Aspiration (project disbursement)

The D//F (Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund) is a multi-funder initiative supported by Ford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Omidyar Network, Schmidt Futures and Open Collective,  sustaining a platform for researchers and practitioners to better understand how open digital infrastructure is built and deployed.
Together, we're creating a body of research and implementation insights that advance the goal to ensure a public commons of technology, sustainably developed and maintained, for the benefit of everyone.

The majority of all code powering the Internet, creating operating systems or enabling application software to run is the result of the recombination of permissive license-components like open source programming language libraries, open source compilers or implementations of open communication protocols.

Together, they form a foundation of free and public code that is designed to solve common challenges - firstly, in programming, but when applied, also to provide a multitude of core functions for society.
These components are created and provided by individuals, volunteer communities, in research institutions and SMEs or other corporate environments.

The benefits of open digital infrastructure are numerous: it can reduce the cost of setting up new businesses, support data-driven discovery across research disciplines, enable complex but everyday technologies such as smartphones to talk to each other, and allow everyone to have access to important technical innovations like encryption that would otherwise be too expensive to deploy.

Collective action problems in this specific field of software development have been well-established over the course of research of the last 20 years, while f.i. the industrial organization of digital infrastructure was less well-understood.

In general, there is a growing need for specialized and updated knowledge about the production, sustainability and security of FOSS - Infrastructure from different actors, as reliance upon those digital components also grows.

Nadia Eghbal released a seminal report titled “Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure” in 2016 that described how the development and maintenance of digital infrastructurefavor specific corporate or government interests over the broad needs of the public. This can lead to significant risks to the open internet.
In order to better understand the incentives and constraints that influence the maintenance of digital infrastructure, in 2018 and 2020 the Funders circle supported  a portfolio 26 research projects. 

The initiative encourages prototype implementations based on previous research
findings next to both qualitative and quantitative original research. Furthermore, DIIF also invites explorations in how ODI can be better supported though effective policy and regulatory tools.

The next open call is scheduled from April 2024.