News: Open Internet Stack: get funded to build your open-source project

Open Internet Stack: get funded to build your open-source project

Do you have a valuable idea in the area of digital commons and networked technology, that will contribute towards achieving a more open information society and serves as a building block for an open internet stack? Could you use financial and practical support to develop your open solution that empowers users on all layers of technology? Then consider applying for funding for the Open Internet Stack open call!

• Anyone can apply: collectives and individuals, developers, researchers and academics, students and young innovators, institutions, SMEs, public sector, non-profits, etc.
• The application form is simple and straightforward.
• You can ask for R&D grants between €5,000 — €50,000 to support your project.
• Project outcomes must be released as free and open source.

Open Internet Stack (OIS) is a new multi-year initiative from the European Commission to work towards a resilient operational stack of strategic technology commons worthy of trust — a stable and defendable foundation to foster healthy and strong democracies and economies, delivering the European vision of next generation digital infrastructures. It ties into their Open Source Strategy which is itself part of the Tech Sovereignty package.

The OIS umbrella initiative consists of a series of independent R&D programmes to support free and open source ecosystem. This work builds on the strong foundation of NGI Zero, a series of very successful R&D programmes within the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative.

Free and open source software (FOSS) and hardware, open standards, open data, Open Science, and open core internet infrastructure are democratising innovation and learning, and are together driving society and industry forward at an unprecedented pace.

The goal of OIS is to provide practical tools that public administrations, SMEs, and individual users can adopt and adapt to their specific needs — delivering digital autonomy and strengthening competitiveness. Only through enough critical mass of shared building blocks and collective pooling of resources and capabilities will our governments, businesses and civil society be able to count on digital security and long term operational availability — and steer towards more fair, innovative economies and societies.

The following theme funds are currently accepting project proposals:

• Restack — a fund that supports projects contributing to an open, resilient and trustworthy digital infrastructure, paving the way for permissionless innovation and user autonomy. In scope are innovations and enhancements to core internet infrastructure, alternatives to closed online technologies serving a large user base, and devices used to run and consume these in a secure and privacy-friendly manner. This also includes full stack security, software supply chain management, reproducibility and trust enhancing technologies.
• CodeSupply — a scale-up programme which addresses data challenges in cybersecurity, software supply chain management, and regulatory and open source license compliance. Funding is available for FOSS efforts that align with the programme’s 3 main objectives:
  1. Publish current, correct, and comprehensive software metadata;
  2. Establish a scalable and sustainable mechanism to provide democratic access to data sets;
  3. Create a foundational framework for future iterations, enhancements, and new data sets.

The 2nd call for Restack and CodeSupply opened on November 3, 2026, with a deadline of January 3, 2027.

Project proposals should be written in English, align with the goal of OIS, and have research and development as their primary objective.

Project results always become available under a recognised free or open source license, so anyone can read and validate the source code, and anyone can use the code or open data to create solutions that fit their own purposes. The right to reuse and right to repair not only allow for unrestricted scrutiny and permissionless innovation, but also help to reduce e-waste. And the use of standards enables interoperability and redundancy in implementation to reduce the risk of compromise and failure.

Apply for funding today to develop your project!

If you have any questions, please contact the Regional Representative of NGI Zero in Moldova.