This announcement was originally published in the website of the NLnet Foundation.
NLnet Foundation and its partners in NGI Zero are happy to announce that 47 new projects have been awarded grants in the twelfth open call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund (deadline April 2026).
This round has projects working on all layers of the technology stack. From innovative and trustworthy open hardware — for instance a much anticipated effort to port Open PDKs to the Verilog-A standard which will allow to speed up the creation of fab-independent open chips, enhancements to the widely used EDA tool KiCad that add physical simulation of printed circuit boards, a high-precision pose estimation component for indoor robotics and an open hardware wind turbine — and deeply technical software engineering projects like a C bootstrapping C compiler for a trustworthy full-source bootstrap or an ambitious recursive build system levering execve memoisation, to more end-user facing social media tools such as a federated e-commerce ecosystem powered by ActivityPub and a management system for Fediverse content creation and publication and software for groups-based communities in the Fediverse.
Meet the new projects!
Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing
- KiCad FEM — Physical simulation of printed circuit boards
- NotSundial — High-precision pose estimation for indoor robotics
- pdsink — Modern USB Power Delivery Sink Library for Embedded Devices
- Power ISA Desktop — Open Hardware Desktop prototype designed for GNU/Linux on Power ISA
- Verilog-A Device Libraries for Open PDKs — Port Open PDKs to Verilog-A standard
- Windkit — Open hardware wind turbine
Network infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPN
- 802.11 monitoring and AP mode for FreeBSD — LinuxKPI based access point mode support for FreeBSD wireless
- GStreamer WebRTC with librice — Integrate librice into GStreamer multimedia framework
- Reticulum-rs daemon — Distribution ready rnsd-rs daemon with broad interface support
- TRDP_SDR — Development Platform for Software Defined Radio
Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs
- BabelBuild — Flexible, recursive build system levering execve memoisation
- Better Sound for Open Source Video Calls — Voice isolation and optimization for FOSS conferencing tools
- CDoc — Persistent embedded conflict-free replicated document
- Distributed Slips Immune — Open, distributed, machine learning-based intrusion prevention system
- Erlang-Red — Visual Flow Based Programming for Erlang
- GNUnet PQ-migration — Modernise GNUnets cryptographic security architecture
- IPSIS protocol creation and development — Rust library unifying real-time control data, audio and video
- Scala bootstrap — Reproducible full source bootstrap for Scala in Guix
Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation
- apparmor.d — Restrict software capabilities with per programme profiles
- asyncnss — New async implementation of NSS/Name Service Switch
- BinB — High-performance Linux userspace emulator
- Dasher v6 — Predictive text entry without a keyboard
- libLISA — Tool to improve x86 (dis)assemblers, Emulators and Binary Translators
- Maturing MesCC — C bootstrapping C compiler for Full-Source Bootstrap for x86_64, x86, Aarch64
- Operese — Windows to Linux migration tool for non-technical users
- user-notify — Rust library for implementing native notifications in apps
Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling
- Crawler defense with iocaine — Lightweight memory-safe mechanism against undesired scraping system
Middleware and identity
- Gorgon usability — Continuous integration testing for PRs against software dependencies
Decentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledger
- FileSender Open Cloud Mesh — Move very large files across remote data storage systems
- Zero Data Apps — Git-backed remoteStorage for web apps
Services + Applications (e.g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration)
- ActivityPub4J — Reusable ActivityPub Foundation for Java
- DataLab Timeseries Support (DTS) — Scientific data processing and visualization
- DSK — Management system for Fediverse content creation and publication
- Gajim Audio and Video Calls — E2EE calling for cross-platform versatile XMPP client
- Harefoot — Beautiful, accessible, cross-compatible technical documents in the terminal
- Sylk Persistent Group Chat — Encrypted enterprise-ready persistent group chat over SIP
Vertical use cases, Search, Community
- Dokieli Knowledge Organisation — Standards-based writing, annotating and publishing on the web
- dp-group-stats — Privacy preserving statistics about sensitive data from small groups
- Economiverse — Federated, open-source e-commerce ecosystem powered by ActivityPub
- Equal Earth Web Maps — Maps with accurate relative land sizes and other alternative projections
- Fix my panorama — A mobile app to contribute street imagery to Panoramax
- Hister — Self-hosted search platform for web history and stored files
- NodeBB Groups — Software for groups-based communities in the Fediverse
- Open Food Facts SKOS export — Revealing the hidden potential of Open Food Facts taxonomies
- Open Library FastAPI — Internet Archive's free and open catalogue of the world's books
- SUMA-Kit — One-stop search engine hosting toolkit
- TiBillet × GNU Taler — Privacy preserving payments for TiBillet ticketing/payment platform
If you applied for a grant
This is the selection for the April 2026 call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund fund only. We always inform all applicants about the outcome of the review ahead of the public announcement, whether they are selected or not. If you have not heard anything, you probably applied to a later call or a different fund that is still under review.
Acknowledgements
The NGI Zero Commons Fund is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Additional funding for the NGI0 Commons Fund is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).