The MacArthur Foundation has started a new competition for a large grant called 100 & Change. This grant gives the winner $100,000,000 USD with the aim of solving a real world problem.
The OSTIF has officially registered for the contest, and we believe we have are in a position to change the world through secure, usable, free software for all.
We believe that we qualify for all of the requirements of this grant, as the problems of digital surveillance and digital censorship are serious global issues that can be solved through powerful open-source software. We are a registered IRS 501c3 charity. We have open books. Our position that the internet needs to be free and open is widely supported by the citizens of all nations. Experts in our field widely agree that our solution will make enormous strides in solving the problem. We can scale our project infinitely with greater funding.
Our proposal is to become an authority on maintaining and securing open-source security software through our already established methods. We will use the grant to invest in a diversified portfolio, which will allow us to operate the organization indefinitely off of the dividends of the investment. This would give the OSTIF a multi-million dollar operating budget to select promising open-source projects and improve them, making them widely available, easy to use, and most importantly, safe.
We believe that no government can be trusted with the task of securing the data of the world, as the lure of sabotaging such standards has proven too seductive to multiple nations around the world. We need a non-partisan advocate, that is well resourced and relentless at pursuing the goals of defensive computing, and defeating censorship and surveillance at all possible avenues.
We will be posting our actual application in the near future as a Google Doc. Stay tuned!