Mozilla launched the Open Source Support Program back in late 2015 which was an award program focused on supporting open source and free software. According to the company, it was “designed to recognize and celebrate communities who are leading the way with open source projects that contribute to our work and the health of the web. Mozilla announced that they have given over a half a million dollars to open source projects in its latest wave of grants. They gave the awards to 5 projects, of which Ushahidi got the biggest share of $194,000 (Kshs 20M).
“The biggest amount ($194,000) went to Ushahidi, an open source software platform for crowdsourcing, monitoring, visualizing, and responding to reports from people caught up in political turmoil or subject to governmental or vigilante abuse,” Mozilla revealed in the post. “They are working on making it easier to securely submit reports, and documentation on how to deploy Ushahidi while minimising risk to the hosts.”
This year, Ushahidi has been in the limelight thanks to a sexual harassment case which was brought to light in July. This case was a PR nightmare for the company and it was exacerbated by how they handled the situation. The other award winners include $125,000 to the webpack project, $100,000 to RiseUp, $50,000 to Phaser and $70,000 for mod_md. Mozilla hopes that supporting these projects will advance a free and healthy internet. Early this year, Mozilla also awarded $365,000 to other open source projects as part of this program, with the biggest beneficiary going to the whistleblower submission system, Secure Drop.
