signal distortion and differential signal skew.

  GPUPCB will be available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Web and will have built-in functions for measuring parameters of transmission lines (wave and differential impedance, effective dielectric constant) and for electromagnetic compatibility (crosstalk), high-speed signal integrity (skew, standing wave ratio, S-parameters) and power integrity (power supply rejection ratio). It will allow simulations of boards designed in KiCad and other software with export to Hyperlynx format.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/GPUPCB

• Nitrokey on RISC-V using Trussed, Xous, Baochip — Security token with open hardware all the way down

  Today's Nitrokey USB security tokens, even if using open-source software, still rely on proprietary microcontrollers with closed documentation and opaque security mechanisms. This project ports the Nitrokey, an open-source security token supporting FIDO2/Passkeys, OpenPGP card, PIV and more, to the open RISC-V architecture. The stack will be the established Rust-based Trussed firmware framework, the security-oriented Xous microkernel OS, and the Baochip RISC-V system-on-chip. The result will be the first security token built entirely on an open hardware architecture to enable independent security audits of the complete stack, from silicon to application--strengthening digital sovereignty and trustworthy open hardware.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Nitrokey-RISC-V

• OpenFlexure Microscope i18n — Localisation/internationalisation of open hardware high end microscope

  The OpenFlexure Microscope is a 3D printed robotic open-source microscope. It is already used for education and research in over 60 countries, and under evaluation for diagnostic use. This project will work on localisation and internationalisation of the software, hardware, and documentation to better serve its global community.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenFlexure-i18n

• Quantum Networking Polarization compensation module — Monitoring and compensate polarization drift in Quantum Networks

  Quantum networking is gradually moving from isolated laboratory experiments toward deployed testbeds. Yet the transition from experimental runs to operated quantum networks requires automatic procedures for monitoring, calibration and compensation of practical impairments. In polarization-based quantum links -- one of the most common implementations - the key impairment is polarization drift induced by environmental changes such as temperature fluctuations, mechanical stress and vibrations in optical fibres, which can significantly degrade quantum-network performance indicators. This project will develop an open-source software for monitoring and compensating polarization drift using polarization controllers based on the widely-adopted HWP-QWP-HWP configuration. The module will be validated over deployed metropolitan-scale quantum links, with documentation and tests to support reproducible use by other researchers and engineers.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/QN-Polarization-stabilisation

Network infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPN

• MANET voice communicator — Short-range voice communicator based on MANET technology

  This project develops an open-hardware device for short-range (up to 3 km) voice communication using MANET technology, enabling fully decentralized radio networks without the need for base stations or licenses. It is designed for scenarios where conventional infrastructure is destroyed/unavailable, such as during hiking, search-and-rescue team activities, and natural disasters or military operations. The project will provide complete documentation – including schematics, firmware, 3D-printable enclosure files, and assembly instructions – using only widely available, permit-free components to ensure high device repairability and minimize electronic waste.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/MANET-communicator

• Open Source Zero-Configuration Mesh Networking — Add Babel routing and automatic mesh formation in Meshpoint

  MeshPoint is open source mesh WiFi hardware and firmware that lets ordinary people, not network engineers, deploy resilient outdoor networks in places where connectivity fails, from refugee camps to disaster areas and rural communities. The project builds on field experience going back to the 2015 refugee crisis, where the hardware served over 50,000 people, and addresses a persistent gap: no fully open, replicable mesh system exists for crisis deployments. This project will research optimal Babel routing (RFC 8966) for crisis scenarios, develop zero-configuration mesh formation on OpenWrt so that networks form themselves without manual setup, and publish the complete system as open hardware, with tested PCB designs under CERN-OHL-S, a rugged enclosure, GPLv3 firmware and a real-time mesh monitoring dashboard. The outcome is a tested, documented open mesh networking stack that anyone can build, replicate and deploy.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Meshpoint

• OpenSATCOMSec — Improve link layer security of satellite communications

  Satellites, underpinning communications of critical infra, GOV and MIL, incorporate significant amounts of proprietary protocols even when built mostly on open standards. The lack of transparency regarding the security of these technologies is worrying given their increasing targeting during geopolitical conflicts. Prior work has shown that SATCOM downlinks are often unencrypted and receivable over areas spanning half a continent, rendering them vulnerable to interception and injection attacks by hostile SIGINT programs. While operators and users should employ link layer security, such implementations are proprietary and have not been scrutinized before.

  This project focuses on the highly relevant DVB-S(2X)/RCS(2) standards and the proprietary Eutelsat OneWeb system which is integral to the EU's IRIS² project and intended as a sovereign counterpart to Starlink. It will reverse-engineer link layer encryption, and do a security analysis. It will then create a FOSS implementation of improved link layer security for open standards and sovereign ecosystems, and provide guidance for current and future standards.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenSATCOMSec

• PulzeLab C1 — Portable standalone LoRa messaging device

  LoRa radio networks make use of open UHF ISM bands to transmit small data packets carried over long distances through a mesh topology. They are emerging worldwide and provide solutions for decentralized, off-grid communication. This project aims to develop an easy to use and affordable yet durable handheld messaging device that allows people to join the mesh and communicate freely. The portable device makes use of simple, rather low-tech hardware but is very capable for a user-friendly messaging experience. In contrast to widespread ways of communication like the internet or cellular networks, it leverages the use of LoRa technology as a low-power solution that doesn’t rely on centralized, complex systems. The device intends to combine well-designed electronics, user-friendly software and a clever housing design that can be manufactured by both, low-volume additive manufacturing as well as serial mass production. This allows people with and without technical background to exchange messages and stay in touch in everyday life as well as in different scenarios of crises.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/LoraMessaging

• Quantum Networking Polarization compensation module — Monitoring and compensate polarization drift in Quantum Networks

  Quantum networking is gradually moving from isolated laboratory experiments toward deployed testbeds. Yet the transition from experimental runs to operated quantum networks requires automatic procedures for monitoring, calibration and compensation of practical impairments. In polarization-based quantum links -- one of the most common implementations - the key impairment is polarization drift induced by environmental changes such as temperature fluctuations, mechanical stress and vibrations in optical fibres, which can significantly degrade quantum-network performance indicators. This project will develop an open-source software for monitoring and compensating polarization drift using polarization controllers based on the widely-adopted HWP-QWP-HWP configuration. The module will be validated over deployed metropolitan-scale quantum links, with documentation and tests to support reproducible use by other researchers and engineers.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/QN-Polarization-stabilisation

• SCION-IP Gateway & SCION Configuration Tools — Full support for tunneling IP traffic through SCION networks

  SCION is an Internet routing technology that allows trusted, highly resilient, and path-aware infrastructures to be built by ISPs, CDN/cloud providers and enterprises. It makes a substantial contribution to the Next Generation Internet by improving trust, data security and privacy, and can help organisations comply with the requirements of NIS2, the EU Cybersecurity Act, DORA and GDPR. The project will deliver a number of improvements and new features to the SCION open source implementation: it will add full support of path policies to the SCION-to-IP Gateway (SIG). This allows Internet devices to tunnel IP traffic through a SCION network and is a critical aspect of supporting SCION adoption. It will also further develop configuration management and automation capabilities to allow SCION hosts to be set-up as end hosts, border routers or control services depending on requirements. And finally it will improve stability of control and data planes.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SCION-IP-gateway

• TETRA BlueStation — Libre TETRA base station stack

  TETRA is a mobile communications solution frequently relied upon in critical infrastructure and by emergency services. It provides voice and text services, but can also carry IP data to handheld and fixed radios. A previous grant helped deliver a proof-of-concept FOSS TETRA base station stack, BlueStation - which immediately gathered hundreds of enthousiasts upon release. This grant will elevate BlueStation from a proof-of-concept stack to a robust, practically usable base station stack. Lowering the price of a base station from tens of thousands to only about 200 euros worth of hardware, while keeping the ecosystem free from vendor lock-in and licensing issues, the project will give new purpose to large amounts of near e-waste handheld TETRA radios, which may then easily be used for resilient wireless communication - be it through a single stand-alone BlueStation cell, or through a network of base stations interconnected through the internet.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TETRA-Bluestation

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

• Amber — Modern, type-safe language that compiles to shell

  Amber is a programming language that compiles to Bash, designed for writing automation scripts while providing modern syntax, type safety, a bundled standard library and runtime safety guardrails. This grant will advance Amber by introducing new object-oriented data structures, including dictionaries, enums, and user defined structures with the ability to declare methods. It will also introduce an entirely new syntax for defining portable, version-aware interfaces to external commands, a new POSIX-sh compilation target, support for pipelines, improved interoperability with target shell code and numerous small language improvements.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Amber

• AsmJit — Improve ISA coverage, code generation and performance

  AsmJit is a library providing a low-latency machine code generation for C++. As a foundational component used by many JIT compilers, programming languages, emulators, query engines, and other performance-oriented applications, it enables developers to generate efficient machine code at runtime with minimal latency.

  This project aims to strengthen AsmJit’s long-term maintainability by expanding the coverage of existing ISA backends, introducing database-driven code generation, and improving the performance of machine code generation.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Asmjit

• CSP Directive for Eliminating DOM Clobbering — A New CSP Directive for Eliminating DOM Clobbering Vulnerabilities in the Web

  DOM clobbering is a Web vulnerability where an attacker capable of injecting non-executable HTML markup with specially crafted `name` and `id` attributes in a webpage, can effectively overshadow benign JavaScript (JS) objects’ properties. Thus, the attacker can alter the execution flow of the existing, benign JS codebase, potentially escalating their attack to severe variations, such as XSS and CSRF. Despite DOM clobbering being a known issue for well over a decade, no defense mechanisms have been proposed to completely eradicate the issue. This project will address this gap by designing and creating a reference implementation of a new Content Security Policy (CSP) directive for Chromium-based browsers, namely `block-named-access`, that websites can trivially deploy to robustly eliminate all instances of potential DOM clobbering vulnerabilities in their pages. Essentially, the directive will serve as an opt out switch for the “named property accesses” feature of the HTML specification, which is the root cause of DOM clobbering. Importantly, `block-named-access` will also support CSP’s `report-only` mode, where violations are reported to website operators without enforcing any protection, ensuring page functionality remains intact. This will enable a smooth transition for adopting websites, by initially rolling out the directive in report-only mode, identifying and refactoring any intentional usage of the HTML named access feature and, finally, deploying the directive in full enforcement to prevent and report any exploitation attempts.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/CSP-block-named-access

• Dolmen / Smtml — Improving the OCaml ecosystem libraries for SMT solving

  Over the last two decades, SMT solving has grown significantly in popularity, notably in the formal methods field, where it is heavily relied upon by deductive verification tools and symbolic execution engines used to prove the correctness of programs and find bugs. In the OCaml programming language, two libraries have been developed to provide necessary services for users of SMT solvers. Dolmen provides parsing, type checking, and model verification for the SMT-LIB language, as well as other languages used in automated deduction, and Smtml provides a common frontend for multiple SMT solvers, allowing users to easily interact with different solvers and giving them access to features such as query simplification and caching. The purpose of this project is to improve both libraries, as well as their integration, pooling their development efforts together to benefit their users and, more generally, the users of SMT solvers.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Dolmen-Smtml

• lib25519 for RISC-V — Timing-attack resistant, high performance microlibrary for ECC 25519

  Modern network protocols rely on elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) to protect communication against espionage and sabotage. ECC is faster than RSA, but it still consumes many CPU cycles, especially when an attacker floods a server's CPU with requests. lib25519 is a software library for the Curve25519 elliptic curve, including the X25519 encryption system and the Ed25519 signature system. Curve25519 is the fastest curve in TLS 1.3, and the only curve in Wireguard, Signal, and many other applications. So far lib25519 has exploited the features of Intel and ARM CPUs to provide top speeds for those CPUs, while meeting the security constraint of not leaking secret information through timing. This project will extend lib25519 to target 64-bit CPUs of RISC-V and provide efficient 64-bit implementations for the architecture.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/lib25519-RISC-V

• libhyphen partitioner — Increased readability of ISO document formats and mobile web pages

  The project develops a state-of-the-art line breaking method in LO/COOL Writer word processor and its portable libhyphen library, resulting in more readable documents and web pages. The new algorithm is the natural enhancement of the “smart” hyphenation of DTP software and office suites. In ISO ODT and DOCX documents, it minimizes the less readable hyphenation of compound words by preferring compound word boundaries within a custom word spacing range, i.e. without losing typographic quality. Limiting hyphenation only for splitting compound words, it can help to eliminate poor rags on mobile web, where the de facto standard is scrolling of the left-aligned text without hyphenation. This is a fundamental requirement for languages with an “unlimited” number of compound words, for example Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Norwegian and Swedish, but it can be useful for English, too, especially on very narrow screen sizes of mobile web.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/libhyphen-partitioner

• Memory-safe Video Decoders in Rust — Implementation of MPEG-2 and H.264 video decoders

  Internet video streaming entertainment and videoconferencing systems rely on implementations of video and audio codecs that process a stream from a remote party. Mistakes in the implementation can lead to crashes or security vulnerabilities in the receivers. The memory-safe Rust language can avoid many of the common problems that cause these failures. This project will develop memory-safe sans-io standalone video decoder implementations for the widely-used MPEG-2 and H.264 video codecs in pure Rust, plus associated GStreamer elements, also written in Rust. For MPEG-2, both Simple Profile and Main Profile will be implemented; for H.264, the implementation will initially support Constrained Baseline Profile.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Rust-VideoDecoders

• Nitrokey on RISC-V using Trussed, Xous, Baochip — Security token with open hardware all the way down

  Today's Nitrokey USB security tokens, even if using open-source software, still rely on proprietary microcontrollers with closed documentation and opaque security mechanisms. This project ports the Nitrokey, an open-source security token supporting FIDO2/Passkeys, OpenPGP card, PIV and more, to the open RISC-V architecture. The stack will be the established Rust-based Trussed firmware framework, the security-oriented Xous microkernel OS, and the Baochip RISC-V system-on-chip. The result will be the first security token built entirely on an open hardware architecture to enable independent security audits of the complete stack, from silicon to application--strengthening digital sovereignty and trustworthy open hardware.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Nitrokey-RISC-V

• Open Wheelchair — Reverse engineer communication protocols in r-net based electronic wheelchairs

  Open Wheelchair is a project that aims to build open-source controllers for electronic wheelchairs. This allows end-users better customizability based on their needs. It also allows discarded electronic wheelchairs to be repurposed into new devices/projects, instead of being thrown away. The Open Wheelchair project initially aims to build an open-source joystick replacement for R-net wheelchairs. Thanks to its open APIs, third parties can get started quickly with their wheelchair project, without having to know all the internals of the particular wheelchair.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenWheelchair

• OpenSATCOMSec — Improve link layer security of satellite communications

  Satellites, underpinning communications of critical infra, GOV and MIL, incorporate significant amounts of proprietary protocols even when built mostly on open standards. The lack of transparency regarding the security of these technologies is worrying given their increasing targeting during geopolitical conflicts. Prior work has shown that SATCOM downlinks are often unencrypted and receivable over areas spanning half a continent, rendering them vulnerable to interception and injection attacks by hostile SIGINT programs. While operators and users should employ link layer security, such implementations are proprietary and have not been scrutinized before.

  This project focuses on the highly relevant DVB-S(2X)/RCS(2) standards and the proprietary Eutelsat OneWeb system which is integral to the EU's IRIS² project and intended as a sovereign counterpart to Starlink. It will reverse-engineer link layer encryption, and do a security analysis. It will then create a FOSS implementation of improved link layer security for open standards and sovereign ecosystems, and provide guidance for current and future standards.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenSATCOMSec

• owi-opt — Optimise software through symbolic execution in/via Wasm

  The goal of this project is to build a WebAssembly (Wasm) optimizer based on semantic program analysis rather than purely traditional rewrite rules. Building on the existing infrastructure in Owi, we will reuse and extend its relational abstract interpreter to compute program invariants that enable optimizations such as dead code elimination, branch simplification, and arithmetic simplification. This approach complements existing tools such as Binaryen's `wasm-opt` by enabling optimizations that require reasoning about complex program semantics. Because it operates directly on Wasm, the optimizer will be language and runtime independent, benefiting software compiled from Rust, C, Go, OCaml, and many other languages.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/owi-opt

• RELOAD Enrollment Infrastructure — X509 certificate distribution for IETF RELOAD (RFC 6940)

  The RELOAD Enrollment Infrastructure aims to implement a REST interface allowing the creation of users accounts with associated email addresses which will also double as SIP addresses, and emit X.509 certificates for those accounts after validating the ownership of the email address. Each participant in the P2P network will thus receive a digital identity that proves that they are the owner of said email/SIP address, allowing them to prove their identity to the party they communicate with. The certificate is also used to sign and encrypt P2P communication in order to avoid identity theft and fraud.

  The framework will be made generic enough that it could easily be adapted to support other usages where a central authority emits digital X.509 certificates for the purpose of serving as digital identities and/or digital signatures for their users.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/RELOAD-enrollment

• TETRA BlueStation — Libre TETRA base station stack

  TETRA is a mobile communications solution frequently relied upon in critical infrastructure and by emergency services. It provides voice and text services, but can also carry IP data to handheld and fixed radios. A previous grant helped deliver a proof-of-concept FOSS TETRA base station stack, BlueStation - which immediately gathered hundreds of enthousiasts upon release. This grant will elevate BlueStation from a proof-of-concept stack to a robust, practically usable base station stack. Lowering the price of a base station from tens of thousands to only about 200 euros worth of hardware, while keeping the ecosystem free from vendor lock-in and licensing issues, the project will give new purpose to large amounts of near e-waste handheld TETRA radios, which may then easily be used for resilient wireless communication - be it through a single stand-alone BlueStation cell, or through a network of base stations interconnected through the internet.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TETRA-Bluestation

• zelph — Auditable Reasoning over Linked Open Data

  When automated reasoners draw conclusions over open knowledge graphs such as Wikidata, the inference is typically a black box: a verdict comes out, but the proof stays hidden inside the tool. zelph is an open-source semantic network engine built on the opposite principle: facts, rules and derivations share one and the same graph representation, so every inference step is inspectable, machine-readable data. zelph already performs logical inference over the complete Wikidata knowledge graph on a single machine and has surfaced thousands of consistency violations in collaboration with the Wikidata Ontology Cleaning Task Force. This project turns that capability into domain-agnostic infrastructure for the Linked Open Data commons: streaming import adapters for RDF/N-Triples and JSON-LD, an open proof-export format that publishes complete derivation chains as Linked Data, a reusable library of constraint rules covering common ontology semantics, and a web-based proof explorer that lets anyone trace a derived fact back to its evidence. Any community maintaining an open knowledge graph will be able to audit its logical consistency — with full transparency over every reasoning step.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Zelph

Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation

• Extension of FuSa proven Slint — Functional-safety-proven open source Graphical User Interfaces

  Functional safety (FuSa) is a core requirement in domains like automotive industry, the medical sector, and aerospace. For safety-critical systems often certifications for entire solutions are part of the regulatory requirements before a solution may be deployed, including all free and open source components which are part of such a solution. The entire solution often also includes graphical user interface elements as well, meaning of course that any underlying frameworks for developing GUIs need to be functional-safety-proven to even be considered.

  Slint is a versatile declarative UI solution written in Rust. Rust's strong guarantees of memory safety and thread safety make it a suitable language for developing applications that require Functional Safety (FuSa) certification. This project completes the effort to make Slint compliant with the requirements for certification, offering a compelling option for building robust graphical user interfaces requiring functional safety.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Slint-FuSa-certification

• File Downloads + Extended Navigation API for Servo — Feature enhancement of Servo browser

  Servo is an independent memory-safe web engine written in Rust. File downloads are a core feature of any browser, and this project will make it possible for users of Servo-based browsers to initiate, pause, resume, and cancel file downloads. As part of this work, Servo embedders also get more control over whether and how content is handled before committing to receiving the full response.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Servo-Navigation_Downloads

• luCT — Privacy friendly real time certificate transparency log auditor

  luCT is a Firefox extension, that turns the browser into a privacy friendly real-time certificate transparency log auditor. While browsing, luCT will inspect the certificates presented to the browser during TLS handshakes and run a number of additional checks, including fetching the corresponding inclusion proofs from the certificate transparency logs. This checking makes rogue certificate attacks less viable, as the number of actors that need to collude against the user is increased. Furthermore, the data collected during this process enables users to gain insight into the certificate transparency ecosystem and how they use and rely upon it.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/luCT

• Mobile Nixos on Qualcomm Snapdragon devices — Get reproducible operating system and apps on mobile phones

  NixOS Mobile is a project that brings the NixOS Linux distribution to mobile devices. It leverages NixOS's declarative reproducible configuration model to manage the full software stack from the bootloader and kernel to the graphical shell on Qualcomm hardware. The project targets a range of Snapdragon devices particularly those with stronger mainline Linux kernel support such as Snapdragon 845 based phones like the OnePlus 6/6T or newer devices based on QCS6490 such as the Fairphone 5. As NixOS treats the entire system configuration as code users can define their mobile environment in a single .nix file. This enables atomic rollbacks and reproducible builds across devices. The result is an open-source alternative to Android that prioritizes long-term support and eliminates the fragmentation typical of the Android ecosystem therefore giving users a phone OS that is fully under their control and built to last.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/MobileNixOS-SDM845-QCS6490

• Modularizing Slint Applications — Better scalability for cross-platform, declarative GUI toolkit Slint

  Slint is a Rust-based alternative to the C++ based Qt toolkit, building on the same conceptual grounds as Qt's declarative UI framework QML - but providing a memory-safe and leaner option. This project aims to make Slint applications more modular and scalable by addressing limitations in its compiler and backend architecture. Currently, Slint requires a single compiler invocation, and all components must be accessed through the top-level module - making library distribution more difficult than necessary. This project will finalize work on modular compiler support and global handles while exploring API improvements that allow splitting UI and backend code across multiple crates or targets.

  Expected outcomes include faster build times, reusable Slint libraries, and flexible project architectures. Users benefit from maintainable, scalable applications, easier integration with backend code in any language, and a more collaborative Slint ecosystem. By enabling modularity, this work empowers the community to build larger, high-performance UI applications efficiently.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Slint-appmodularity

• postmarketOS immutability & test automation — Vendor-independent, open source smartphone operating system

  postmarketOS keeps smartphones useful after they don't receive updates anymore: the original operating system gets replaced with an up-to-date lightweight open source software stack based on Alpine Linux. With Google's announcement to develop Android behind closed doors, and plans to block every Android app whose developers are not approved by Google, as well as the changing political landscape it is now more important than ever to fund truly open source smartphone operating systems that are developed in the open and independently of specific market actors. This project is about releasing the first version of postmarketOS that is immutable, as well as significantly improving automated hardware testing for postmarketOS. With these efforts, we will be able to eliminate whole classes of bugs and bring postmarketOS closer to be used by everyday people.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Immutable-postmarketOS

• SelfHostBlocks Onboarding — User-hosted reproducible services based on NixOS

  Hosting services yourself is the obvious alternative to alleviate those concerns but it tends to require a lot of technical skills and time. SelfHostBlocks (together with its sibling project Skarabox) aims to lower the bar to self-hosting, and provides an opinionated server management system based on NixOS modules embedding best practices. Contrary to other server management projects, its main focus is ease of long term maintenance before ease of installation. To achieve this, it provides building blocks to setup services. Some are already provided out of the box, and customising or adding additional ones is done easily. This project will focus on polishing the user experience, making sure that self-hosting is accessible to everyone.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SelfHostBlocks-onboarding

• Slint Layouts 2.0 — Cross-platform declarative graphical user interfaces

  Slint is a Rust-based cross-platform UI toolkit, building on the same concept of declarative UI but doing so in a type-safe manner. This proposal focuses on redeveloping the layout engine to improve the creation of scalable user interfaces, able to support modern features and anchor positioning. This project modernises Slint’s layout system to better support today’s diverse screen sizes, mobile devices, and maker-driven use cases. It adds a more powerful hierarchical layout system with cross-axis alignment, text baseline alignment, correct application of size constraints in conditional and repeated elements, and extended GridLayout capabilities (axis-specific spacing, dynamic spacing, automatic wrapping. Its new flexible layout abstractions will allow layouts to be defined dynamically (e.g. horizontal vs. vertical based on orientation) and support wrapping behavior similar to Flex/Wrap layouts. It is based on an anchor positioning system with clear syntax, enabling developers to express visual relationships between elements without deep layout hierarchies or complex equations. The project will also improve layout tooling: e.g. add runtime warnings for unsatisfiable constraints, compiler-reported source locations, and live preview visualizations of the layout tree and constraint issues.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Slint-layouts-2.0

• Snapdragon 845 SoC Mainline Enablement — Battery Monitoring + Haptic Feedback in Linux for Snapdragon 845

  Linux-based smartphones becoming more and more popular within EU as an alternative to proprietary mobile OS such as Android or iOS. While some people already using smartphones based on this architecture on daily basis, hardware components such as the battery management and haptic controller doesn't have proper Linux upstream drivers. The expected outcome is a improved stability, and improved long-term maintainability by moving these features into upstream Linux where they can benefit from proper review and security updates.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Snapdragon-845-Linux

• SurfJS — Real-Time and Context-Agnostic Surrogate Functionalities for Privacy Invasive JavaScript

  SurfJS is a privacy enhancing browser extension that offers real-time, script-agnostic and obfuscation-resilient surrogate functionalities for privacy invasive JavaScript. Currently, existing content blocking tools rely on replacing entire scripts with surrogate counterparts, so as to prevent webpage breakage and preserve privacy. However, this approach entails certain limitations, such as script replacements being bound to specific script versions and necessitating constant updates, may become obsolete and cause breakage, and typically require significant and possibly error-prone manual effort to author. SurfJS will tackle these issues by adopting a fine-grained, dynamic approach of selectively instrumenting and replacing privacy-sensitive JavaScript APIs with surrogate APIs. In more detail, harmful scripts will access mock APIs (e.g., set or access a cookie in a dummy cookie jar), while benign scripts will still be able to call the original APIs, essentially maintaining script and page functionality while preserving user privacy. Crucially, this approach allows SurfJS to operate in a fully automated, scalable and script-agnostic manner, i.e., without requiring any prior script analysis, refactoring or manual effort.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SurfJS

• U-Boot Display Drivers — MNT OS Diversity / U-Boot Display Drivers

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

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/uboot-graphicsdrivers

• wasm2ml2unikernel — OCaml unikernel implementation of WebAssembly System Interface

  The wasm2ml2unikernel project will make it easy to deploy applications written in many programming languages as secure, lightweight unikernels thanks to WebAssembly (Wasm) as a universal compilation target. Building on Owi, the project will provide a compiler from Wasm to OCaml, along with an OCaml implementation of WASI for Solo5-based unikernels and a way to deploy them with Albatross. This will allow software written in Rust, C, Go and many other languages to be transformed into isolated, efficient unikernels with minimal effort, improving portability, security and ease of deployment.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/wasm2ml2unikernel

Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling

• DFLARE — Digital Forensics, Logging, Analysis, and Response for Embedded Systems

  Connected embedded systems are everywhere and under increasing attack by both state-sponsored and cybercriminal threats. However, in case of a (suspected) incident, there is no framework for device-level Digital Forensics & Incident Response (DFIR) on embedded systems. The DFLARE project will will design, build and release an open-source modular framework tailored to embedded device-level DFIR activities. The framework will aid responders in quickly assessing the situation, collecting and analyzing evidence, and also provide functionalities to aid in responsibly restoring operations. The modular DFLARE framework will support several high-profile embedded systems commonly encountered in critical infrastructure, and, of course, be well-suited for extension with additional functionalities and wider device support, kicking off an ecosystem for a currently non-existent yet critical application.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/DFLARE

Middleware and identity

• Cryptic Elephant — Transparent Column Encryption for PostgreSQL

  PostgreSQL is a widely used enterprise-scale relational database engine that is standards compliant and extensible. The software runs on all major operating systems. This project will deliver a PostgreSQL extension for Transparent Column Encryption, written in Rust. This allows for transparent data encryption, comply8ing with industry standards and regulation, without requiring a fork of Postgres. Data would be encrypted in memory, using Envelop Encryption to protect the Data Encryption Key (DEK). Key Encryption Keys (KEK) are stored in an external key management system, making key rotation easy and fast.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/CrypticElephant

• Ocaml GNS — Implementation of GNS resilient decentralised name system in Ocaml

  The Domain Name System (DNS) is a central piece of technology that holds together the Internet. It is also one of the most fragile and sensitive pieces allowing traffic amplification attacks, censorship and mass surveillance. This project works towards a practical, radical and holistic answer to the issues of DNS by providing a stand-alone implementation of the GNU Name System (GNS), which has been developed as part of the GNUnet research project. The aim is to extract the GNS logic into an implementation optimized for practical usability and stability. The memory-safe and functional programming language OCaml, allows for the integration and deployment as a mkernel unikernel.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/GNS-OCaml

• pac4j support for EUDI Wallet/eIDAS 2.0 — EUDI Wallet/eIDAS 2.0 support in pac4j Java security framework

  Pac4j is an easy to use, generic security framework that can be used across the Java ecosystem. Its security concepts are deliberately restricted to two main use cases: securing web applications and web services (although everything can still be customized by code). Pac4j integrates out of the box with the most popular security frameworks (like Spring Security and Shiro). Many specific implementations exist for the most popular development frameworks (like JEE, Spring Boot, Play framework, Vert.x, etc.). The core logic lives in a unified security engine (< 100k lines of code) which deals exclusively with security concepts and protocols, independent of any specific framework. This project will implement two specifications that are needed to support the EUDI Wallet/eIDAS protocols, and make these available across the Java ecosystem.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/pac4j-eIDAS2.0

• Python Web Calendaring Ecosystem — iCalendar, CalDAV, and JMAP in Python

  The Python calendaring ecosystem is a collection of open source libraries that implement the iCalendar, CalDAV, and JMAP standards for reading, writing, and synchronizing calendar data. Calendaring applications that depend on the Python calendaring ecosystem can create alarms, schedule one-time or recurring events, invite attendees, and perform other calendaring tasks. In this project several new libraries will be introduced - for JMAP calendar support, protocol-agnostic sync, and Django integration. Together the packages icalendar, python-caldav, recurring-ical-events, and open-web-calendar form the foundation of calendar support for a broad range of Python applications.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Python-Webcalendaring

Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger

• Pillow — P2Panda Support Nodes Powered by Willow

  Peer-to-peer systems struggle with data availability problems if they solely rely on replication between end user devices. We plan an infrastructure of “support nodes” to act as an optional, reliable backbone. These support nodes will store key-value data via the Willow data model. We will specify and implement the Willow Transfer Protocol, a request-response protocol for communication both between support nodes internally and between support nodes and end user devices. We will implement data storage for the p2panda project in these support nodes, but will keep the underlying infrastructure sufficiently generic to also be of use to other peer-to-peer protocols.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pillow

• RELOAD Enrollment Infrastructure — X509 certificate distribution for IETF RELOAD (RFC 6940)

  The RELOAD Enrollment Infrastructure aims to implement a REST interface allowing the creation of users accounts with associated email addresses which will also double as SIP addresses, and emit X.509 certificates for those accounts after validating the ownership of the email address. Each participant in the P2P network will thus receive a digital identity that proves that they are the owner of said email/SIP address, allowing them to prove their identity to the party they communicate with. The certificate is also used to sign and encrypt P2P communication in order to avoid identity theft and fraud.

  The framework will be made generic enough that it could easily be adapted to support other usages where a central authority emits digital X.509 certificates for the purpose of serving as digital identities and/or digital signatures for their users.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/RELOAD-enrollment

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

• Freeform — Form solution for building complex questionnaires with branching questions

  Freeform is a self-hosted alternative to Google Forms meant for (but not limited to) social sciences researchers who need to create, manage, and apply survey campaigns. It provides tools for building complex questionnaires with branching questions that adapt to participant responses, rich data types, and repeatable fields for collecting variable-length groups such as family member information or itemized expenses. It includes an admin interface for managing campaigns and downloading collected results. It allows for usage in the field with limited internet access, form styling and offers basic CMS capabilities. With an API based on PostgREST, it is easy to deploy in almost any infrastructure.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Freeform

• Lexical editor collaborative editing — Integrate json-joy CRDT in Lexical editor

  Lexical is a modern open-source rich-text editor used by Meta, Proton Docs, PayPal, and others, but it lacks a reliable solution for real-time collaborative editing: the only existing integration loses or scrambles text during common operations like splitting or merging paragraphs. This project builds a collaborative editing integration between Lexical and json-joy Peritext, an open-source rich-text CRDT that preserves concurrent edits correctly - the same technology already integrated with the ProseMirror and Slate editors. It will deliver a bi-directional data synchronization as a Lexical plugin, fuzz testing, and public documentation with an interactive demo.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Lexical-json-joy

• Privacy-respecting PIM tool — Personal information management in an isolated Mirage unikerel

  Some libre tools for Personal Information Management (PIM) exist, but most users still rely on proprietary hosted services to store their calendars and contacts. Obviously, this is sensitive information and so privacy-respecting, self-hostable alternatives would be preferable. This project develops a MirageOS unikernel, which only contains the pieces strictly necessary - a tiny virtual machine. The strict separation of code and data means updating the code is straightforward, only affects this one unikernel, and can also easily be rolled back. This has significant security benefits: minimal attack surface, memory-safe programming language. It also helps with sustainability, as it uses minimal CPU and memory.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/MirageOS-PIM

• SparkleShare — Version-controlled collaboration and sharing of files

  SparkleShare is a Free and Open Source collaboration app based on Git. It allows people who are not software developers or otherwise technical (designers, lawyers, academics, etc.) to collaborate and share files with projects that use Git as a version control system. It is available on Linux, macOS, and Windows. SparkleShare provides an automatic sync algorithm and a friendly user interface to review recent changes and restore files from history. The project is to revive the codebase by porting it to Rust and bringing it up-to-date with modern security and user interface standards, starting with Linux and releasing on Flathub, so that it can remain a useful tool for years to come.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SparkleShare

Vertical use cases, Search, Community

• ActivityBot — A full ActivityPub server in a single PHP file

  ActivityBot is a full ActivityPub server in a single PHP file. Get up and running with a feature-complete ActivityPub Bot by uploading two files to your server. No containers, no imports, no esoteric commands. Just upload and you are on the Fediverse. With full support for uploading media, private messages, threads, following users, content warning, and most standard Mastodon features. ActivityBot is also a teaching tool; fully commented to allow you to understand how the ActivityPub protocol works. ActivityBot is handmade, by a real human, in London.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/ActivityBot

• Allmaps — Towards an explorable database of historical maps

  International Image Interoperability Framework is a set of open standards for serving high-resolution images of paintings, old manuscripts but also maps. Allmaps is a free and open source set of tools to work specifically with IIIF Images of maps: georeferencing them using Georeference Annotations, linking pixel coordinates on the image with geographic coordinates on the globe. This enables adding such maps as an overlay to webmaps, projecting and warping them as needed, via plugins for all popular open source mapping libraries (MapLibre, OpenLayers and Leaflet).

  Over the past years, an open database has been collected as part of this project containing tens of thousands of georeferenced maps. In order to make this database explorable, we need to take some next hurdles: this project will develop a handful of computational geometry algorithms that allow efficient clustering of map masks, efficient vector tile rendering of masks, intuitive user interaction to select masks and Exposé-like automatic re-ordering of masks. Together with improvements in the rendering pipeline and the Georeference Annotation spec, these will be the open source building blocks for a user-facing Allmaps Explore application, while also being reusable in other (map-related) projects. This will make it easier and more inspiring to curate, georeference and explore collections of digitised maps.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Allmaps

• BookBrainz Open Data & Discovery Initiative — Crowd-sourced curation of information about written publications

  BookBrainz is a community led open-source database serving information about every single book, magazine, journal and other publication ever written. All the data is published under a Creative Commons CC0 license, allowing everything to be consumed and used for any use case. Its goal is to become the standard open-source source of truth for publications and offer long-lasting identifiers that can be used for third parties, as well as a user-friendly web interface to simplify entering and curating publication information, and allowing users to have their virtual library, reviews and recommendations.

  This project will strengthen BookBrainz’s core infrastructure to expand public access to high-quality metadata. It will improve and modernize the search infrastructure, ensuring long-term scalability and reduced infrastructure costs. The project will enable importing records from trusted public sources, including European national libraries, and introduce community-driven recommendations to improve discovery. Finally, the project will provide incremental data dumps and replication feeds to support (offline) reuse by researchers, libraries, and third parties.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/BookBrainz

• Fedipub — Ruby Library for adding ActivityPub Federation

  Fedipub is an open source library that implements the ActivityPub standard as a pluggable engine for the the Ruby on Rails web framework. By providing a common implementation of the standard using Rails idioms and design, it makes it easy for developers to add federation to their existing Rails applications, or create completely new ones. While Fedipub is already running in real-life applications to an extent, this project will improve documentation and onboarding, implement the rest of the core ActivityPub standard and add common Fediverse enhancements.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Fedipub

• Flock XR for Data Science — Data visualisations for VR-based visual coding environment

  Flock XR is a visual creativity and coding tool to create 3D experiences in a web browser. Flock XR allows anyone to create apps relevant to the virtual worlds that they use socially. Flock XR is a modern application designed for users who may have older hardware and limited data access, taking young people’s rights, safety and data privacy very seriously. Through creating with Flock XR, people develop technical and creative skills such as coding and working in 3D space with 3D models and animations. They can create using spatial computing features including VR, Augmented Reality, 3D printing and spatial audio. Flock XR is being developed with an inclusion first approach using co-design techniques with young people. In this grant, the project will be adding data science features so that users can create data visualisations, simulations and "digital twins".

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/FlockXR-datascience

• Inventaire split — Standalone Wikidata-federated Bibliographic Database

  Inventaire is a libre tool and social network to list and share books, helping individuals and collectives to form networks of librarians (Social Core). This is built on top of an open contributive bibliographic database extending Wikidata (Entities Core). Until recently, those two cores have been hosted on a unique, centralized, instance: inventaire.io.  During the previous grant, we started decentralizing the Social Core by making it possible to run an instance while reusing entities from another instance (a.k.a. federated entities mode). This validated the viability of having both cores running separately, giving us the opportunity for a great clarification, which will be the aim of new grant project: splitting Inventaire into two coupled but distinct projects, with their own code base, own domain name, own identity, etc. This rearchitecturing will strenghten the decentralization of the Social Core, thank to the reduced complexity, with all instances integrating entities in the same way. This will also open opportunities for reusing the Entities Core codebase alone, for other use cases than bibliographic data.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Inventaire-Split

• Mautic Privacy Project — Make Mautic tooling GDPR-compliant/privacy-by-default

  This project will make Mautic a truly privacy-first marketing automation platform by reducing unnecessary tracking for those who do not want or need it, improving GDPR compliance, and giving users a single, clear place to control privacy settings. It will rework cookies and contact-data handling so Mautic can operate without tracking by default, add stronger internal access controls and audit logging for sensitive organisations, and create a central privacy centre that explains the impact of each tracking option before it is enabled. The goal is to help NGOs, public-sector bodies, political organisations, and human rights groups communicate effectively without exposing people to surveillance, while also educating marketers and setting a new standard for ethical, privacy-respecting marketing technology.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Mautic-privacy

• NeTEx deckplan infrastructure for public transport — Viewer and editor for NeTEx-compliant deckplan infrastructure

  Transport operators store vehicle layouts in a range of proprietary formats. This data cannot be shared between operators, and important accessibility details are absent, including the height gap between the train and platform, steps inside the vehicle, wheelchair lifts, and accessible toilets.

  The NeTEx standard offers deckplan representation, making it the first standard expressive enough to model and openly exchange this information. What is missing is tooling. The NeTEx Deckplan Editor allows transport operators to create, edit, and openly exchange vehicle layouts, including the accessibility details travelers depend on. The project delivers this in two parts: a production-ready standalone editor that non-technical staff can use directly and a web component library for rendering NeTEx deckplans and integrating them into existing applications. The tools will be tested in practice by transport operators in Austria, Norway, Germany, and Finland, validating their use in real operational settings and identifying what is needed for smooth integration. The result is an open, interoperable foundation for vehicle data including accessibility information in public transport, available to any operator or passenger information service, while being fun for anyone interested in public transport to tinker with.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/NeTEx-deckplan

• Open Wheelchair — Reverse engineer communication protocols in r-net based electronic wheelchairs

  Open Wheelchair is a project that aims to build open-source controllers for electronic wheelchairs. This allows end-users better customizability based on their needs. It also allows discarded electronic wheelchairs to be repurposed into new devices/projects, instead of being thrown away. The Open Wheelchair project initially aims to build an open-source joystick replacement for R-net wheelchairs. Thanks to its open APIs, third parties can get started quickly with their wheelchair project, without having to know all the internals of the particular wheelchair.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OpenWheelchair

• OpenHistoricalMap + MapReader — Open Source Geospatial Components toward Automated Data Integration

  OpenHistoricalMap is the archival counterpart to OpenStreetMap, an open data platform for mapping world geography over time that is built on the OSM data model and uses forked components of the OSM ecosystem. It is a collaborative, global effort, but one thing it lacks is a comprehensive and standards-based approach for adding data extracted from scanned historical maps. This effort will focus on MapReader, an open source, UK-based humanities research software library that implements text spotting models to extract text and coordinates from georeferenced historical maps. We will enhance MapReader's input capabilities to better handle IIIF sources georeferenced via Allmaps, will synchronize its output with OHM's tagging schema, and use MapRoulette to implement a staging mechanism for human review. The goal of this project is not only to create a new contribution pipeline for OHM, but to enrich an existing software ecosystem and lay a foundation for future work in these themes.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/OHM-Mapreader

• Overte Federation

  Overte is a virtual social platform that allows its users to socialize in a more involved way than traditional digital communications, by allowing them to enter worlds using Virtual Reality. It can be used not just for recreational activities, but also education, psychotherapy, congresses, and more. The goal is to support people's need for immersive social platforms, by providing them with something that is privacy respecting and free. Within the scope of this grant, the project will add federation between Overte servers, as well as upgrade the backend directory service to allow for easier discovery of users.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Overte-Federation

• PubDex Gotta Track ’Em All — Libre publication tracking system for scientific publications

  PubDex is the free, open-source publication index that ‘gotta track ‘em all’! Research institutions repeatedly have to assemble publication lists for reporting, evaluation, and open-science monitoring. Because ORCID, Crossref, OpenAlex, and similar services each have their own gaps and errors, this still requires substantial manual searching and spreadsheet work, or dependence on costly commercial systems. PubDex will provide a free and open-source alternative that institutions can host themselves. It will collect records from scholarly sources, help staff match authors, remove duplicates, and record where each item came from and why it was included. Documented APIs, standard exports, and reproducible deployment tools will let institutions reuse the resulting records in reports, on websites, and in their own analyses. We will develop and test PubDex at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, keeping it modular, for other departments, libraries, and research institutions to run it locally and adapt it to their own workflows.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/PubDex

• Ruido Visual Web VJ — Browser-based live video performance and production tooling

  Ruido Visual Web VJ is a browser-native, libre software tool that turns any computer with a webcam into a professional live video performance and production studio. It democratizes access to VJ (video jockey) tools by offering real-time multi-source compositing, a rich library of visual effects, MIDI controller support, and audio-reactive capabilities, all within a free and open-source web application. By prioritizing open web standards like WHIP and WebRTC over proprietary protocols, the project ensures full interoperability and user freedom. It is designed to empower independent creators, educators, and live streamers by providing a versatile, modular, and community-driven alternative to expensive, closed-source software, with a strong focus on human-centric performance and a sustainable, library-first architecture.

  — For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Ruido