2024 Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund RFP

2024 Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund RFP is sponsored by Ford Foundation. This RFP supports proposals addressing a range of issues within Open Digital Infrastructure (ODI), which includes open-source code, institutional settings, technical standards, and knowledge assets that support software technologies.

Critical Digital Infrastructure Research - Ford Foundation Critical Digital Infrastructure Research The software, standards, and protocols that form our digital infrastructure are critical to a free and open internet, and much of it has been built by volunteers.

But free, public code—which we refer to as open source software—needs regular upkeep and maintenance, just as physical infrastructure does, and because it doesn’t belong to any one person or party, it is no one person’s job to maintain it. Without maintenance, we see the digital equivalent of a crumbling road or a collapsing bridge.

Building toward a more diverse and well-funded ecosystem for critical digital infrastructure, the Ford Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation came together in 2018 to fund thirteen research projects that fill gaps in understanding of how digital infrastructure is built, maintained, and sustained.

In some cases the findings of these projects open up further questions, while in others they suggest interventions that could strengthen community practices. 2020 Digital Infrastructure Research RFP To continue to advance this agenda, Ford Foundation, Sloan Foundation, Mozilla, Omidyar Network and Open Society Foundations launched a 2020 Digital Infrastructure RFP to further study the maintenance of digital infrastructure.

Learn about selected research projects on opencollective. com . Also dig into the research and findings in the reports, one-pagers, and videos.

Researchers gathered for a number of convenings in the summer of 2020 to discuss their findings and the importance of this work. Watch the Building Our Digital World and Equity & Sustainability in Open Source recordings on YouTube. What makes an open source project “critical digital infrastructure?

” Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Society Researchers: Lucy Bernholz , Jessica Feldman , Argyri Panezi What factors encourage and sustain international communities of contributors to open source projects?

Researcher: Anushah Hossain What is the relationship between money and sustainability for community-driven, open-source software instruments that enable transformative research in stellar astrophysics?

Arizona State University, University of California Santa Barbara , University of Wisconsin-Madison Researchers: Frank Timmes , Lars Bildsten , Richard Townsend To what extent are F/OSS projects supported by waged labor, and how does this affect project cohesion and sustainability?

University of Canberra , Telecom Paris Tech Researchers: Mathieu O’Neil , Laure Muselli , Mahin Raissi , Stefano Zacchiroli Resource: Research one-pager How can funders and community leaders better meet the needs of digital infrastructure projects, and how are those needs distinct from projects at the application layer – particularly with respect to values, governing bodies, and supporting structures?

Implicit Development Environments Research Group Researchers: Elisa Lindinger , Katharina Meye r , Julia Kloiber Collaborators: Ame Elliott, Eileen Wagner ( Simply Secure ) Report and findings from research How do FOSS Foundations (trade associations or non-profits that provide services such as asset management to open source infrastructure projects) contribute to the operations, sustainability, and success of critical digital infrastructure projects?

Researcher: Martin Michlmayr FOSS Foundations: Commonalities, Deficiencies, and Recommendations Growing Open Source Projects with a Stable Foundation How might structural factors in the social networks of open source communities pose barriers to underrepresented newcomers, especially women, becoming full community members?

Carnegie Mellon University Researchers: Laura Dabbish , Bogdan Vasilescu , James Herbsleb, Sophie Huilian Qiu , David Widder How do non-financial and career incentives impact the motivation and productivity of contributors to open source and proprietary digital infrastructure projects?

MIT , Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business , UCLA Anderson School of Business Researchers: Erina Ytsma & Jana Gallus In community-based open-source software projects, what is the visible and invisible work of maintaining trusted, functioning software infrastructure — especially as projects grow and transition from volunteer-based to various sustainability models?

UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science , UC San Diego , University of Connecticut Researchers: Stuart Geiger , Lilly Irani , Alexandra Paxton , Nelle Varoquaux , Chris Holdgraf , Dorothy Howard How can we measure, model, and reduce underproduction in open source software infrastructure projects?

Researchers: Kaylea Hascall Champion , Benjamin Mako Hill , Morten Warncke-Wang , Aaron Shaw How do mismatched conceptualizations between maintainers and users of a FOSS digital infrastructure project interact to affect the community health and thus sustainability of such projects?

Rochester Institute of Technology Researchers: Mel Chua & Stephen Jacobs How can legal devices and institutions be adapted and applied (both locally and transnationally) to overcome the under-maintenance of critical digital infrastructure?

Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies , Institute for International Law and Justice & NYU School of Law Researchers: Benedict Kingsbury , Thomas Streinz , Angelina Fisher Resource: Research one-pager Ford: Announcing $1.

3M in funding for digital infrastructure research Ford: A call for research on digital infrastructure Nadia Eghbal: Roads & Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind our Digital Infrastructure Maintainers: Why do people neglect maintenance? Ford: A Critical Time for Digital Infrastructure​ Note: We are not soliciting grant proposals at this time.