Pierluigi Paganini September 01, 2020

The Tor Project announced the launch of the Tor Project Membership Program to financially support the work of the organizations.

The Tor Project launched the Tor Project Membership Program to financially support its work.

The move aims at diversifying funding in the budget of the organization and to increase unrestricted funds for the software development of tor and other tools.

The Tor Project Membership Program also aims at reinforcing partnerships with private organizations that want to support the work of the noprofit. 

“Today we are officially launching the Tor Project Membership Program, a new way for nonprofit and private sector organizations to financially support our work.” reads the announcement. “We decided to create a program inspired by what Tor is based on, community. Our goal is to build a supportive relationship between our nonprofit and private sector organizations that use our technology or want to support our mission.”

The five founding members are Avast, DuckDuckGo, Insurgo, Mullvad VPN, and Team Cymru.

The Tor Project Membership Program is very important to drastically reduce the turn-around period (six to twelve months) from submission of a proposal to the receipt of a contract and start of work.

Thanks to the membership the organization will propose a more agile development process.

“Because we are a software development organization, relying only on grant funding, forces us into a development model that is slow and archaic. We can never execute solutions immediately in an agile way or experiment quickly with possible paths.” continues the announcement. “We want to change that so we can respond to issues and start projects faster. And we can do that by increasing the number and amount of unrestricted contributions to the Tor Project.”

The Tor software is essential for anyone that wants to avoid censorship, including activists, journalists, and civil rights organizations. 

Several third-party organizations, such as GlobaLeaks, SecureDrop, Brave browser, and OnionShare include integrated support for Tor the network in their solutions. 

“Any membership level contribution means that your organization will have access to Onion Advisors and our special webinars. The only thing that differentiates the tiers is the public promotion of your membership. Each tier will come with varying opportunities to share your organization’s commitment to online privacy with our hundreds of thousands of followers and dedicated community.” concludes the announcement.

Companies interested in becoming a member could reach out to the organization by sending an email at [email protected].

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Tor Project Membership Program)

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