Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2023-10-02
Buyer: SPRIND GmbH
Country: DE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 72262000: Software development services | 73000000
Estimated value: 491400 EUR

Technical requirements: Igalia S.L.  is an open source consultancy that has made massive contributions to various FOSS technologies, including web browsers, ECMAScript, WebAssembly, RISC-V, Mesa, and user-space GPU drivers. They are proposing to work on two libraries within the web development space that are critical to keeping our web infrastructure safe and accesible to the public.
Igalia S.L. is an open source consultancy that has made massive contributions to various FOSS technologies, including web browsers, ECMAScript, WebAssembly, RISC-V, Mesa, and user-space GPU drivers. They are proposing to work on two libraries within the web development space that are critical to keeping our web infrastructure safe and accesible to the public.
The first library is the Test262 compatibility and interoperability reference testing suite for the Javascript language. It helps ensure that new JS features are implemented consistently across different Javascript engines and can highlight areas where improvements are needed to the specification. The library has not had funded maintainers for a few months, which has slowed down the work considerably, and creates a threat that different JS implementations can diverge from each other and create security risks. By investing in the Test262 library, STF is contributing to strengthening and securing Javascript standardisation and interoperable implementations, and contributing to securing the FOSS ecosystem.
The second library they will work on is called AXAccess, a library for inspecting the accessibility of desktop and mobile applications. Assistive Technologies (ATs) provide equal access to software and information to users with different disabilities and needs. There is a current lack of a well-maintained, cross-platform, open-source library that allow developers to test their applications for accessibility issues, and developers often have to rely on expensive tools or more often, they don’t address accessibility issues.
AXAccess is hoping to address this gap by creating an open-source library that could be used by web developers in testing their work, as well as be the basis for further tools that can be used in order to improve the accessibility of their work. Accessibility has long been underfunded and an issue in open source software, which have denied access to many people to be able to use FOSS infrastructure. Bad accessibility can also introduce security risks to the users or platforms. By investing in AXAccess, STF is contributing to its mission to secure and strengthen the FOSS ecosystem.
Milestone B2. Proof of concept developed: support for three major desktop accessibility APIs on Window, Mac and Linux (5 months, 1.5 FTE)
Milestone B2.1. Completed support for traversal of the accessibillity tree and inspecting basic properties via the NSAccessibility protocol on OSX (1.5 month, 1.5 FTE)
Milestone B2.2. Completed support for traversal of the accessibillity tree and inspecting basic properties via MSAA/IAccessible2 on Windows (2 months, 1.5 FTE)
Milestone B2.3. Completed support for traversal of the accessibillity tree and inspecting basic properties via ATK/ATSPI on Linux (1.5 month, 1.5 FTE)
Milestone B3. Tested and polished library through the library’s incorporation into real world use cases (6 months, 0.5 FTE)
As a research and development service, the contract is excluded from the scope of application of public procurement law (cf. Section 116 (1) No. 2 Act against Restraints on Competition).


Winner: Igalia S.L.
Award value: 491400