# Open Source Guidance

[Open-source](https://opensource.com/resources/what-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 11 to open source solutions. 

#### Areas of interest:

Proposals may focus on open-source technical solutions that: 

* 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:

Cardano Open: Developers (technical) will not be funding projects that: 

* do not develop new code or contribute to or support existing open-source developers. For example, a learning resource guide to developing on Plutus, Marlowe, or other smart contracts platforms like Aiken. In this case, the Cardano Open non-developers   
* are inherently non-technical (For example, a community event or hackathon to bring more developers or users to Cardano. In that case, it should apply to the Cardano Open: Ecosystem - non-technical track.)  
* are not open-source and are producing proprietary software, hardware, or data. 


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