Periodic Reporting for period 4 - NGI0-Discovery (NGI Zero Discovery)
Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2022-10-31
NGI0 Discovery is an ambitious RIA within the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative that aims for a resilient, trustworthy and sustainable internet. It supports independent researchers that contribute technological building blocks.
In this information age, the tools to search and find information are instruments of power. Search engines are gateways but also gatekeepers to our economy, our culture and our society. The unprecedented reliance of individuals, businesses and governments on a few companies has led to a severely disrupted and disfunctional situation. Search providers may offer ‘free’ search but often present a restricted and unfair view, while extracting as much data as possible. Intransparent ranking algoritms combined with psychological profiling maximise advertising revenue at the cost of social stability, quality and ethics. The result is vast damage to our society and economy, loss of privacy concerning even very sensitive (medical, sexual, political) information, and a loss of control over our online presence.
We need more fair alternatives for search and discovery that move away from this unhealthy dependency, and put users back in the driver seat. The Next Generation Internet can help make online search more decentralized and privacy-friendly. NGI0 delivers everything as free and open source software. This way public money directly supports public technology everyone can benefit from.
An initiative as ambitious as NGI revolves around a combination of groundbreaking projects and hard work to make everything work together. The first objective of NGI0 Discovery is to provide projects with an effective, agile and low-threshold funding mechanism. The second objective is to create a best-of-breed 'greenhouse' where projects are provided with knowledge and skills to advance their work. The third objective is to promote collaboration between projects. The fourth objective is to offer high-quality shared infrastructure - all with the aim to make the most out of the independent researchers at work within NGI Zero.
In this information age, the tools to search and find information are instruments of power. Search engines are gateways but also gatekeepers to our economy, our culture and our society. The unprecedented reliance of individuals, businesses and governments on a few companies has led to a severely disrupted and disfunctional situation. Search providers may offer ‘free’ search but often present a restricted and unfair view, while extracting as much data as possible. Intransparent ranking algoritms combined with psychological profiling maximise advertising revenue at the cost of social stability, quality and ethics. The result is vast damage to our society and economy, loss of privacy concerning even very sensitive (medical, sexual, political) information, and a loss of control over our online presence.
We need more fair alternatives for search and discovery that move away from this unhealthy dependency, and put users back in the driver seat. The Next Generation Internet can help make online search more decentralized and privacy-friendly. NGI0 delivers everything as free and open source software. This way public money directly supports public technology everyone can benefit from.
An initiative as ambitious as NGI revolves around a combination of groundbreaking projects and hard work to make everything work together. The first objective of NGI0 Discovery is to provide projects with an effective, agile and low-threshold funding mechanism. The second objective is to create a best-of-breed 'greenhouse' where projects are provided with knowledge and skills to advance their work. The third objective is to promote collaboration between projects. The fourth objective is to offer high-quality shared infrastructure - all with the aim to make the most out of the independent researchers at work within NGI Zero.
NGI0 Discovery is made up of work packages that describe the grant management process and the project support services. The report details the work done per work package, here important highlights are summarized.
NGI0 Discovery hosted 6 bimonthly calls during the reporting period where 63 projects were selected from 269 applications. Project plans and agreements were developed and requests for payment based on delivered milestones were made when verified. Coordinator NLnet produced detailed overviews of finalized call results.
NGI0 members organized project support services about free and open source software development, software packaging, accessibility, internationalisation, software licensing, software security (development), responsible disclosure and standardisation.
NGI0 Discovery hosted 6 bimonthly calls during the reporting period where 63 projects were selected from 269 applications. Project plans and agreements were developed and requests for payment based on delivered milestones were made when verified. Coordinator NLnet produced detailed overviews of finalized call results.
NGI0 members organized project support services about free and open source software development, software packaging, accessibility, internationalisation, software licensing, software security (development), responsible disclosure and standardisation.
The submitted Periodic Technical Report Part B details and updates the expected impacts of NGI0 Discovery. Here we summarize these impacts, the high-level socio-economic impacts and implications of NGI0 Discovery and what progress beyond the state of art was made.
Expected impacts NGI0 Discovery
The first expected impact of NGI0 Discovery is to significantly advance the state of art of search, discovery and identification technology. In this first reporting period NGI0 Discovery has attracted and supported projects that demonstrate their potential for fundamental improvement of open search and discovery. These are spread across all categories of technology building blocks, apart from "Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing":
Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing - 4
Network infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPN - 10
Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs - 9
Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation - 7
Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling - 6
Middleware + identity, including DNS, authorisation, authentication, distribution/deployment, operations, reputation systems - 13
Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger - 24
Data and AI - 32
Services + Applications (e.g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration) - 57
Vertical use cases, Search, Community - 65
See https://nlnet.nl/thema/NGIZeroDiscovery.html(opens in new window) for an overview of all projects.
The second expected impact is to increase cooperation in the field of search, discovery and identification technology. In this second reporting period NGI0 Discovery has connected and supported several projects that work on converging goals, like increased discoverability of the reproducible package manager Guix during the 1st period, automated vulnerability scanning of already packaged Guix-software during the 2nd period and improved web search and crawling with the Open Search Foundation crawler combination, the crawler-neutral URL Frontier and the high-performing AREXERA-crawler. Other projects provide new bridges across protocols and technologies for open search and discovery like the Kazarma-project that connects the federated social media protocol ActivityPub and the secure communication infrastructure Matrix, or Solid-Nextcloud that connects the open source cloud technology Nextcloud to Solid, a worldwide effort to create privately owned and managed data pods.
The third impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is for all project output to be secure, ready for internationalisation, accessible, legally sound and easily available. Expert organizations provide these support services to projects as detailed in the Technical Report Part B and the summary above. As such, projects during this reporting period were prepared to run at internet scale, which helps to generate working parts for the NGI initiative.
The fourth impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is to influence how the internet ecosystem further develops regarding search, identification and discovery. NGI0 Discovery has longstanding relations with for example the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the World Wide Web Consortium, as well as civil society decision makers like the Internet Society and the European Digital Rights association. Through these relations NGI0 Discovery will make sure that project output can be deployed at critical internet junctions and make headwind in communities that strongly influence internet policy and governance.
The fifth impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is to establish standards. Work in under way in several projects to standardise within IETF and W3C, and the project funds several active standards editors.
In conclusion, NGI0 Discovery is already during this first reporting period advancing the state of art and supporting concrete, usable technologies that show how decentralized, user-centric search and discovery can benefit internet users everywhere.
Expected impacts NGI0 Discovery
The first expected impact of NGI0 Discovery is to significantly advance the state of art of search, discovery and identification technology. In this first reporting period NGI0 Discovery has attracted and supported projects that demonstrate their potential for fundamental improvement of open search and discovery. These are spread across all categories of technology building blocks, apart from "Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing":
Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing - 4
Network infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPN - 10
Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs - 9
Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation - 7
Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling - 6
Middleware + identity, including DNS, authorisation, authentication, distribution/deployment, operations, reputation systems - 13
Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger - 24
Data and AI - 32
Services + Applications (e.g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration) - 57
Vertical use cases, Search, Community - 65
See https://nlnet.nl/thema/NGIZeroDiscovery.html(opens in new window) for an overview of all projects.
The second expected impact is to increase cooperation in the field of search, discovery and identification technology. In this second reporting period NGI0 Discovery has connected and supported several projects that work on converging goals, like increased discoverability of the reproducible package manager Guix during the 1st period, automated vulnerability scanning of already packaged Guix-software during the 2nd period and improved web search and crawling with the Open Search Foundation crawler combination, the crawler-neutral URL Frontier and the high-performing AREXERA-crawler. Other projects provide new bridges across protocols and technologies for open search and discovery like the Kazarma-project that connects the federated social media protocol ActivityPub and the secure communication infrastructure Matrix, or Solid-Nextcloud that connects the open source cloud technology Nextcloud to Solid, a worldwide effort to create privately owned and managed data pods.
The third impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is for all project output to be secure, ready for internationalisation, accessible, legally sound and easily available. Expert organizations provide these support services to projects as detailed in the Technical Report Part B and the summary above. As such, projects during this reporting period were prepared to run at internet scale, which helps to generate working parts for the NGI initiative.
The fourth impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is to influence how the internet ecosystem further develops regarding search, identification and discovery. NGI0 Discovery has longstanding relations with for example the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the World Wide Web Consortium, as well as civil society decision makers like the Internet Society and the European Digital Rights association. Through these relations NGI0 Discovery will make sure that project output can be deployed at critical internet junctions and make headwind in communities that strongly influence internet policy and governance.
The fifth impact NGI0 Discovery intends to make is to establish standards. Work in under way in several projects to standardise within IETF and W3C, and the project funds several active standards editors.
In conclusion, NGI0 Discovery is already during this first reporting period advancing the state of art and supporting concrete, usable technologies that show how decentralized, user-centric search and discovery can benefit internet users everywhere.