Newsletter: Applications for General & Bug Resilience Program, Memory Safety Reflections & Job Opening

In this newsletter edition, we’re sharing updates on our general funding application, the Bug Resilience Program, a blog post by STF technologist Tara Tarakiyee about memory safety, and a new position we’re hiring for. Learn about the new open source infrastructure technologies that the Sovereign Tech Fund has commissioned work on.

If you’d like to find out about these updates as they happen, you can find the Sovereign Tech Fund on Mastodon, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Bluesky.

Beginning 17 June 2024 (around noon Berlin time), you'll be able to submit proposals for funding from STF through our application platform. We’re looking forward to proposals from critical and foundational open source technologies, whose work strengthens the FOSS ecosystem.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we transition to a permanent organization, and work on refining and expanding how we support the open source ecosystem and critical FOSS infrastructure.

The Bug Resilience Program enhances the resilience of critical, free and open source software infrastructure against vulnerabilities. We’re now accepting applications from open digital infrastructure projects to join the program for access to services like our bug and fix bounty program. Our service partner assists with triaging reports, and we provide a fixing bounty to the maintainers in addition to the bug bounty for the researchers!

More details here FAQ Criteria

Addressing memory safety in critical infrastructure is a complex issue with multiple approaches. The Sovereign Tech Fund supports several initiatives, and technologist Tara Tarakiyee reflects on the long road ahead.

Read more

We’re looking for a new person to join our team! As a new type of organization, the communication of the Sovereign Tech Fund's mission, objectives, and insights is central to the long-term success and visibility of our vision.

Communications Manager

If you know people who might be interested, please share this position with them and share it on social media (German-language posts):

• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@sovtechfund/112529290853977952
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7201881675558010881
• X: https://x.com/sovtechfund/status/1796109126570807532
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sovereigntechfund.de/post/3ktp3le5v5g2p

Applications for the communications manager position will be accepted through 30 June 2024, and we will post all new positions on our jobs page.

We’re excited to be working with these maintainers and FOSS communities, and to support the software that forms the foundation of our shared digital infrastructure.

The STF team raises awareness about how important open source digital technologies are. Here are some opportunities we’ve had to talk about STF’s mission and how we’re implementing it.

• On 4-5 May, 2024, Paul Sharratt and Powen Shiah spoke at the g0v summit in Taipei: video in English.
• On 24 May 2024 in Brussels: Adriana Groh spoke on the panel “Public Interest Digital Innovation - Beyond Big Tech Regulation: Funding & Scaling Public Goods”: video in English.
• 30-31 May 2024: Adriana participated in the Policy Lab of the Digital Commons Policy Council / Centre Internet et Société at CNRS in Paris, France.
• Last week, Adriana Groh spoke on two panels at re:publica in Berlin, Germany:
  • Digital Commons, digitale öffentliche Güter, digitale Souveränität – eine Anleitung für den Diskurs der gemeinwohlorientierten Digitalisierung
  • AI, Software & Schiene: Warum es in Europa einen Ausbau der öffentlichen (digitalen) Infrastruktur braucht: video in German.
• 4 June 2024: Adriana Groh spoke on the panel “Engage in Open Source Policy Discourse: Past, Present, and Future” at the APELL conference (European Open Source Software Business Association) in Berlin, Germany.
• 5 June 2024: Adriana Groh and Fiona Krakenbürger are participating in the NGI Commons Strategic Advisory Panel’s workshop “Co-Creating Digital Commons Priorities for Europe's Digital Decade” in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• 5 June 2024: Fiona Krakenbürger is speaking at Upstream with Tidelift’s Luis Villa: "Government carrot, government stick: Exploring two contrasting approaches to improving open source security."
• Adriana Groh and Fiona Krakenbürger will both be at the PublicSpaces Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• On 12 June 2024, Paul Sharratt will be speaking on the digital infrastructures track at TICTeC in London, United Kingdom.