The Americans came to the defense Fund open technologies Open Technology FundОльга Blinkova | 22.06.2020
Since 2012, the Foundation Open Technology Fund received funding from the US government through the structure of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). In particular, grants were provided to projects
to support democracy, freedom of speech around the world.
So, for several years, funded tools to bypass the great Chinese firewall (the project “Golden shield”, the Golden Shield Project), campaign against censorship in Iran and Syria, as well as
projects to create safe communications for the opposition in the countries where thrive repression.
And here the Foundation is under threat.
Almost 400 organizations have signed an open letter asking Congress to protect funding for the Foundation’s Open Technology Fund in terms of recent macroeconomic and political developments.
So, the letter was signed by Wikimedia Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Tor project, Red Hat, Gnome, Digital Ocean, TunnelBear and the Open Source Initiative, AccessNow and Human Rights Watch.
In addition, a letter signed by 2300 individuals.
Foundation open technology Open Technology Fund is a non-profit and working as a liaison between the U.S. government and projects based on open source code (open source
projects).
What fear signers?
Recently, the administration trump replaced the head USAGM and fired a few key managers. Have lost their jobs, the leaders of Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty and the Open Technology Fund. It also became known that the new leadership USAGM plans to redirect funding of the Foundation Open Technology Fund on several other projects, leaving many
active projects without support.
In an open letter to Congress signers require new leadership of the Fund to act in accordance with utverzhdena informed budget, supporting existing projects, they also insist that
the financial flows allocated in a transparent manner. In addition, they require regular auditing.
Open source
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