#NLnet is the BEST of the terrible #openweb tech funding in Europe, likely the world. Over the last 10 years we’ve put around a dozen funding applications in to #openweb funders with real-world social and technological value projects. All were dismissed at the first round.
So this time we brought in a professional fundraiser to help write the application. They did an impressive job, and finally, our #OMN #makinghistory proposal – Trust-Based Media Flows for the #Fediverse – made it through to the second round.
Today, people have started publishing updates on getting grants, nothing back for us yet. The second-round process appears to involve “a polite interrogation: what are the ideas, how will the project be developed, what will the money pay for, what are the main tasks, and what is the project’s policy on AI-assisted coding? All perfectly reasonable questions”, that we are still waiting to have an opportunity to address.
There is a bigger problem, progressive tech funding still has a narrow idea of what counts as valuable #openweb work. Projects have to translate themselves into the language of funders, technical reviewers and the #geekproblem before they can even get considered. Grassroots projects are expected to prove their legitimacy through carefully packaged technical language.
Meanwhile, the things we are actually trying to build – trust, federation, community infrastructure, open process, human moderation, archives and alternative media flows – are the things that don’t fit neatly into the usual technology funding boxes.
So yes, we’re patiently waiting to see what happens with #NLnet, and are grateful that the project reached the second round. But getting through one funding round shouldn’t feel like winning a lottery. If the #openweb is supposed to be commons, funding it needs to be about more than finding projects that already know how to speak the language of institutions and narrow #geekproblem subcultures.
The #OMN path is about building infrastructure with and for the people doing the work, that probably means we will always be slightly awkward applicants. Good, the #openweb needs more awkward projects and fewer polished funding bubbles.
#4opens #OMN #openweb #FOSS #Fediverse #techchurn
The point I’ve been making to some of the best people in progressive #mainstreaming is simple – over the last ten years, the balance of what you supported and funded has been wrong. Your texts say one thing, but what gets funded and built is a limited subset of what those texts claim to value.
I don’t think this is necessarily bad faith. But at some point we have to be honest about the gap between what we say we believe and what our actions actually produce. When the support needed is the deeper social infrastructure, grassroots participation and open commons, then our blinded crew become part of the mess that needs composting rather than part of the path out of it.
We need shovels.