GitHub Backs Open Technology Fund in Open Letter to Congress
GitHub has added its name to a letter signed by more than 500 organizations urging the U.S. Congress to preserve funding for the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a group that finances open source tools aimed at protecting internet freedom. The letter was sent last week.
The OTF has shown how relatively small government grants can have an outsized impact when directed at open source projects. The organization has seeded and supported dozens of tools used by roughly 2 billion people to strengthen their digital security and push back against censorship and surveillance. Beyond the end-user tools, developers get a broader benefit from OTF’s work to secure core infrastructure that underpins common technology stacks.
OTF-supported projects include major names such as Signal, Qubes OS, Tor, and WireGuard. These tools help developers safeguard the privacy and security of users worldwide, with particular importance for at-risk populations.
The threat to the organization comes from a recent shift in leadership at the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government agency that backs OTF. GitHub is now joining the call for Congress to step in and ensure the fund can keep supporting open source security efforts and internet freedom initiatives.
