🔊We can´t wait to hear your cutting edge ideas on these fields & intersections. Refer to our RFP for further details on application and scope: infrastructureinsights.fund/… - we want to do more than we already contributed to the field, to stay ahead of the curve. Apply! & reach out.

🌇For a field that has been forming for many years, 2 questions remain, always: what infrastructure needs to stay alive, no matter the cost & which projects can be responsibly sunset, how? Our current cohort is looking into a few of these aspects already (infrastructureinsights.fund/…)

🔓 We stay invested in core organising principles of F(O)SS (Infrastructures): Market consolidation or failing interoperability & openness (by design or accident) are a constant danger to the public interest. What interventions are necessary to counter these developments? (13/x)

🌍 New realities emerge, too, such as the global shift in developer demography and also the brunt of "users" of digital services & infrastructures: (restofworld.org/2024/github-…) This needs to be reflected in the investigations of our next cohort. (12/x)

🏢The advent of "public protocols" like #DPG, for service delivery at scale & deployed in digital ID and verification, civil registration, payment data exchange or information systems might introduce additional stressors (or opportunities) for ODI (11/x): digitalpublicgoods.net/DPI-D…

📀New stacks are emerging, that might have impact on the ODI ecosystem and software development/computing at large, like quantum (builtin.com/articles/open-so… & journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…) (10/x)

⛓️Supply chains (in different critical fields from research software to AI, administration, journalism or health) are relational and do have consequences, on people, the environment as our shared resource, social and political dynamics, markets and law/regulation. (9/x)

👩‍💻Coding itself might have: not only core devs author code, machines now do, too (f.i. github.blog/2023-11-08-the-s…) New challenges arise as AI and data infrastructures intersect with software, computing & hardware - throughout all layers of the stack. (8/x)

Despite the social embeddedness of FOSS development (+ its exploitation, like f.i. recently demonstrated in the xz utils- crisis, that clearly positioned ODI as key in current cybersecurity & geo-politics: theverge.com/2024/4/2/241193…& commons.ngi.eu/2024/04/24/re…) what else changed? (7/x)

📈 Understanding the delineation is relevant to identifying coordination failures *not* solely connected to resources, but social development environments, norms, project governance & engineering paradigms. (6/x)

🫰What did the new influx of funds change in regard to sustainability, security & mitigation planning in developer communities? (Shoutout to @cailean_osborne (review board) & @AtlanticCouncil for initial assessments: dfrlab.org/2024/04/18/more-m… & arxiv.org/abs/2404.06484) (5/x)

⚖️Since DIIFs inception, we've witnessed strides towards more just ways of sustaining critical digital commons across foundations, governments, businesses, academia &volunteer communities (like f.i. the creation of the @sovtechfund) (4/x)

👯These incidents demonstrated how collective action problems (f.i. undersupply & burnout) that only seem to apply to specialised individuals providing FOSS building block technology (f.i. transport layer security or logging frameworks), can suddenly scale to global risk (3/x)

This is what we're currently thinking about: Originally, the creation of DIIF was closely tied to events like heartbleed (slate.com/technology/2019/10…) and log4j ( technologyreview.com/2021/12…) (2/x)

🚀With the application deadline (June 2) coming closer, we want to take the opportunity to reflect on the role of the DIIF- from recent events & publications to our origin story - navigating the challenge-landscape for open digital infrastructure (1/x) .

🛎️ We announce today the launch of our 2024 Request for Proposals (RFP), open until June 2nd 2024: fordfoundation.forms.fm/2024… (1/x)