How it works

What's the same

• You get all the source, not a cut-down edition. There's no open core and no paid tier with the good bits.
• You can run it for anything you like.
• You can change it and share your changes.
• You can fork it. Anyone can, at any time, without asking.
• It's built the way open source is built: in the open, by people who argue about it, with the freedom to walk away.

The one thing that's different

Each person who uses Kanecta:

1. belongs to a mutual — a non-profit, member-run organisation that looks after Kanecta (you choose which one),
2. does a five-minute declaration once a year — pre-filled, mostly just confirming things, and
3. pays their dues, or declares hardship.

That's the only difference. It's what makes you an owner rather than a user: you get a vote on where Kanecta goes, the same single vote as everyone else.

Owning something costs a bit

Like rates on a house or subs at a club: being an owner comes with a small cost and a say in how things are run. You pay your mutual, not us and not the trust. Your mutual uses it to pay the people who build and maintain Kanecta.

There's one price, everywhere. The members set it by vote. Each year's declaration has one line on it: "The price is currently X. What do you think it should be?" The leading idea is that the middle answer wins, so nobody can drag it by voting absurdly high or low. Mutuals don't set the price and can't compete on it, so they compete on being good places to belong to instead.

In this prototype there's no price yet — the first vote hasn't happened, and there are a couple of legal questions to settle before there is one.

If you can't afford it

Say so in your declaration. That's it. Nobody approves it, nobody checks, nobody can refuse it. You're a full owner with the same vote as anyone else, and the app shows you the same green dot.

Your declaration is visible inside your own mutual, among people you know. That's the only check there is, and it's deliberately a gentle one. Your name is never published anywhere.

What the app does (and doesn't)

• Free for three months, with everything switched on.
• After that, a friendly reminder that you'd be welcome as an owner.
• A green dot once your membership and declaration are up to date. Paying, hardship or helping out in kind: same dot.

It never locks you out. There's no licence key, no activation, no phone-home and no tracking. We don't build that stuff and we never will — it would turn Kanecta into the kind of software it's meant to replace. The licence does the asking. You do the deciding.

Who looks after the code

The mutuals do. They employ the developers, decide what they work on, and ideally pool their work into one shared version — but they don't have to. If one goes off the rails, its members can leave for another, or start their own. The main version stays the main version because it's good, not because anyone owns the title.

Who holds it all

The trust. It holds the copyright, the name and the licence, and records the price the members choose. It's built to be boring: it can't sell anything, can't profit, and doesn't get to make judgement calls.

If it all falls apart

Every obligation in the licence only applies while there's a working way to meet it. If there are no mutuals, there's nobody to pay, so you don't. If the trust itself is wound up, the conditions simply fall away and Kanecta becomes ordinary permissive open source. Nobody can grab it on the way down, because there's nothing left to grab.

The full model, at oosl.org →