Open Source Guidance

Open-source refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible. Open-source software has source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.

Open-source software, hardware, and data solutions encourage greater transparency and security and help reduce costs by developing, collaborating, and fixing in the open.

It helps create developer-friendly tooling and approaches that streamline an integrated development environment, helping to develop code more efficiently and providing ease of use for developers.

In all cases, as an essential deliverable, projects must include high-quality documentation as learning resources of the proposal.

Cardano Open: Developers (technical) is the most relevant track in Fund 12 to open source solutions.

Areas of interest:

• standardize, develop, support, or provide utilities for full-stack solutions and IDEs,

• create new libraries, SDKs, publicly available APIs, toolchains, and frameworks

What we do not fund:

The following are examples of proposals that will not be funded in the Cardano Open: Developers (technical) category:

• Proposals that are not primarily seeking to develop new technology or contribute to or support existing open-source technology. For example, a learning resource guide to developing on Plutus, Marlowe, or other smart contracts platforms like Aiken should be part of the Cardano Open: Ecosystem (non-technical) category

• Proposals that are not seeking to develop technology that is open-source and are in fact producing proprietary software or hardware