Hard questions

Because with a price of zero, big software gets paid for by volunteers or by companies, and whoever pays decides. We wanted it paid for, and decided, by the people who use it. That takes exactly one change to open source — everyone who uses it is a member — and we've kept everything else.

If your project is a small library, plain open source is probably right for you. We use MIT for ours. The longer answer.

You don't have to — use the free one if it suits you. But "free" usually means one of two things: someone's volunteering for you, or a company is paying for it because it gets something back. The first wears people out. The second means the company steers.

What you get here is a share in the thing itself: a vote on where it goes, a guarantee it can never be sold, and people paid properly to keep it secure. If you genuinely can't afford it, declare hardship and you get all of that anyway.

It is source available — we say so on every page. Most source-available licences exist to protect a company's business: you can look, but the company keeps control. This one does the opposite. There's no company to protect. The licence's one condition is what makes you an owner, and the trust that holds it can never sell it or profit from it.

The trust deed. The code, the name and the domains sit in a trust that can never sell, give away, exclusively license or mortgage them — and that part of the deed can't be changed by anyone, including us. We hold no special power: no veto, no founder seat, no power to amend.

And if someone did capture the trust anyway, there'd be nothing to take. They couldn't sell it, couldn't profit from it, couldn't close the source, and couldn't stop everyone else forking it and walking away. What the trust can't do.

A licence fee buys you permission from someone who owns the software. Here, nobody owns it but the members. The money goes to your mutual, which pays the people who work on Kanecta, at a price you and the other members vote on every year.

The test is who's in charge. With a licence fee, the company that takes the money decides. Here, the people who pay are the people who decide, one vote each — and someone who declares hardship gets exactly the same vote as someone who pays.

Nobody. Nobody approves your membership — no mutual can refuse you. Nobody approves your hardship declaration — it's your call. Nobody checks up on you through the software — there's no licence key and no phone-home. The licence sets out the terms, and you decide whether to keep them.

Mostly, nothing — and we're fine with that. Large organisations don't knowingly break licences; their lawyers and auditors won't let them. Individuals mostly do the right thing when they're asked nicely and can see who they'd be letting down: not a corporation, but the other members who pay their bit.

We'd rather some people get away with it than build surveillance into software people are meant to own.

No. You're an owner, not a contributor. Most owners will never look at the source, and that's fine. You get a vote either way.

No. It's source available. Open source means no conditions on using the software at all, and we have one. We're not applying for OSI approval and we're not trying to sneak under the label.

No. No email, no account, no sign-up. If you join a mutual, that relationship is between you and them.

It stays on your machine, it's yours, and it exports cleanly. The licence only covers the software. The data in your fields is private and always will be.

The licence's conditions only apply while there's a working way to meet them. No mutuals means nobody to pay. If the trust is wound up, the conditions end and Kanecta becomes ordinary permissive open source. If someone later rebuilds the machinery, the conditions come back. Kanecta never ends up locked away or owned by someone.

Kanecta was started in New Zealand and has been about twenty years in the making. The people who started it get no special share, seat or power — they're members like everyone else, and if Kanecta succeeds they'll be a small minority of its owners.

Not yet. This site is a prototype. The trust doesn't exist yet, no mutuals are registered, there's no price, and no lawyer has reviewed the deed or the licence. We're publishing early so people can tell us what's wrong with it.