$1M/yr in Grant Funding for FOSS Projects + New funding.json Standard

[BolajiAyodeji]

The FLOSS/fund has announced a dedicated fund aimed at providing financial assistance to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS/FLOSS) projects globally, with an annual commitment of $1 million. They're accepting funding requests from projects through their new experiment, a publicly accessible funding.json file hosted on their repositories or websites. This file is an open manifest (JSON schema) that acts as a signaling and discovery mechanism for projects seeking funding. It is a self-contained manifest file you can host on your websites or repositories to describe financial requirements in a structured, machine-readable manner. It acts like a robots.txt file, allowing it to be publicly crawled and indexed, to make projects in need of financial assistance discoverable.

Once you're done setting up the funding.json file, you can apply for the fund through this link. If you're a DPG product owner, what do you think about this new standard for making funding needs public for potential funders and machine readable? Do you think this could be useful for your projects?

Tip

You can use this tool to automatically generate the JSON schema by filling out a regular form. To learn more about the thinking behind this new experiment, you can read this blogpost. There's also a documentation to learn more about the funding.json file.

Sample funding.json Schema

{
    "version": "v1.0.0",

    // Required. The entity associated with the project, soliciting funds.
    // This can be an individual, organisation, community etc.
    "entity": {
        "type": "",                     // Required. [individual, group, organisation, other]. Use the closest approximation.
        "role": "",                     // Required. [owner, steward, maintainer, contributor, other]. Use the closest approximation.
        "name": "",                     // Required. Name of the entity. Max len 250.
        "email": "",                    // Required. Max len 250.
        "phone": "",                    // Optional. Generally suitable for organisations. Max len 32.
        "description": "",              // Required. Information about the entity. Max len 2000.
        "webpageUrl": {
            "url": "",                  // Required. Webpage with information about the entity. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
            "wellKnown": ""             // Optional. Required if the above url and the URL of the funding.json manifest do not have the same hostname. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
        }
    },

    // Optional. One or more projects for which the funding is solicited.
    "projects": [{
        "guid": "",                     // Required. A short unique ID for the project. Lowercase-alphanumeric-dashes only. eg: my-cool-project. Max len 32.
        "name": "",                     // Required. Name of the project. Max len 250.
        "description": "",              // Required. Description of the project. Max len 2000.
        "webpageUrl": {
            "url": "",                  // Required. Webpage with information about the project. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
            "wellKnown": ""             // Optional. Required if the above url and the URL of the funding.json manifest do not have the same hostname. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
        },
        "repositoryUrl": {
            "url": "",                  // Required. URL of the repository where the project's source code and other assets are available. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
            "wellKnown": ""             // Optional. Required if the above url and the URL of the funding.json manifest do not have the same hostname. Starts with https:// or http://. Max len 250.
        },
        "licenses": [],                 // Required. The project's licenses (up to 5). For standard licenses, use the license ID from the SDPX index prefixed by "spdx:". eg: "spdx:GPL-3.0", "spdx:CC-BY-SA-4.0"
        "tags": []                      // Required. Up to 10 general tags describing the project. Lowercase-alphanumeric-dashes (max 32 chars). eg: ["programming", "developer-tools"]. For reference, see tags.txt
    }],

    // Required.
    "funding": {
        // Required. This describes one or more channels via which the entity can receive funds.
        "channels": [{
            "guid": "",                 // Required. A short unique ID for the channel. Lowercase-alphanumeric-dashes only. eg: mybank, my-paypal. Max len 32.
            "type": "",                 // Required. [bank, payment-provider, cheque, cash, other].
            "address": "",              // Optional. A short unstructured textual representation of the payment address for the channel. eg: "Account: 12345 (branch: ABCX)", "[email protected]", "https://payment-url.com", or a physical address for cheques. Max len 250.
            "description": ""           // Optional. Any additional description or instructions for the payment channel. Max len 500.
        }],

        // Required. One or more funding and payment plans.
        "plans": [{
            "guid": "",                 // Required. A short unique ID for the plan. Lowercase-alphanumeric-dashes only. eg: mybank, paypal. Max len 32.
            "status": "",               // Required. [active, inactive]. Indicates whether this plan is currently active or inactive.
            "name": "",                 // Required. Name of the funding plan. eg: "Starter support plan", "Infra hosting", "Monthly funding plan".
            "description": "",          // Optional. Any additional description or instructions for the funding plan.
            "amount": 0,                // Required. The solicited amount for this plan. 0 is a wildcard that indicates "any amount".
            "currency": "",             // Required. Three letter ISO 4217 currency code. eg: USD
            "frequency": "",            // Required. [one-time, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, yearly, other]
            "channels": []              // Required. One or more channel IDs defined in channels[] via which this plan can accept payments.
        }],

        // Optional. A simple summary of funding history. Only include if at least one, either income or expenses, have to be communicated.
        "history": [{
            "year": 2024,               // Required. Year (fiscal, preferably).
            "income": 0,                // Optional.
            "expenses": 0,              // Optional.
            "taxes": 0,                 // Optional.
            "currency": "",             // Required. Three letter ISO 4217 currency code. eg: USD
            "description": ""           // Optional. Any additional description. Max length 500.
        }]
    }
}

Important

Ensure to use the tags dpg and digital-public-goods in the tags[] field of the schema to allow potential filtering on places where this funding data will be displayed like this directory (e.g., searching for digital public goods to fund).

[gracepotma]

One thing to add: There is also a "Validate" tool that is very helpful to QA your funding.json file before submitting. This really helped us in our process of submitting @openmrs 's funding.json file.

FLOSS/Fund's Validation Tool: https://dir.floss.fund/validate

Thank you so much DPG Alliance for elevating this funding.json file convention!

[BolajiAyodeji]

Thanks for sharing this, @gracepotma!

[eduffus]

Hmmmm, struggling with submitting this file @BolajiAyodeji @gracepotma
Our funding.json is here
It validates using the tool
I get this error: "https://github.com/opencrvs/.github/blob/main/funding.json?raw=true returned 404"
Can you please help?

[andrablaj]

@eduffus I am subscribed to this topic, just saw your question and figured to jump in. The .github repository seems indeed private, and I believe that's the reason you get that 404 error. This tutorial can help change the visibility of the project from private to public. I hope it helps!