WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:23.680 Thank you so much. Hi everyone. It's so nice to meet you all and I don't want to thank the 00:23.680 --> 00:27.280 Devroom facilitators to bring everyone together. I hear that last year and there's a 00:27.280 --> 00:32.240 much smaller room. So we're going up in the world. We've got a bigger room this year. So I'm here 00:32.240 --> 00:39.600 to talk to you a bit about the nominette DNS fund. It's very much got my learning hat on coming 00:39.600 --> 00:44.720 to you with humility because I really want to hear from you about what you think and how we can 00:44.720 --> 00:50.800 improve because we're very, very early days. So forgive our bumps and mistakes but that's what 00:50.800 --> 00:55.360 we're here for, right? It's to learn and improve and say what we haven't got right. So I work for 00:55.360 --> 01:02.720 nominette. We run the dot UK registry and a number of other TLD's top level domains. And as 01:02.720 --> 01:07.760 part of that we are a public benefit company. So it's part of our articles of association that we 01:07.760 --> 01:14.080 can't make profit in a traditional way. And that means that we give a lot of our excess from selling 01:14.080 --> 01:19.440 domains to public benefit causes. Now traditionally my rollers looked at things like digital 01:19.440 --> 01:25.120 skills online safety but we've been really trying to listen to our community and this year for 01:25.120 --> 01:31.920 the up to last year 2025 for the first time we were really delighted to enter a new space and start 01:31.920 --> 01:38.720 funding open source DNS projects. So as I say it's relatively new for us but it's it's quite 01:38.720 --> 01:43.840 interesting to then think about you know where that's how that's come about and what our 01:43.840 --> 01:48.800 personal incentives are as well. So where did we start with all of this? Well it tracks back to 01:48.800 --> 01:55.840 even before I had my child who turned three last week and we did some research in 2022 with this 01:55.840 --> 02:02.800 amazing organization called Demas. They're an awesome think tank in the UK and they set out to help us 02:02.800 --> 02:07.520 craft the question. What is it that we're trying to influence? What is it that we're trying to do? 02:08.480 --> 02:15.280 And it's really what should nominate focus our investment on to support the technology ecosystem 02:15.280 --> 02:20.080 that underpins internet infrastructure and once we've got a hands-alone over that question and we've 02:20.080 --> 02:30.080 got a bit of focus what funding model should we use. So we set out and ask this question of you can 02:30.080 --> 02:37.440 tell a little bit of who ended up having a say in this. Our staff and our members and overwhelming 02:37.600 --> 02:43.040 those people were saying look don't try and do lots of the shiny things don't do lots of new 02:43.040 --> 02:48.000 and innovative things look at what's existing look at the maintenance of what is out there. 02:48.880 --> 02:53.360 The other thing that they said and this this graph isn't stacked because it you could 02:53.360 --> 02:59.280 answer multiple to this question. You can really see overwhelming our members in particular so 02:59.280 --> 03:04.880 those are people that work with us that by domains and and resell domains in their own work. 03:05.840 --> 03:09.920 They said work with open source communities and you can see a couple of quotes up there 03:09.920 --> 03:15.280 that investing profits in open source with a focus on human rights seriously nothing else. 03:16.160 --> 03:22.400 We also did a massive landscape map so we thought to really understand other funders, 03:22.400 --> 03:28.320 government actors who in the DNS was was operating and what sort of projects we might expect 03:28.320 --> 03:33.360 to go out there identifying different actors and players and where we might have a role and where 03:33.360 --> 03:40.960 we might have a niche and I just absolutely love this quote which comes from an expert advisor 03:41.600 --> 03:48.320 on how when we look at who is maintaining and who's paid to maintain open source. Often when 03:48.320 --> 03:53.120 that's at the behest of profit the motivations are going to steer them towards those profit driven 03:53.120 --> 04:00.080 motivations. So you know I think it's really powerful to think about those motivations and think 04:00.400 --> 04:05.040 where there might be pots of funding or actors that could be looking at it with a different lens. 04:06.400 --> 04:12.240 And where did that research kind of lead us? What were the main findings? And I'd love to hear 04:12.800 --> 04:18.160 actually I'm going to ask you whether you think these are right or whether you think there's more to it 04:18.160 --> 04:23.680 but this is from all of this mapping lots of interviews with staff members and those in the open 04:23.680 --> 04:31.440 source community about the pre-existing funding in open source. So the first one being that the majority 04:31.440 --> 04:37.680 of funding stems from corporate, not foundations and that can bias development. Second being single 04:37.680 --> 04:43.680 source funding so you get one funder wants to just take credit for one project as opposed to 04:43.680 --> 04:48.080 pooling funds and something that Nick Gates was talking about earlier with joining up lots of funds 04:48.800 --> 04:55.040 and thirdly funding not being available for individuals only projects. That fact sound familiar 04:55.920 --> 05:03.440 people nodding yeah oh yeah well do do shout out and I can repeat what you say if you think of anything 05:03.440 --> 05:14.000 else but this is what it found. And I think it's interesting because we identified these problems 05:14.000 --> 05:18.880 but I'm not going to say that automatically we were able to resolve them right because we weren't. 05:18.880 --> 05:29.520 We've made mistakes, we've got problems and we've got challenges to each in these. So the second 05:29.520 --> 05:35.920 project problem here in particular about having one funder one project we have tried to reach 05:35.920 --> 05:41.600 out to other funders and combine and work but it's not always easy and sometimes when you do work 05:41.600 --> 05:46.000 for an organization like mine they do want to have their name associated with it so that they 05:46.000 --> 05:50.880 can sort of celebrate and say what they're doing. This third problem in particular has been a real 05:50.880 --> 05:56.320 challenge for us and I'm just going to share a little anecdote about taking this finding back 05:56.320 --> 06:02.160 into our organization. So as you can imagine we had to set up lots of conversations with our lawyers, 06:02.160 --> 06:06.720 with our financial controllers to think about what it looks like to actually fund not just 06:06.720 --> 06:12.080 well established large organizations but some of those smaller individuals that are just the 06:12.080 --> 06:17.840 unsung heroes of keeping the internet as we know it alive and it was really hard because actually 06:17.840 --> 06:23.920 you know for financial tax audit reasons they were saying to me well no actually you've got to be 06:23.920 --> 06:27.360 a registered entity you've got to have a name you've got to have a dress which can't just fund 06:27.360 --> 06:33.440 Joe blog of the streets but I went through this process and actually there are there are two 06:34.320 --> 06:39.680 in our portfolio that are individual maintainers and don't have an organization. We've been supporting 06:39.680 --> 06:46.080 them to register and actually my financial controller said to me look Amy look at your portfolio 06:46.080 --> 06:49.680 of the people you're funding actually you've got to make sure you get that balanced right you've 06:49.680 --> 06:55.120 got to make sure that this is about funding those maintainers and those individuals so it will 06:55.120 --> 06:59.760 really was a case of going back to the principles of what we were doing who was setting out to fund 06:59.840 --> 07:05.120 and relying on this research to make sure that we were responding to that need so where did we end 07:05.120 --> 07:11.520 up what did we do last year now I feel a little bit embarrassed honestly to share the amount of money here 07:11.520 --> 07:19.760 it's a 370k in pounds which is about 430 euro thousand euros so it really isn't about a lot 07:19.760 --> 07:24.400 of money that we're talking about here but we're seeing this as somewhat of a pilot we want to see 07:24.400 --> 07:30.880 how it lands how it lands amongst you the community with our members with our stakeholders what the 07:30.880 --> 07:35.760 perceptions are of a fund like this and certainly we're hoping to at least double this in the next 07:35.760 --> 07:40.880 year one of the big things coming out of the research was longevity of funds so I would love to 07:40.880 --> 07:45.840 imagine being able to award three year funding which we've been able to do with previous 07:45.840 --> 07:50.720 grants in our country on nine harms portfolio but at the moment we've just been giving these one 07:50.720 --> 07:57.360 off fundings but that if that's you know strong feedback that that is about relying on that 07:57.360 --> 08:01.840 that fund moving forward then I think that that is something important for us to make the case 08:01.840 --> 08:07.920 for our board to get three years worth of sign off not just one and really we landed on something 08:07.920 --> 08:13.040 that felt right in terms of the fund itself and what we were setting out to achieve so it's all 08:13.040 --> 08:19.600 about funding and improving the security sustainability and resilience of DNS open source projects 08:20.480 --> 08:26.480 and that's been really critical because when we looked at all the applications it was something 08:26.480 --> 08:32.560 we did come back to had to be open source and had to be in the development of DNS not just using 08:32.560 --> 08:38.080 DNS and that's helped us stay really true and transparent to what we set out on our objectives 08:38.800 --> 08:44.880 and so how did we do this well firstly yes of course we have some expertise but we have our own biases 08:44.880 --> 08:50.320 as a nominate we have our own preferences of different platforms we have our own technical experts 08:50.320 --> 08:57.520 so while the panel that we formed was designed to make sure we were really listening to the experts 08:57.520 --> 09:04.480 that had a better horizon scan and a map of the community we we made sure that we were bringing 09:04.480 --> 09:10.640 in our knowledge but also really listening externally so you can recognize two of these amazing 09:11.600 --> 09:15.280 panelists who are set on the front row over here so we've got Caleb and Mirko 09:16.160 --> 09:21.280 who really were fantastic in just bringing your knowledge and steering us in the right way not just 09:21.280 --> 09:28.800 not just whom we selected but also in how we set up the fund to try to realise what it means to be 09:28.800 --> 09:35.920 transparent and how we could really understand what's needed I think something I'm very conscious of 09:36.000 --> 09:42.640 is this uncomfortable realisation of power who has power who makes decisions how those decisions get 09:42.640 --> 09:48.400 made so one mitigating step you can do I think is to build an advisory panel like this and we 09:48.400 --> 09:52.960 took a lot of learning from the soft and tech agency from that perspective as well and we also 09:52.960 --> 09:59.920 tried to be really principles focused so be transparent in what we were looking for what questions 09:59.920 --> 10:05.680 we'd be asking how we would be making those selections and sharing those out there so actually I'm 10:05.680 --> 10:13.200 going to pause for a moment and invite you to have a little read so we've got five main criteria 10:13.200 --> 10:19.840 about public benefit it's about securing critical infrastructure and what impact that would have 10:19.840 --> 10:25.840 on society if it broke down the need that it represents in terms of resilient operation of the global 10:25.840 --> 10:31.520 DNS we were really looking for proof and use this is really important to us that we weren't 10:31.520 --> 10:37.040 setting out to fund shining new infrastructure it was actually about things that maintainers that are 10:37.040 --> 10:42.080 already doing the work that are already underfunded that are already in the ecosystem and have a 10:42.080 --> 10:49.280 proven reputation so we wanted to see that in what we were selecting and indeed the right people 10:49.920 --> 10:55.600 are those people the people that have the skills experience and understanding and in fact some 10:55.600 --> 11:02.720 some some teams we looked at were sorry some application we looked at weren't part of teams 11:02.720 --> 11:07.440 they were individuals so that's quite interesting too you could be the best individual in the world 11:07.440 --> 11:11.600 but if that project isn't necessarily sustainable you don't have lots of contributors you 11:11.600 --> 11:16.640 haven't thought of that that's something in the system that we're looking at in terms of sustainability 11:16.640 --> 11:21.600 and value so I'd just like you to turn to the person next to you if you're next to someone 11:21.600 --> 11:26.000 or if you don't want to you could just think about it in your own time um but just tell like have 11:26.000 --> 11:32.000 a little chat just a couple of minutes do you feel like these are right for our first round in 11:32.000 --> 11:37.200 terms of principles have we got it right is there something that you would add to that or do 11:37.200 --> 11:41.920 differently and then if anyone's willing to give me a little bit of feedback we're really really keen 11:41.920 --> 11:45.440 to learn so I'm just going to give you a couple of minutes just to turn to person next to you 11:51.600 --> 12:00.240 okay how am I for time 13:52.400 --> 13:57.040 see you again 14:16.960 --> 14:18.800 okay thank you so much 14:18.800 --> 14:22.800 I've got my listening hat on, I keep being really tempted to step. 14:22.800 --> 14:25.800 I have to stand between these bits so I'm not allowed to move out to you. 14:25.800 --> 14:29.800 But I've got my pen and paper ready and I'm really keen to learn. 14:29.800 --> 14:32.800 So I said, no, I've got any feedback to these feel right. 14:32.800 --> 14:34.800 Is there anything you would add if you were in my shoes? 14:34.800 --> 14:35.800 Would you do differently? 14:35.800 --> 14:37.800 I can be using the mic, is that okay? 14:37.800 --> 14:39.800 There's a guy at the back there. 14:49.800 --> 14:52.800 Thanks, all of these make sense. 14:52.800 --> 14:58.800 The only one I would maybe tweak with the point number three, 14:58.800 --> 15:04.800 Proven use, because actually since you're providing grants 15:04.800 --> 15:09.800 and you have people that have identified a problem, 15:09.800 --> 15:12.800 maybe that problem has not been solved yet. 15:12.800 --> 15:17.800 So actually it might be the case that there are no current solution 15:17.800 --> 15:19.800 to that problem. 15:19.800 --> 15:23.800 It would be risky for you to firm them, obviously, 15:23.800 --> 15:28.800 because they have not yet demonstrated a proven solution. 15:28.800 --> 15:32.800 But it sometimes makes sense to take that risk 15:32.800 --> 15:38.800 if the identified need on point two is really serious in your eyes 15:38.800 --> 15:40.800 if you see what I mean. 15:41.800 --> 15:44.800 That's really helpful feedback, thank you. 15:44.800 --> 15:45.800 Anyone out? 15:45.800 --> 15:48.800 There's the side over here. 15:52.800 --> 15:54.800 Hi, welcome, don't worry, just come in. 15:54.800 --> 15:59.800 We're just discussing these other principles that we set up as part of our DNS fund. 15:59.800 --> 16:02.800 It was our pilot rounds, but I'm really keen to learn. 16:02.800 --> 16:05.800 So just getting a bit of feedback from people about whether it feels right. 16:05.800 --> 16:07.800 Thank you. 16:07.800 --> 16:10.800 Hi, thank you for this particular session. 16:10.800 --> 16:14.800 It's rare that we get an opportunity to talk to the people next to us. 16:14.800 --> 16:20.800 Ruth raised a very important concern about the third one. 16:20.800 --> 16:25.800 Is this project successful and is it been used at scale? 16:25.800 --> 16:30.800 And she talked a bit about how sometimes it's successful, 16:30.800 --> 16:33.800 but what's the definition of success? 16:33.800 --> 16:36.800 And what does that look like? 16:36.800 --> 16:39.800 It might be successful, but not at scale yet. 16:39.800 --> 16:42.800 It could be mutually exclusive. 16:42.800 --> 16:48.800 And that's really resonated with me because I was looking at the fourth point. 16:48.800 --> 16:55.800 The second part where it says, do they have a track record of getting similar things done? 16:55.800 --> 17:02.800 So speaking from personal experience, I run a project where we're trying to get more research coming 17:02.800 --> 17:09.800 out of Africa by offering an open source curriculum to teach research in Africa. 17:09.800 --> 17:13.800 That's impact that's high need, but we're not at scale. 17:13.800 --> 17:21.800 Or as he mentioned, we haven't solved the problem yet, but we don't look fondable yet. 17:21.800 --> 17:29.800 This is the core idea behind my talk tomorrow about how impact is usually needed for funding, 17:29.800 --> 17:34.800 but to get impact, you do need the funding, so it's a crazy paradox. 17:34.800 --> 17:37.800 It's interesting to hear others share that as well. 17:37.800 --> 17:42.800 I totally hear that. Thank you so much for your feedback. It's really helpful. 17:42.800 --> 17:46.800 We've got Kaylin at the front here. 17:46.800 --> 17:50.800 It's for the live stream as well. 17:50.800 --> 17:59.800 Thank you. 17:59.800 --> 18:03.800 So I'm Kaylin with Hano and Mirko. 18:03.800 --> 18:06.800 So Mirko and I are on the expert advisory panel. 18:06.800 --> 18:12.800 And we're discussing how the first one, others too, in particular the first one. 18:12.800 --> 18:17.800 It can be a bit subjective when you're assessing and when we're assessing applications. 18:17.800 --> 18:22.800 And Mirko made an important point that it's hard to eliminate the subjectivity. 18:22.800 --> 18:27.800 And the most important thing is that you report your transparent about that and you report it, 18:27.800 --> 18:28.800 transparently. 18:28.800 --> 18:34.800 And I think we did that quite well and knew the team were very intentional about doing that well. 18:34.800 --> 18:42.800 But yeah, so basically, Mirko's point is, you can't eliminate subjectivity in some of the assessment criteria. 18:43.800 --> 18:47.800 Yeah, I really agree. And I think it is about just then being transparent about that. 18:47.800 --> 18:57.800 So we haven't announced the successful applicants yet, but it really is our intent to tie the storytelling to these principles of why those have been successful. 18:57.800 --> 19:06.800 But I think you're right that there are areas of subjectivity that we need to be just open and honest about in what our advisory panel are sharing with us. 19:06.800 --> 19:09.800 And then ultimately we're making that judgment. 19:09.800 --> 19:11.800 We've got one more bit of feedback here. 19:12.800 --> 19:22.800 I think it's worth considering a spectrum of risk in products, like not everything should be safe and not everything should be super risky. 19:22.800 --> 19:32.800 So there are always, there's always the possibility the next innovation, the greenfield idea may come from come through something like this, 19:32.800 --> 19:42.800 if a fund like this doesn't take a spectrum of risk into account, then those things won't get funded and we'll just be sort of where we are now. 19:42.800 --> 19:54.800 So I agree with the idea that funding shiny new things is not great, because there's a lot of stuff out there that exists and we depend on now that needs the funding. 19:54.800 --> 20:00.800 But I think that the risk spectrum is possibly affected to add. 20:01.800 --> 20:07.800 Thank you. Yeah, I love that idea of adding in more of a spectrum and so we can understand that. 20:07.800 --> 20:17.800 Yeah, and I mean your point on innovation is very fair and it is something that the research came up with three potential models for us to look at and one of them was just an innovation fund. 20:17.800 --> 20:25.800 We could look out for the next big thing that's going to radically shake up DNS and we could fund that and put big money into it. 20:25.800 --> 20:38.800 Actually we settled on, let's start small and just look at what's happening at the moment where there's existing work and as we iterate and evolve, I could see potentially parts of that changing and shifting. 20:38.800 --> 20:53.800 So look, I've got three pages of many notes, I'm going to take those back, we will be launching our round two in the coming months, so watch this space and you know it's my full intent that your feedback will help us shape the learning of how that comes across. 20:53.800 --> 21:01.800 So where did we get to? Are you saw that the fund was live in September? We made advisory panel, we had advisory panel meetings in November. 21:01.800 --> 21:11.800 We've been busy working with the eight successful applicants that we've committed to fund on their contracting. 21:11.800 --> 21:23.800 For those, these are just a sample of the types of things that we've got coming in around DNS path transparency, DNS resolvers, looking at tracking to reduce maintenance and admin issues. 21:23.800 --> 21:38.800 We've got lots of ideas about libraries, DNS client and server libraries, test beds, testing environments, lots of things about monitoring availability and performance of DNS servers and monitoring DNS traffic as well. 21:38.800 --> 21:50.800 So it was brilliant. There was quite an international spread in those that I expected 20 applicants, honestly, and we got 33, so I think that was really, really good. 21:50.800 --> 22:06.800 And we're really delighted with the kind of feedback and reception that we've had. So yeah, I'm sorry not to have the slide that then says, and here are the people we're funding, but we just have to make sure that we're doing all our, or all our projects and it will be sort of live scenes. 22:06.800 --> 22:11.800 So watch this space. There is a space on our website where you can sign up for updates and for more. 22:11.800 --> 22:18.800 But otherwise, look, I'm really receptive to any general questions that you have. We've got about 10 minutes left. 22:18.800 --> 22:27.800 You could tell me some of the things, I mean, you already have started to, but if you've got things that you think as a funder, I should stop doing what we should stop designing in. 22:27.800 --> 22:35.800 Really, really all ears, but otherwise, if you've got any questions, be really delighted to hear anything that you've got. 22:35.800 --> 22:46.800 There's a question in the middle here. 22:46.800 --> 23:03.800 Hi, super interesting talk. You mentioned earlier one turn into your head was with contracting and engaging people or having them set up. 23:03.800 --> 23:17.800 I was curious that you look into some like funding in the intermediaries, things like get up sponsors or open collective or things like that to not have this direct connection between. 23:17.800 --> 23:24.800 Let's say while direct contract connection between your entity and the receiving parties. 23:24.800 --> 23:25.800 Yeah, thanks. 23:25.800 --> 23:36.800 I'd love to hear more about that because I think it's definitely pointing to we need some kind of intermediary because at the moment we've had these two individuals as part of the eight. 23:36.800 --> 23:46.800 One of them successfully quickly rallied and set up a company and got all the accounting and legal staff and actually they've got a huge number of contributors. 23:46.800 --> 23:53.800 So it was something that was going to happen anyway for that person, but the other person just like, look, I do this in my free time. 23:53.800 --> 24:00.800 I'm not interested in setting up a company as much admin for me. I don't earn enough on this to pay tax. 24:00.800 --> 24:05.800 We've said to them, you know, what can we do to pay a little bit more to help you with the setting up of that? 24:05.800 --> 24:10.800 And it's just really, really problematic because my company is saying we can't just pay anyone. 24:10.800 --> 24:16.800 So if there is something like GitHub sponsors that we could do an intermediary, that will be game changing for this fund. 24:16.800 --> 24:26.800 And I think that we could really open it up because in one of our, you know, even though the research told us funding individuals on our first eligibility, it says you have to be an organization, right? 24:26.800 --> 24:30.800 And that's just a, that's something we've got wrong and we're trying to make it right. 24:30.800 --> 24:35.800 But if there's an, I'd love to connect with you and hear how that could work. 24:36.800 --> 24:43.800 So actually my comment is along the same lines or question is along the same lines. We talk a lot about funding. 24:43.800 --> 24:49.800 But we don't talk a lot about operationally managing that funding when it's received. 24:49.800 --> 24:59.800 And this is a perfect example of an individual that really doesn't want to deal with any of the operational concerns of receiving money. 24:59.800 --> 25:11.800 So if I'd like to suggest that that it might be possible for your company to actually set up like a research institute that can just employ the people at some level. 25:11.800 --> 25:18.800 And take care of all the operational complexity because at the end of the day you really don't want developers doing this, they don't want to do it. 25:18.800 --> 25:28.800 It will cost them and they will get it wrong and it is actually kind of counter to the way that we do open source, which is essentially sharing the work. 25:29.800 --> 25:42.800 And if, if one entity can get set up and basically do the work of all that work for a bunch of people, it actually enables a lot of contribution without a lot of overhead for them. 25:42.800 --> 25:53.800 That's a really good idea. Yeah, one idea we had was, and we're still exploring is like a DNS academy because the people interested in DNS is declining. 25:53.800 --> 26:00.800 And but we know that there's still a lot of work to be done and the diversity in DNS, at least a lot to be desired. 26:00.800 --> 26:08.800 So I think potentially something that could pair that into a workflow of saying you could then be employed to do this work independently. 26:08.800 --> 26:14.800 I think we'll be a fabulous idea, so let me bring it back to my board and see what they say. 26:14.800 --> 26:22.800 Okay, I think we've read very close to the end, but I'm really happy to hear any further feedback and there's my email. 26:22.800 --> 26:25.800 You can find me on LinkedIn and things like that. 26:25.800 --> 26:32.800 So thank you so much everyone for your contributions and for making this a really interactive and giving me some things to go back with. 26:32.800 --> 26:36.800 So appreciate your time and have a good rest of your afternoon. 26:36.800 --> 26:38.800 Thank you. Thank you.