Mozilla announced that it is joining the Ford Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations so it can launch a request for proposals (RFP) to fund the research on open source digital infrastructure.
As part of this partnership, The Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS) is contributing $25,000.
In a blog post announcing the partnership, Mozilla said that:
"The benefits of digital infrastructure are numerous: it can reduce the cost of setting up new businesses, support data-driven discovery across research disciplines, enable complex technologies such as smartphones to talk to each other, and allow everyone to have access to important innovations like encryption that would otherwise be too expensive."
It started back in 2016, when the Ford Foundation funded a report by Nadia Eghbal titled Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure that described how that the development and maintenance of digital infrastructure often falls to communities of volunteers who take it upon themselves to maintain this infrastructure in their own free time and for little or no money.
This initiative led to significant risks to the open internet and the ability to develop new, innovative research and businesses within it.
Then in 2018, the Ford Foundation was joined by the Sloan Foundation to fund a portfolio of 13 research projects.
"In some cases the findings of these projects open up further questions, while in others they suggest interventions that could strengthen community practices," said the Ford Foundation on its own announcement.
In 2020, the RFP invites proposals from more people and organizations as well as companies, to further study the maintenance of digital infrastructure.
It's in this RFP that the Ford Foundation and the Sloan Foundation are joined by the Open Society Foundations and Mozilla.
By joining the three foundations, Mozilla hopes that it can contribute by propelling further investigation into the sustainability of open source digital infrastructure.
"Selected researchers will help determine the role companies and other private institutions should play in maintaining a stable ecosystem of open source technology, the policy and regulatory considerations for the long-term sustainability of digital infrastructure, and much more," said Mozilla.
These aims are in line with Mozilla’s pledge for a healthy internet.
"We’re confident that these projects will go a long way towards deepening a crucial collective understanding of the industrial maintenance of digital infrastructure."
Inviting more people to join, the foundations and Mozilla said that anyone from individuals, organizations (non-profit and for-profit) and Academic Institutions are eligible.
Working through the Open Collective Foundation, who will manage all grants provided through this program, the total amount of fund at the moment of the announcement is somewhat similar to the amount funded through the 2018 RFP which was $1.3 million.
