Discuss
Props to the maintainers and community for taking a hard look at what makes maintenance, development, and contributions sustainable.
I may be beyond my interest and capacity to keep using YunoHost, but I adore & appreciate contributors seeking to make it work. A low overhead on-ramp to maintainable self-hosting is a great tool for free individuals & communities.
Continuing the thread of existing calls for funding support, I want to suggest other funding sources.
Looks like NLnet is focusing on a Nix + Federation push over the summer, through August 1st.
https://chatgpt.com/c/6a55659e-a794-83e8-8f45-75add9fd6912
not yet stable infrastructure funding. One-off grants are being used to bridge a recurring-cost problem. YunoHost appears conscious of this: it is developing YunoHost.pro so paid customer work can let maintainers spend more time on the commons.
My summary of ChatGPT research:
Prospective funders
- NLnet, future NGI programs—concrete and independently useful. I would consider working on IPv6 / multi-address visibility & behavior and tightening, un-bundling, parallelizing diagnostics tools.
- Sovereign Tech Agency—note: German, proposals >€50k, non-user-facing focus so packaging lifecycle, system-administration framework, secure upgrade machinery or application-maintenance infrastructure Sovereign Tech Fund
- FUTO—funded ecosystem includes Tor, Matrix/Conduit, PeerTube, CryptPad, Garage and other autonomy-adjacent projects. FUTO Grants
- Open Technology Fund: Internet Freedom Fund—($50,000–$200,000) Funds. A credible proposal would need to serve journalists, human-rights groups or civil society operating under censorship or surveillance—maintainable deployment platform for OTF-supported applications. FOSS Sustainability Fund as well.
- Fondation Afnic
good for adoption, training and social deployment
support French nonprofit projects involving digital inclusion, autonomy and public-interest technology- SIDN Fund—closed for 2026, so in a future year & with a Dutch university, cooperative hoster or public-sector OSPO.
- Prototype Fund — component-level only—Prototype Fund offers up to €63,000 over four months, but the lead applicant or team must be based in Germany.
In budget, it also reports:
- €100k budget expected,
- €30k/yr recurring donations,
- €250k est uncompensated contributor work
Past grants—NLnet
- NLnet – NGI0 PET 2019-2022 – YunoHost & InternetCu.be
- April 2026 – OIDC support & Packaging v3 (I may ask for help with code review on an OIDC implementation I’m working on)
My limited tie-in
I’m involved in a community hackerspace in San Francisco, Noisebridge, and have discussed with others coordinating software development and grant administration to support it, but have so far demurred from pursuing this responsibility. I also run a weekly meetup, talking about infrastructure & self-hosting.