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#OMN Project Budget — NGI Zero Commons Fund
Duration: 9 months | All paid roles part-time
Work Package Labour
| WP | Description | Lead | Days | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP1 | Research & specification — architecture mapping, flow documentation, landscape analysis of existing Fediverse tools | Hamish | 40 | €170 | €6,800 |
| WP2 | Core development — flow service implementation, ActivityPub integration, trust layer, Emissary extensions | Michael | 80 | €170 | €13,600 |
| WP3 | UX & prototype — #makinghistory interface, user testing loops, dual-layer UX design | Michael | 40 | €170 | €6,800 |
| WP4 | Testing & documentation — community testing with institutional partners, public documentation, iteration | Hamish | 43 | €170 | €7,310 |
| Labour total | 203 days | €34,510 |
Infrastructure
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Development server hosting — 3 instances over 9 months | €1,800 |
| Storage, backups, domain and tooling | €350 |
| Security review and dependency audit | €400 |
| Infrastructure total | €2,550 |
Outreach & Community
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| 6 grassroots events at €400 each | €2,400 |
| European partner travel (MayDay Room, Bishopsgate, Peace Museum, EU partners) | €944 |
| Documentation translation for European rollout | €500 |
| Outreach total | €3,844 |
Administration
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Fiscal hosting via OpenCollective — 10% of subtotal (€40,904) | €4,090 |
| Admin total | €4,090 |
| Grand total | €44,994 |
| Rounding adjustment | +€6 |
| Total | €45,000 |
Budget Notes
Part-time working pattern: All paid team members work part-time across the nine-month project period. Hamish contributes approximately two days per week across WP1 and WP4, with heavier involvement at the project's start (months 1–3) and end (months 7–9). Michael works at approximately two to three days per week, with intensity peaking during months 3–6 when WP2 and WP3 overlap and the Month 6 prototype milestone is the primary focus. This distributed pace is intentional, it reflects the commons-contribution model of the project and allows space for community feedback loops to inform development in real time.
Wage parity: All paid roles are remunerated at an identical rate of €170 per day, regardless of role or seniority. This reflects the project's non-hierarchical values and its roots in commons-based working practice. €170 per day represents subsistence-level compensation for skilled open source and ActivityPub development work - significantly below commercial market rates of €400–€600 per day for equivalent expertise.
Ben's in-kind contribution: Ben contributes as a non-remunerated technical adviser throughout the project, providing architectural guidance on the Emissary codebase and mentoring Michael through the core implementation. No payment is drawn from the grant for this contribution. Ben's advisory input - covering ActivityPub integration strategy, Emissary template architecture, and code review - represents an estimated €4,000–€6,000 of equivalent value at subsistence rates, had it been included as a funded work package. This in-kind contribution strengthens the value-for-money case for the grant.
Institutional seed data partners: MayDay Room, the Bishopsgate Institute, and the Peace Museum in Bradford contribute their archival collections as seed data for the #makinghistory prototype at no cost to the project. This in-kind contribution of real-world, historically significant content would be prohibitively expensive to replicate commercially and is a material asset to the R&D process and to the credibility of the proof-of-concept.
Infrastructure rationale: The infrastructure budget has been set at a realistic level for active development hosting across a nine-month period with three live instances. The security review signals the team's awareness of audit readiness.
Second-stage intent: This budget is explicitly a seed project for proof-of-concept and validation. A second-stage proposal will seek wider funding to expand the team, widen the European partner network, and move toward a polished production-ready system. The lean, part-time structure of this first grant is therefore deliberate - it is sized to seed the concept.
Focus is on building working code + real community, not overhead. Events are key to expanding the crew to test implementation in the wild to growing a sustainable #openweb ecosystem
Further reading: https://hamishcampbell.com/a-minimal-governable-infrastructure-for-trust-based-media-flows/
Technical Overview (engineering focus): https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/wiki/Technical-Overview-%28engineering-focus%29
Small-print-for-funding: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/wiki/Answering-the-small-print-for-funding