Interviews

Maemo Leste aims to provide a free and open-source experience on mobile phones and tablets. Find out more about the work that this team of innovators is developing with DAPSI’s support, in this interview with Ivan Jelincic. Can you briefly introduce yourself? Greetings! I’m Ivan Jelincic (nickname “parazyd”). I am a long-time free software developer. I’ve worked on P2P networks, cryptocurrencies, Devuan GNU/Linux, and most recently founded the Maemo Leste mobile OS. Throughout the years I have collaborated with and contributed to many free software projects, communities, and organizations, like Dyne.org, and Bitreich, to name a few. Currently, outside of Maemo, I’m working with Dark Renaissance Technologies on a new anonymous operating system paradigm, and unlocking the hidden potential of this untapped design space. My favourite programming languages are C, Python, Go, and Rust, and most recently my focus is zero-knowledge cryptography and multi-party computation. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? The most important goal is to help people escape the clutches of surveillance and exposure. By developing interoperable tools, we can empower both developers and users to transition to far better and liberated technologies which will keep their data in their ownership, and their communication safe and private. It is also essential that these tools and technologies are free software, as otherwise things may become corrupt. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? We’ve heard about DAPSI through our friend Michiel, who is part of the Nlnet foundation. He told us about this opportunity, and not much more, but after doing research, we realized that we would be a great fit for the goals that DAPSI implies. Our main drive for applying is always sustainability. We want to be able to push our operating system forward, while keeping the transparent approach. This shows our community...

The DASI Breaker project aims to break down data silos! It enables the development of data-driven, context-aware Web applications and services, even cross domain. Find out more about this project and the team behind it in this interview with team member Luca Roffia. Can you briefly introduce yourself? My name is Luca Roffia and I am CEO of VAIMEE, the University of Bologna spin-off I co-founded in 2020 together with Cristiano Aguzzi, Alessandro Fuligani and Marzio Minarelli, and Assistant Professor at the same University where in 2005 I got a PhD in Computer Science, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, with a dissertation on "Context Related Information Sharing and Retrieval in Mobile Cultural Heritage Applications". I have been running courses on Logic Design, Computer Architecture, and Information Technologies for Arts Organizations. My research interests are focused on the design and implementation of software solutions to enable interoperability by means of Linked Data technologies. In particular, since 2016 I have been the principal investigator of SEPA (SPARQL Event Processing Architecture), an open source solution which provides a publish-subscribe mechanism over Linked Data, making the solution very suitable in all the scenarios characterized by dynamic, heterogeneous and not structured data, like for the example the Internet of Things. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? I do believe in the importance of data, as well as in the role played by data to provide advanced data-driven context-aware services for the benefit of many stakeholders as citizens, private bodies, and public institutions. Ensuring the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles is essential, even more when it comes to the data portability. Hence, at VAIMEE we believe that SEPA and Web of Things technologies can play a significant role for the development of trustworthy applications and services, which preserve the privacy of machine understandable data,...

IDISS team has a challenge to solve: enhance data portability of standards for any structured data (XML). How? Find out in this interview with the team member Svante Schubert! Can you briefly introduce yourself? My name is Svante Schubert, just turned 50, living with family in Berlin, where I work since 2011 as a freelancer. Earlier I had been 12 years employed as Software Engineer at Sun Microsystems in Hamburg working on StarOffice (later being called OpenOffice and LibreOffice). During that time, I learned to work on software standards (being the blueprint of software) and I am still involved in the ODF standard – ODF being the office file format supported by many office applications - as co-chair of the technical committee at OASIS. As part of the EU digitalization efforts, I have added 7 years ago the domain of e-procurement to my field of experience, where I am now a co-editor at CEN TC 434 on the EU e-invoice format (EN16931). What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? My motivation is to reduce the pain I am experiencing nearly every single day due to the lack of digitalization. For instance, one of my main pains is doing the tax (for procurement, I must type data into my procurement software and, some months later, I am typing the same data into my tax software – this drives me crazy!). So much redundant, time consuming, error-prone work with the lack of running statistics across all data! This must change, and the solution should be applicable to all domains! Therefore, I am working on high-level ideas & tools to break free from this vicious circle. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? A friend told me about the DAPSI project before the 2nd project’s deadline. Sure, it is...

Delta Chat started with a father trying to provide his 13-year-old daughter a secure communication tool. With DAPSI’s support, this team is now working towards the goal of helping users make informed choices about their messaging apps, email clients and providers. Henriette Signer, from project EPPD, tells us all about it in this interview. Can you briefly introduce yourself?I am Henriette Signer, 30 years old and technical coordinator of the merlinux team. I am responsible for international relations (English, French, Spanish, Russian), funding, event management and networking/ communication. I love music, botanics, outdoor sports and audiobooks. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? With this project, we would like to help users making informed choices about their messaging apps, email clients and providers. The tight relation between email providers and the well-functioning of our app Delta Chat is crucial for the user experience. We therefore want to facilitate onboarding, inform about diversity, different conditions and performances of email providers so users can easily communicate in a secure and autonomous way. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? We got the tip to send our proposal from a former funder and co-worker with whom we already accomplished a successful funding project last year. In simple words, what challenge does your project address? Our project addresses the need for information and transparency when choosing an email provider and email client, or messaging app. What solution are you developing? In 2017 Delta Chat was developed by Bjoern Petersen who wanted to provide a secure communication tool for his 13-year-old daughter as an alternative to Whatsapp, Telegram etc. He therefore used the email ecosystem as base for an end to end encrypted, decentralized (no central server), independent and widely compatible email app looking like a messenger. Everyone who has an email address can...

In a scenario where you need to share confidential data with someone else, how can you make sure this data won’t be used for other purposes, shared or even stolen? Nicolae Paladi from CoCEM project is here to tell you how! Can you briefly introduce yourself? My name is Nicolae Paladi, I am a computer security researcher based in Stockholm, Sweden. I am the co-founder of CanaryBit, a company that uses the latest advancements in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, cryptography, and confidential computing to build secure data analytics services. I am also a part-time researcher at Lund University. In my free time, I organize tech meet-ups and go for kayaking adventures wherever I find water and a kayak. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? We are all increasingly aware of the immense importance and value of data – be it personal, business, production, or research data. The current technological and economic model helps a handful of giant technology companies aggregate and centralize data ownership. We provide an alternative, allowing data controllers to manage, process, and monetize their data without giving it away. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? A former colleague obtained an NGI (New Generation Internet) grant and advised me to apply to the NGI DAPSI program. The DAPSI call was very relevant to what we do so I applied to help realize this project idea. In simple words, what challenges does your project address? We are working on a solution that allows confidential data collaboration between data owners and business intelligence actors. Today, data owners that do not have the necessary data analysis capacity (for example software or expertise) often choose to transfer data to a third-party business intelligence actor for processing. This means giving data away in clear text, with no verifiable technical way...

Myenergy.AI project is focused on the energy data portability space! Learn in this interview how this team wants to help persons and companies make better decisions for reducing their carbon use. Can you briefly introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Dan Leighton, CTP at Advanced Infrastructure Ltd. We are a company specialising in energy data for decarbonisation. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? We are motivated to work in data portability by the need to ensure that a company or person’s energy data can be utilised by them anywhere without restrictions, to allow them to make better decisions about how to reduce their carbon use. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? We heard about DAPSI via the NGI website. We applied as we believed we had a valid problem to solve in the energy data portability space. In simple words, what challenge does your project address? We make it possible for energy data to be easily moved out of closed data systems and used by the data owner. What solution are you developing? We are building a tool to allow corporation’s and individual’s energy data to be moved between suppliers seamlessly and to ensure that relevant energy data, such as travel footprints, can be easily moved out of data silos. What will be the next steps? The next steps are to build the software!  

Electric cars, telematics and data portability: these are the keywords that drive project TDIP – Telematics Data Interoperability Platform. Curious? Team member Balázs Szabó explains us more in this interview. Can you briefly introduce yourself? I am Balazs, CEO and Co-founder of Konetik. Konetik helps businesses to integrate electric vehicles with a software that analyses real vehicle usage data and recommend the suitable electric vehicles and the optimal charging infrastructure. What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? While working with telematics companies we realised that there is a lot of value hidden in the second-life use of telematics data. However, data portability is an issue due to the different formats. How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? We have seen this opportunity in a newsletter and immediately thought that the DAPSI program could be helpful to overcome our data portability challenge: makes it easier for us to integrate with partners and it can be also useful for other companies and the broader community. In simple words, what challenge does your project address? Telematics data is notoriously varied in their format. Despite the existence of standards, telematics data providers don't seem to be actually using them in practice.Instead of trying to convince data providers to stick to one single standard, our goal is to improve the interoperability of telematics data, so that users and data providers can share data more easily between services, irrelevant of the format they use. What solution are you developing? The solution is to learn to map different formats and translate data from one format to another seamlessly. This may seem like a very difficult task to automate. However, recent advances in machine learning, and in particular natural language processing, give us the tools to do so with confidence. We use pre-trained deep neural networks to perform...

  The Data Portability & Services Incubator is preparing the launch of its third and last open call that will empower internet innovators developing solutions in the Data Portability field. In order to collect the most important research questions and challenges w.r.t. the topic of Data Portability, a survey has been prepared. The goal of this survey is to revisit the identified data portability subdomains and determine a potential new subdomain for the next open call. You are invited to contribute with your background and expertise by completing the survey, which should not take more than 5 minutes. Your inputs are much appreciated! Link to survey: https://form.123formbuilder.com/5970553/

Current times highlighted the importance of giving families and friends the ability to stay connected through chats and audio/video calls. But how can they keep their data when these platforms are shut down? XPORTA project is here to address the challenge! Find out more in this interview with Matthew Wild. Can you briefly introduce yourself? Hi, I’m Matthew Wild. I’m a developer with a passion for open source, open standards, and online communication. Most of my work is within the XMPP ecosystem, an open protocol that enables people to communicate in real-time using their choice of provider and software. I’m currently working on Snikket, a project building a user-friendly messaging platform for families and other social groups, built on top of XMPP and principles of openness and decentralization.   What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? Over my time working in XMPP, I’ve seen communication providers come and go. Often such transition is painful for users, who have no easy solutions to back up their data or move it to new providers. More recently I have been working on a hosted platform for Snikket, and I want to ensure that we make it as easy as possible for people to transition to and from our service, allowing them to migrate between providers and empower them to run their own self-hosted Snikket service if they want to.   How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? I heard about the DAPSI open call through people sharing it on fosstodon.org, part of the Fediverse open social network. Unsurprisingly, the principles of open standards and interoperability that DAPSI promotes resonate strongly with that community. At the time I heard about DAPSI I had been struggling to find funding for Snikket as a not-for-profit, and I was preparing to put the project on hold while I...

The usage of emails has been massively widespread by both individuals and companies. But how secure are our data? This is where SCoP project comes into play. Find out more in this interview with Romain Calascibetta, one of the members behind this team. Can you briefly introduce yourself? My name is Romain Calascibetta. I'm 28 years old and I work at Tarides, a company that builds open source, functional systems and libraries in OCaml. I started programming with PHP, at the age of twelve, and I continue to develop software, mainly in OCaml. Over the past five years, I have specialised in developing protocols and have developed alternative technologies for more secure communications. I also like to travel and play the guitar. I've previously lived in the UK, where I worked at the University of Cambridge as a research assistant for a year.   What is your motivation to work in the data portability field? The internet exists only because many people achieve consensus around specific protocols and formats. The result of this agreement is data portability: the ability to share data and to communicate without any constraints. My goals are to implement these protocols/formats and strengthen data portability, in order to continue, at least, to maintain this ecosystem and improve portability with more data security and privacy. These mechanisms are important as they help us to share our knowledge, globally, and to learn from each other.   How did you hear about DAPSI and what drove you to apply? The network of companies and organisations that I work in has previously participated in similar programs, such as NGI, for example. They alerted me to the DAPSI program, and we decided to apply because the goals of the program are aligned with our own goals.   In simple words, what challenge does your project address? My project re-implements existing protocols...