Let’s strengthen the Open Source ecosystem together! https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/challenges/ The Sovereign Tech Fund is looking for developers who use open source and want to contribute back. We need a sustainable ecosystem that enables new software development and ensures the ongoing security of existing dependencies. Many more people use open source software every day than contribute to it. It's time to give back and invest in this ecosystem, to increase its security and sustainability. In three challenges, participants can work on contributing back to open source for up to eight months with a budget of up to €300,000 for each of the four-month rounds. We’re accepting proposals starting today through July 6, 2023 (23:59 UTC+2). What are the Contribute Back Challenges about? The Sovereign Tech Fund is issuing three challenges to encourage active participation in open source infrastructure. With the call to “Contribute Back,” we are making it possible for developers, contributors, and maintainers to actively contribute to and work on the open source projects they depend on over a four to eight period. We want to identify critical issues in the open source ecosystem and empower people to work on them. To do this, the Sovereign Tech Fund is offering short-term challenge funding for participants to explore new solutions and focus on implementing them over a limited period of time. Our goal is to use these challenges is to discover the best ways to strengthen the ecosystem together. The Sovereign Tech Fund is providing up to €300,000 per application over a period of four months, with the possibility of a 4-month extension. We will support the creation and improvement of developer tooling, the production security of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) components, and the documentation of critical open source infrastructure technologies. In the challenges, the STF hopes to answer important questions, for example: Can better developer tooling help FOSS maintainers manage growing technical debt and increase test coverage to provide greater reliability and maintainability in the long term? What software production security mechanisms enable FOSS projects to stay open to contributions while protecting against the increasing threat of supply chain attacks? As the demand on the FOSS infrastructure increases, what documentation is needed to allow new developers to participate and to reduce the load on maintainers? To learn more about the Contribute Back challenges, visit https://sovereigntechfund.de/en/challenges/ Thanks and let’s get to contributing back! The STF Team