Software Infrastructure
Software infrastructure is one of the two funding priorities of the Prototype Fund.
Software is more than concrete applications such as programs or apps - these only form the part visible to users, so to speak. Below these lies the software infrastructure, which consists, for example, of implementations of protocols and which is required by developers as a tool to write programs for users and make these usable. Software infrastructure projects are therefore not usually aimed at end users, but primarily at developers.
The same infrastructure elements are often used for a wide variety of applications. They are versatile modules that can be exchanged, modified and reused via repositories. At best, this saves developers a lot of work. Examples of such elements of software infrastructure are code libraries or network protocols. With these, software infrastructure makes up the foundation for all those applications from messengers to map services that users encounter on a daily basis.
Numerous applications depend on individual infrastructure components and the often voluntary communities of developers who keep them up to date and maintain them. This harbors a potential for dependency that becomes problematic if individual modules cannot be adequately maintained due to a lack of funding, for example, resulting in security vulnerabilities.
Therefore, it is important to the Prototype Fund that funding projects contribute something back to the ecosystem in the spirit of open source by helping to maintain and further develop the infrastructure used.
As these projects are the reason that digital innovation can be developed cost-effectively in the first place, it is crucial that they also receive funding in the long term in order to maintain them and develop them further.
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