NGI0 Review

Project Information

NGI0 Review

Grant agreement ID: 101070519

DOI

10.3030/101070519

EC signature date 25 May 2022

Start date 1 August 2022

End date 31 July 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 1 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 1 500 000,00

Coordinated by

STICHTING NLNET
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NGI0 Review (NGI0 Review)

Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

NGI0 Review is a support service oriented programme within the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative to support projects that are part of ongoing or previous NGI programmes. It is aimed to support these projects with services that are of importance to deliver secure, trustworthy, usable and resilient software or hardware. Core services are:

- security audits
- accessibility scans
- standardization strategy and support
- preparing for localisation/i18n
- reproducible packaging
- copyright compliance and best practices
- testing
- support in setting up governance models

In addition the NGI Zero Review programme offers more general forms of mentoring with regards to community building, conflict mediation and improving diversity and inclusion. The overarching goal is to strengthen these free and open source efforts and the community behind them and make them more resilient for the future.

The main objective of NGI0 Review is to provide a best-of-breed “greenhouse environment” (analogous to but distinct from what an “accelerator” does for for-profit initiatives) across the NGI portfolio. We want every project to be usable by and useful to actual users as early as possible. Where possible, we help create synergy among the different projects funded within NGI, and within the wider technical community. We also contribute to capacity building within the community, through programmes like the Summer of Nix.

As a secondary goal we have taken it upon ourselves to deliver an open collaboration environment (web portal) with access to the knowledge created within the services of NGI0 Review. We will also automatically derive other relevant information about projects, and publish the bundle as LinkedData with a dedicated ontology. In order to ensure the origin of any claims, this ontology will feature digital signing and federated publication of information.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have actively reached out to all the programmes within NGI in various ways. As a (Coordination and) Support Action, our work is to make the work of others better. So far NGI0 Review had 95 requests from 50 projects. Security audits from Radically Open Security are the most popular, WCAG/accessibility audits by HAN place second. There is a shared third place for copyright compliance advice (delivered by FSFE) and packaging (delivered by NixOS Foundation). Runner up is a new, custom service (support for testing) which has taken the fourth place before other services. The latter service is delivered through Commons Caretakers BV.

The 2023 edition of the Summer of Nix was very successful, and delivered tens of new talents to the labour market.

A first prototype version of the LinkedData tooling and portal has been published.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The overarching goal of the programme is to support the digital commons in question, and (perhaps separately from that) the people that deliver them. Many NGI projects are delivered by individuals and small teams, and in order to make the most of their effort in the long term we need to strengthen the technology, processes and community behind them. The burden to go beyond the state of the art lies with them, our mission is to unburden them in every dimension we can and help them achieve more impact.

This means we help improve quality in a number of ways, but cannot claim autonomous success. That said, we believe our service package as defining the state of the art. We make opinionated choices, based on long term experience and our fairly unique overview of the technology domain.