Som jeg sa i forrige innlegg så begynte jeg dette raset med foredrag med en kort presentasjon av NUUG Foundation på NONOG i september 2025. Det er på engelsk, for det er ofte sånn at det er på engelsk de greiene våre i Internett-verden.. Og så ble det jo en ganske dårlig presentasjon, om jeg må få lov til å være ærlig.
Men! Hadde jeg bare øvd litt mer, slappet litt mer av og…. sånn. Uansett ønsker jeg jo fremdeles å presentere NUUG Foundation, så here goes:
Origins of NUUG Foundation
NUUG Foundation is not the same as the Norwegian Unix User Group – known as NUUG, but we stem from the same history.
NUUG is an organization started in 1985, to share experiences and knowledge around UNIX and similar systems. As a part of their organization, NUUG operated Usenet, the Norwegian part of what became EUnet.
When Internet was commercialized in early 1990, NUUG founded the company EUnet Norge AS which made commercial success as one of the very first Internet providers in Norway.
EUnet Norge AS also because part of EUnet International. When EUnet International was sold, NUUG wanted to make sure the money from this sales benefitted technical innovation and commuity, and created NUUG Foundation with the funds from this sale.
NUUG Foundation was established in 2000, with its own board and its own by-laws, operating independently from NUUG.
The bylaws of NUUG Foundation states:
The foundation’s purpose is to promote the development of an open infrastructure for digital processing, storage and exchange of information.
An open infrastructure means software whose use is free, and where source code and data formats are freely available.
Which makes me want to go back to the origins of NUUG Foundation; the profits from EUnet International stems from a collaborative, innovative environment where the sharing of knowledge and ideas ended up bringing us the Internet as we know it, and even generative AI. And this open source, collaborative and creative environment is what we wish to continue to foster.
Since the origin to now
Since 2000, NUUG Foundation has provided financial support to the promotion and development of open software and infrastructure – both by travel grants for participating in conferences connected to these topics, and to support various projects with a focus on sharing knowledge and developing open source projects.
The basis premises for support is that the project will result in the development, improvement or better utilization of computing or Internet – and there are many ways to reach this. But the results of the project must be made freely available to the community, either as source code or application or other means. This premise is now under discussion by the board, as we see that a lot of commercial projects will not qualify for support as long as we have this premise, and a lot of the more interesting open source projects have some sort of commercialized idea.
Another other thing that happened is that NUUG Foundation has had some successful fund placements, making the foundation a quite wealthy one. And this is were we stand now. In NUUG Foundations bylaws, there is an opening for a 10% usage of the share capital to support projects. The share capital is today around 60 million kroners.
Who gets the money?
All previous projects who received money from from NUUG Foundation is available on the NUUG Foundation website. As you can see, NONOG received money this year, and there are several who receive travel grants for participation, travel and accommodation to conferences. I have the distinct impression that most people who know about NUUG Foundation, know about it because of this travel grant.
Travel grants are primarily thought as a travel grant to students, but everyone may apply. Travel grants are for participation on international telecommunications or IT technology conferences.
NUUG Foundation has also support conferences, like NONOG, or other projects, like my book when I wrote a book on how Internet works. You can download the book from NUUG Foundation site.
There are, in short a myriad of opportunities for project support with NUUG Foundation, as long as the basic premises are met:- the project will result in the development, improvement or better utilization of computing or network technology (Internet technology); – all results of the project will be made freely available to the community («Open Source»); – the results of the project will be presented at an appropriate national or international conference if possible.
These premises have sometimes been a bit of a hinderance to accept applications, but at the same time, these are guiding for us in the board to accept or reject applications. To us, the main focus is to promote the development of an open infrastructure for digital processing, storage and exchange of information.
What does the future hold?
NUUG Foundation increased the number of board members this summer, from 3 to 5, where yours truly is one of the new board members.
One of the intentions on who came aboard, was to explore a more commercial approach to the support NUUG Foundation may offer. This means we are open to evaluate support for start ups, or scale-ups, or other commercial entities who are in a bit of a financial pickle with growing or starting.
These ideas have not been adapted into bylaws yet, but we are mature and willing to change towards a more investing role rather than a clean out grants role. NUUG Foundation still has a focus to promote the development of open infrastructure and not as a purely return-on-investement-fund.
The increase in board members also indicate a wish to be more active and make more things happening. There are more than enough activities already defined in our policy, and from early days until now we have a whole generation of developers, activists and innovators who might not even know we exists. So if you have been listening and thought to yourself «this is exactly me», please do not hesitate to present your projects to us.
