tech:

taffy

Mozilla awards $385,000 to Open Source projects as part of ‘Mission Partners’

Mozilla has awarded $380,000 to various open source projects as part of the ‘Mission Partners’ award of the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) continuing program. The program has a budget of $1.25 million for 2016. 

The first eight awardees are:

  • Tor: $152,500. Tor is a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked. 
  • Tails: $77,000. Tails is a secure-by-default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and anonymity.
  • Caddy: $50,000. Caddy is an HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt.
  • Mio: $30,000. Mio is an asynchronous I/O library written in Rust.
  • DNSSEC/DANE Chain Stapling: $25,000. This project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set, to reduce the latency associated with DANE and DNSSEC validation.
  • Godot Engine: $20,000. Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5.
  • PeARS: $15,500. PeARS (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit.
  • NVDA: $15,000. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows.

The Mission Partners track is open to any open source/free software project which is undertaking an activity which significantly furthers Mozilla’s mission, says the organization. 

Applications remain open both for Mission Partners and for the Foundational Technology track (for projects creating software that Mozilla already uses or deploys) on an ongoing basis, if you want to check them out. 

[Image courtesy: Mozilla]

Just in

Vercel raises $250M

San Francisco-based Vercel, a frontend cloud platform provider, has secured $250 million in Series E funding, bringing the company's valuation to $3.25 billion.

Worky raises $6M (Mexico)

Mexico City-based Worky, a provider of HR and payroll software solutions for Mexican companies, has closed a $6 million Series A financing round.

Amazon announces $1.31B investment in France

Amazon has announced a new investment of about $1.31 billion (€1.2 billion) in France, which the company says will lead to the creation of over 3,000 permanent jobs in the country.

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky to step down — CNBC

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing business, will step down from his role next month. Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Amazon Web Services, will succeed Mr. Selipsky after he exits the company June 3, writes Annie Palmer. 

Palo Alto Networks, Accenture expand alliance to offer generative AI services

Palo Alto Networks and Accenture have announced the expansion of their strategic alliance to provide new offerings that combine Palo Alto Networks' Precision AI technology with Accenture's secure generative AI services.