The Sovereign Tech Agency is a subsidiary of the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, funded by the

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (, ; abbreviated BMWE, formerly BMWi) is a Cabinet of Germany, cabinet-level ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was previously known as the "Ministry of Economy". It was recreate ...

, aimed at providing financial support to

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

. The initial funds were allocated by the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

in May 2022.

Purpose of funding

According to the Federal budget of Germany plan, the program aims to promote and secure open-source foundational technologies.Bundeshaushaltsplan 2023, Einzelplan 09
Federal Budget Plan 2023, Single Plan 09, Chapter 09 01 – Title 685 03. It intends to make the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

ecosystem more resilient against external attacks, thereby enhancing

cybersecurity Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and networks from thr ...

and resilience across the German economy. This initiative fulfills a demand from the

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

. This is also an approach to the classic

free-rider problem In economics, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods and common pool resources do not pay for them or under-pay. Free riders may overuse common pool resources by not ...

faced by many open source projects. The funding is described as time-limited and targeted at specific challenges or security vulnerabilities.

Scope and organization

In 2022, the program had a budget of 13 million

Euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

s, which increased to approximately 22 million euros in 2023 and is expected to reach up to 16 million euros in 2024. The executive team consists of: * Adriana Groh (co-CEO), previously from the

Open Knowledge Foundation Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, England. It is incorporated in Engla ...

's Prototype Fund * Luisa von Beust (co-CEO), previously at several commercial organizations * Fiona Krakenbürger (CTO), previously worked at the Open Technology Fund

Supported projects

As of April 2025, the following projects received funding: * ActivityPub testsuite: 152,000 Euro *

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

Package Management (ALPM): 562,800 Euro *

coreutils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers ...

: 99,060 Euro *

cURL cURL (pronounced like "curl", ) is a free and open source computer program for transferring data to and from Internet servers. It can download a URL from a web server over HTTP, and supports a variety of other network protocols, URI scheme ...

: 195,500 Euro * domain: 993,600 Euro *

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

: 278,700 Euro * The Eclipse Foundation: 515,200 Euro *

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

: 157,580 Euro * Fortran ecosystem (e.g. Fortran Package Manager, fpm): 816.000 Euro 182,930 Euro *

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

: 686,400 Euro *

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

1 million

Euros The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

* GNU libmicrohttpd: 300,000 Euro * GopenPGP/ OpenPGP.js: 176,955 Euro *

GStreamer GStreamer is a Pipeline (computing), pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one f ...

: 203,000 Euro *

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

ecosystem (see also OpenJS below, for additional investment): 176,955 Euro *

JUnit JUnit is a test automation framework for the Java programming language. JUnit is often used for unit testing, and is one of the xUnit frameworks. JUnit is linked as a JAR at compile-time. The latest version of the framework, JUnit 5, resides ...

: 180,000 Euro * Log4j: 596,160 Euro * Mamba: 349,875 Euro * OpenBGPd: 200,000 Euro * OpenBLAS: 263,000 Euro * OpenJS (investment in

, see it also above): 874,940 Euro * OpenJS Foundation: 874,940 Euro *

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...

: 384,000 Euro * OpenMLS: 195,000 Euro * OpenSSH: 200,000 Euro * Pendulum: 449,850 Euro * PHP: 205,000 Euro * Prossimo, part of Internet Security Research Group: 1,436,729 Euros * Python Package Index: 1,056,672 Euro * Reproducible builds: 353,430 Euro * RubyGems & Bundler: 668,400 Euro *

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

: 688,800 Euro * Sequoia PGP: 900,000 Euro *

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manage ...

: 455,000 Euro * WireGuard: 209,000 Euro * Yocto Project: 759,000 Euro

References

External links

* {{Official website German economic policy Free software culture and documents 2022 establishments in Germany Open source

Purpose of funding

Scope and organization

Supported projects

See also

References

External links