[pmwiki-users] European Union funding for open source software and research
Andrius Kulikauskas
math4wisdom at gmail.com
Fri Jan 10 13:27:51 PST 2025
Dear Petko,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply!
I share with you and your forum the letter I wrote below to my Math4Wisdom
group. Here it is in our archives:
https://www.freelists.org/archive/math4wisdom/01-2025
You can certainly apply directly for support for your work. I imagine that
you could calculate the hours the work will take you, and the amount of
money you will need to earn, and then if it is larger than 50,000 euros,
you could break it up into pieces. The next deadline for applications is
February 1, 2025, and then you can apply again every 2 months, so long as
you have completed any work they have funded.
If you like, our group would be very interested to work with you to submit
a proposal and execute a research project. I have sketched out below a
three-month project that we would like to do with you. If you are
interested, then we would consider more specifically how we could make
better use of PmWiki and perhaps any extensions. Perhaps others in your
forum may also be interested. We have a very public culture but then, as
needed, we can communicate privately. I need to look carefully at the
application form:
https://nlnet.nl/propose/
Here are recent winners, including for offline use of MediaWiki
https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250101-announcing-grantees-June-call.html
I look forward to your thoughts. We are grateful for PmWiki!
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
https://www.e-c-o.net
Vilnius, Lithuania
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Marcus, Florian, Horace, Andrew, Judith, Manas,
I am very glad to share my thoughts after our meeting yesterday for our
Community Economics Study Group. Marcus leads this group and I am actively
mentoring him so that we cultivate the investigatory culture which I seek
with all who want.
We are blessed with investigators!
Hans-Florian Hoyer: What are the basics which are independent? What are the
things that depend on the basics? How are those dependent things
interdependent amongst each other?
https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/Basics
Horace Otieno: What is the root cause of our poverty? How can we empower
our Hope Rootz members impactfully?
https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/Poverty
https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/HopeRootz
Andrew Pashea: How can we quantify language? How can we make an Active
Inference agent which maintains in itself a knowledge graph and can read
natural language?
https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/QuantifyLanguage
Janet Feldman wrote us that she intends to investigate leadership. We look
forward to your question, as ever you phrase it! Marcus and I have also
heard from Stephanie Rearick of the HUMANs Solidarity Summit. She looks
forward to participating and Marcus and I hope to speak with her in the
coming week.
Our Econet website https://www.e-c-o.net runs on PmWiki open source
software, maintained by Petko Yotov of France / Bulgaria and founded by
Patrick Michaud of the US. I wrote the PmWiki users forum to alert them to
the possibility of applying for EU small grants, which Marcus discovered.
http://www.pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2025-January/065388.html
Petko wrote a nice reply about the improvements that he would like funded.
http://www.pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2025-January/065389.html
Petko can apply directly for up to 50,000 euros. If he may be interested,
then I will suggest that we submit a proposal that would combine his work
on improving the functionality with our team's research on supporting our
investigatory culture. Briefly, here is a sketch of my proposal.
"PmWiki as a Middle Ground for an Investigatory Culture"
Our goal is to demonstrate that a classic wiki, PmWiki, can be used and
adapted to bridge investigators ranging from poorest and richest access to
the Internet. Just as the Internet is technologically designed to be
decentralized, with each point of equal value, so we envisage an
investigatory culture based on universality, where each participant is a
spiritual window of unique significance, with its own deepest value in
life, its own relationship with truth, and its own investigatory
questions. Our goal is not to provide everybody with equal access
technologically, but rather to cultivate and support forms of interaction
where each participant, as relevant, can serve as the center of our
universe, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.
Specifically, we are asking for:
25,000 EUR for Petko Yotov (France / Bulgaria) to improve the PmWiki
software
10,000 EUR for Marcus Petz (Finland) to administer the project and to
organize, research, document and present how PmWiki and related software
can facilitate our work as investigators
4,000 EUR for HopeRootz CBO (Kenya) to organize participating researchers
in rural Kenya
1,000 EUR for Janet Feldman (rural US) to participate as a researcher with
limited access to the Internet
2,500 EUR for Active Inference Institute (California) to fund Andrew Pashea
(Chicago) to facilitate participation by researchers with abundant
computational power, including AI tools and knowledge engineering tools,
such as Coda
2,500 EUR for Andrius Kulikauskas (Lithuania) to make explicit the
investigatory culture the team will facilitate
Imagine a global fellowship of researchers, each of whom commits to
devoting time to personally contemplate the meaning of life; formulates
their deepest value in life, which includes all of their other values;
works with a mentor to make explicit their personal relationship with
truth; declares an investigatory question that they don't know the answer
to, but wish to answer; and frequently carves out their best hour of the
day to think with their best energies on how to make progress on their
question. Participants in such a culture can appreciate each other,
recognize each other, empathize with each other, and collaborate with each
other as the same investigatory spirit in a variety of contexts.
Concretely, we will extend a human chain of such researchers, including:
* Members of the Maasai, especially women, who may have no Internet access,
who define themselves by investigating the questions they personally care
about, such as how to advocate effectively against female genital
mutilation and for school education.
* Judith Ongango of HopeRootz, who works with Maasai people, advocating for
education, interacting in local languages. She has internet access through
her mobile phone.
* Horace Otieno, a leader of HopeRootz in Kenya, who has a business degree
in supply chain management, and is investigating, What is the root cause of
our poverty? How can we empower our Hope Rootz members impactfully? He
primarily accesses the internet through his mobile phone.
* Marcus Petz, in Finland, has a PhD in Social and Public Policy, and wrote
his thesis on community currency for rural renaissance. He and Horace have
known each other for years and shared an interest in community economics.
Marcus investigates, Is community economics a school in itself? What is
syntropic finance, can it exist and does it work?
* Janet Feldman, in rural North Carolina, USA, with limited internet
access, is an expert in helping small African NGOs get funds to support
their work in health, media and art. Her deepest value is holistic helping
and she is investigating leadership.
* Jere Northrop, in upstate New York, USA, is an ecotechnology pioneer, the
co-founder of TimberFish Technologies, which could be applied locally in
Africa for fish and fuel. He works on the Relational Symmetry Paradigm, a
conceptual language of wisdom, and investigates, Why is the world so
apparently thoughtless? How can one individual do anything about it?
* Andrius Kulikauskas, in rural Lithuania, has a PhD in Mathematics, leads
the investigatory culture of Econet, and documents a conceptual language of
wisdom, as with Theory Translator https://www.theorytranslator.com He
investigates, What is a science of love and how does it ground a culture
based on the investigatory mind, where we live by not knowing, thus by
absolute truth?
* Andrew Pashea, in Chicago, of the Active Inference Institute, is a data
analyst with a Masters degree in Social Sciences. He is coding software
agents to implement biofirms. He investigates, How can we quantify
language? How can we make an Active Inference agent which maintains in
itself a knowledge graph and can read natural language?
* Visionary entrepreneurs, academic luminaries, artificial intelligence
pioneers and multimillionaire philanthropists participate in the Active
Inference Institute's activities at the forefront of neuroscience,
artificial intelligence, robotics and much more.
Econet is the hub of an investigatory culture based on Andrius
Kulikauskas's life work. The Econet website https://www.e-c-o.net is based
on PmWiki, which along with zoom, email, videos and other channels allows
researchers to interact in ways that focus on cognizant, deliberate,
willful investigation of the questions that they personally care about,
seeking answers that are grounded in universal, absolute truth.
We are seeking to enhance PmWiki so that the Econet culture can include
participants at both extremes - those who have limited, sporadic access to
internet and computers, and may speak only local languages, and those who
have a wealth of bandwidth, computing power, access to AI, and other
privileges. We are seeking to focus on the social software needed to share
the deepest insights in life.
What do you think? What would you like? I invite our imagination!
Andrius
Andrius Kulilkauskas
math4wisdom at gmail.com
https://www.e-c-o.net
https://www.math4wisdom.com
Vilnius, Lithuania
On Wed, Jan 8, 2025 at 9:20 PM Petko Yotov <5ko at 5ko.fr> wrote:
> Hi Andrius,
>
> Thank you for sharing this information and the links. I find this very
> interesting and was hoping to secure funding for core PmWiki development
> and additional functionality. Last August, I discussed this with someone at
> a university, but unfortunately, it didn’t lead to any results. For
> context, I’m an EU citizen currently living in France and Bulgaria.
>
> I’m deeply committed to Free/Libre software and the principles of
> knowledge and culture sharing. For the past 16 years, I have maintained the
> PmWiki core, its documentation in English, and over 140 addons by me or by
> other authors. In addition, I’ve supported the community on mailing lists,
> talk pages, and off-list for even longer.
>
> Despite this extensive work, I’ve only received dedicated funding once—for
> five weeks in 2017. During that time, I was able to update dozens of
> popular addons to work with newer PHP versions. I typically update the core
> as soon as I learn of breaking changes in PHP, and I stay ahead by using
> the latest PHP versions or their release candidates.
>
> In 2017, I created the page Pay for PmWiki
> <https://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PayForPmWiki>, and while I am deeply
> grateful that some generous individuals donated or commissioned specific
> work, some people more than once, it has only covered 1–2 days of full-time
> development annually in recent years. Everything else I do in my free
> time—nights and weekends—after my regular day job.
>
> My professional work involves maintaining and supporting PmWiki-based
> websites, which has contributed significantly to core updates,
> enhancements, hooks, and addons. I’ve also developed several custom
> functions that I hope to publish as extensions when time permits. These
> include:
>
> - *Database integration*: MySQL/MariaDB.
> - *Advanced user management*: Email-based registration, verification,
> self-recovery, two-factor authentication, access control delegation.
> - *Rich email notifications*: Customizable templates with rich text
> (from wiki markup), embedded images, and attachments.
> - *Enhanced analytics*: GDPR-compliant, without external tracking,
> with detailed stats by groups and wikis, charts, and export options.
> - *Hierarchical page organization*: Tree-like structures for grouping
> and moving pages and subpages within a WikiGroup.
> - *Visual editor*: User-friendly WYSIWYG features, galleries, videos,
> maps, and LaTeX formula editing with live preview.
> - *Integrated tools*: JavaScript calculators, PDF export as posters
> and QR codes, permalinks, and more.
> - *Specialized extensions*: Semantic search, AI-powered chatbot,
> search clouds, 360-degree virtual tours, RSS feeds, and document tables
> with categories, expiry dates, and maintainers.
> - *Scalable infrastructure*: Support for large file uploads, admin
> panels.
>
> Each of these features requires substantial time to refactor to detach
> from their dependencies, convert to the new PmWiki extension format, test,
> publish, and document. And then they need to be supported as people use
> them. On top of this, ongoing core maintenance is essential to ensure
> compatibility with newer PHP versions, evolving security threats, and best
> security practices.
>
> If there is a viable way to fund this work and release it as free and
> open-source software, it would benefit the entire community. I’ll review
> the documentation on how to apply for funding, and if you have any advice
> or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me off-list.
>
> Best wishes,
> Petko
> --
> If you upgrade : https://www.pmwiki.org/Upgrades
>
>
> On 07/01/2025 21:27, Andrius Kulikauskas wrote:
>
> Dear Petko, Patrick and all,
>
> I want to alert you to the NGI Zero Commons Fund set up by the European
> Union
> https://nlnet.nl/commonsfund/guideforapplicants/
> They are funding small projects ranging from 5,000 euros to 50,000 euros.
> The next deadline is February 1, 2025 and then every two months. The
> application process is relatively simple. It is designed for individuals
> to be able to apply, but institutions and businesses are also welcome.
> This is to fund scientific research, design and development of free and
> open source software and open hardware, and lots of related activities
> https://nlnet.nl/commonsfund/eligibility/
>
> "The key objective is to deliver potential break-through contributions to
> the open internet. All scientific outcomes must be published as open
> access, and any software and hardware must be published under a recognised
> open source license in its entirety."
>
> "Given equal proposals, inhabitants of the EU and countries associated to
> Horizon Europe are given priority. However if the project is of exceptional
> quality and the proposer holds unique technical expertise proposals from
> outside of those geographic areas can be eligible as well — under the
> condition that there is a clear European dimension."
>
> "A human centric Next Generation Internet shall reflect the openness,
> diversity and the inclusion that are at the core of European values. The
> overall mission of the Next Generation Internet initiative is to re-imagine
> and re-engineer the internet for the third millennium and beyond to shape a
> value-centric, human and inclusive society for all. How we share and
> retrieve information is an essential part of that equation."
>
> Patrick, this may all relate to your core values
> https://pmichaud.com/wiki/Pm/PmCoreValues
> which relate to my own interests.
>
> I myself, as a thinker and organizer, have used PmWiki for at least 12
> years.
>
> I am leading a small investigatory community for absolute truth,
> developing a language of wisdom, Wondrous Wisdom, and a culture of
> investigation. I am doing that at several wikis that run PmWiki.
>
> https://www.e-c-o.net is where we are developing the Econet culture. I
> have customized the wiki to have a simple Chat box
> https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/Chat
> which updates the page and then reads its sixth line to insert it in the
> header of every page. That's a primitive way for us to socialize as we
> work alongside each other. I also have a page
> https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/PersonalVisions
> that draws values from metadata stored on pages for individuals.
>
> I may at some point applly for funding to research how to customize PmWiki
> to support a culture of thinkers and activists, or more broadly, an
> independent social network. This could include organizing and funding
> coders to help with small projects such as creating or adapting cookbook
> files or skins as relevant. I envisage a federated network of platforms
> that share data about our values, our relationships with truth, our
> investigatory questions, our commitments to the culture, and so on. My
> colleague Daniel Friedman uses Coda. So we would be interested to combine
> records from Coda and from PmWiki, for example, at least for reading.
>
> I use PmWiki for Theory Translator https://www.theorytranslator.com where
> we collect examples of conceptual structures, such as the three minds. The
> top of the page is a PHP/MySQL page that I coded and the bottom of the page
> is a PmWiki for the expositions.
>
> I use PmWiki for my websites https://www.math4wisdom.com and
> https://www.ms.lt (in Lithuanian).
>
> I live in Lithuania and my colleague Marcus Petz lives in Finland. Both
> countries are in the European Union. Daniel is the President of the Active
> Inference Institute https://www.activeinference.institute and that opens
> up all kinds of possibilities. They are based in California and are a
> 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the US. Among us, Marcus is the one
> who needs a job or funding. He recently got his PhD in Social and Public
> Policy. His thesis was on community currency in rural development. He
> leads our Community Economics study group. So mutual aid or simply helping
> each other is an element of our social network. A related element is
> registering the time that we are committing to our culture.
> https://www.e-c-o.net/wiki/Econet/Commitments
> We have participants in Kenya and in rural America so that also adds the
> meaningful challenge of including in our culture those who may have limited
> online access or perhaps none at all.
>
> I have funding for myself for all of the coming year so I am avoiding
> further obligations. But we are keeping in mind this funding opportunity
> and certainly taking up the knowledge engineering challenges.
>
> If anybody is interested in customizing PmWiki to support our culture, or
> simply participating in our culture, please do let me know about your
> interests!
>
> Andrius
>
> Andrius Kulikauskas
> math4wisdom at gmail.com
> https://www.math4wisdom.com
> Vilnius, Lithuania
>
> _______________________________________________
> pmwiki-users mailing list
> pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
>
>
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