For many years people with visual impairments and the legally blind have paid a steep price to access the Web on Windows-based computers. The market-leading software for screen readers costs well over $1,000. The high price is a considerable obstacle to keeping the Web open and accessible to all. The NVDA Project has developed an open source screen reader that is free to download and to use, and which works well with Firefox. NVDA aligns with one of the Mozilla Manifesto’s principles: “The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.”

That’s why, at Mozilla, we have elected to give the project $15,000 in the inaugural round of our Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) “Mission Partners” awards. The award will help NVDA stay compatible with the Firefox browser and support a long-term relationship between our two organizations. NVDA is just one of eight grantees in a wide range of key disciplines and technology areas that we have chosen to support as part of the MOSS Mission Partners track. This track financially supports open source software projects doing work that meaningfully advances Mozilla’s mission and priorities.

Giving Money for Open Source Accessibility, Privacy, Security and More

Aside from accessibility, security and privacy are common themes in this set of awards. We are supporting several secure communications tools, a web server which only works in secure mode, and a distributed, client-side, privacy-respecting search engine. The set is rounded out with awards to support the growing Rust ecosystem and promote open source options for the building of compelling games on the Web. (Yes, games. We consider games to be a key art-form in this modern era, which is why we are investing in the future of Web games with WebAssembly and Open Web Games.)

MOSS is a continuing program. The Mission Partners track has a budget for 2016 of around US$1.25 million. The first set of awards listed below total US$385,000 and we look forward to supporting more projects in the coming months. Applications remain open both for Mission Partners and for the Foundational Technology track (for projects creating software that Mozilla already uses or deploys) on an ongoing basis.

We are greatly helped in evaluating applications and making awards by the MOSS Committee. Many thanks again to them.

And The Winners Are….

The first eight awardees are:

Tor: $152,500. Tor is a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked. This award will be used to significantly enhance the Tor network’s metrics infrastructure so that the performance and stability of the network can be monitored and improvements made as appropriate.

Tails: $77,000. Tails is a secure-by-default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and anonymity. This award will be used to implement reproducible builds, making it possible for third parties to independently verify that a Tails ISO image was built from the corresponding Tails source code.

Caddy: $50,000. Caddy is an HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt. This award will be used to add a REST API, web UI, and new documentation, all of which make it easier to deploy more services with TLS.

Mio: $30,000. Mio is an asynchronous I/O library written in Rust. This award will be used to make ergonomic improvements to the API and thereby make it easier to build high performance applications with Mio in Rust.

DNSSEC/DANE Chain Stapling: $25,000. This project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set, to reduce the latency associated with DANE and DNSSEC validation. This award will be used to complete the standard in the IETF and build both a client-side and a server-side implementation.

Godot Engine: $20,000. Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5. This award will be used to add support for Web Sockets, WebAssembly and WebGL 2.0.

PeARS: $15,500. PeARS (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit in a privacy-respecting way. This award will permit face-to-face collaboration among the remote team and bring the software to beta status.

NVDA: $15,000. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows. This award will be used to make sure NVDA and Firefox continue to work well together as Firefox moves to a multi-process architecture.

This is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more award announcements as we allocate funds. Open Source is a movement that is only growing, both in numbers and in importance. Operating in the open makes for better security, better accessibility, better policy, better code and, ultimately, a better world. So if you know any projects whose work furthers the Mozilla Mission, send them our way and encourage them to apply.