GitHub and Sovereign Tech Agency: Funding Open Source Ecosystems
Details
Join GitHub and the Sovereign Tech Agency (home of the Sovereign Tech Fund) for a conversation on public- and private-sector open source funding. Are you a maintainer looking for financial support? Do you want to attract new contributors, improve security and make your project more sustainable?
Tune in for a fireside chat with Felix Reda, GitHub’s Director of Developer Policy and former member of the European Parliament, Adriana Groh, the Sovereign Tech Agency’s Co-CEO and founder, David Runge, package maintainer for Arch Linux, currently receiving investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund, and hosted by Kara Sowles from GitHub’s Open Source Programs team. Their discussion will include:
- What is the Sovereign Tech Agency’s approach to investing in open source?
- Who can apply for funding?
- Other activities of the Sovereign Tech Agency, the Sovereign Tech Fund’s new institutional home
- GitHub’s Secure OSS Fund
A Fireside Chat with:
Felix Reda, Director of Developer Policy at GitHub
Adriana Groh, Co-CEO of the Sovereign Tech Agency
David Runge, package maintainer for Arch Linux
Hosted by: Kara Sowles, GitHub Open Source Programs team
Details:
Date: Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024
Time: 8 - 9 AM Pacific, 17 - 18:00 Central European Time
RSVP on Meetup.com
Watch on GitHub’s YouTube, Twitch, or LinkedIn channels
About the Sovereign Tech Agency
The Sovereign Tech Agency (https://sovereign.tech) is the first publicly funded organization in Europe tasked with strengthening critical digital infrastructure. It identifies and invests in foundational open source software components and supports open technologies with broad societal importance. Providing digital services in the public interest enables the independent use of open technologies by the state, the private sector, organizations, and individuals, and safeguards security and technological diversity. The Sovereign Tech Agency is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. It was started by Adriana Groh and Fiona Krakenbürger following a feasibility study conducted with experts from the open source ecosystem in 2022.
You can learn more and apply here: https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund
Speakers
Felix Reda [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Reda] (he/they) is the Director of Developer Policy at GitHub. He has been active in the digital rights field for over ten years, including serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019 and working with the strategic litigation NGO Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF). His areas of interest encompass copyright reform, freedom of expression, and the sustainability of the open-source ecosystem. Felix is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center, serves on the board of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, and is a member of the policy committee for Knowledge Rights 21. He holds an M.A. in Political Science and Communications Science from the University of Mainz, Germany.
Adriana Groh (she/her) Adriana Groh is co-founder and co-CEO of the Sovereign Tech Agency, an organization funded by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action to invest in critical, open digital infrastructure. Previously, she built a project on digital sovereignty, participation, and data commons with the city of Hamburg and was the director of the Prototype Fund, an innovation fund of the Open Knowledge Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Her interest lies in applying democratic principles to the field of innovation and digitalization, and she co-initiated several tech projects, such as a chat app for federal elections in Germany and the #WeVsVirus Hackathon.
David Runge is a free software developer, that works on infrastructure and system packaging related projects. He is a package maintainer for the Arch Linux distribution and currently dedicates time to the ALPM project, which provides specifications, libraries and commandline tools for Arch Linux Package Management.
GitHub and Sovereign Tech Agency: Funding Open Source Ecosystems