The trust

What it can't do

These are written into the part of the deed that nobody can ever change — not the trustees, not the members, not us.

• It can't let Kanecta go. No selling, giving away, licensing exclusively or mortgaging the code, the name or the domains. Not for profit, not at cost, not for a dollar.
• Nobody can profit from it. Not the trustees, not the people who started it. Wages for real work are fine. Profit and private benefit aren't.
• It can't make judgement calls. Wherever the trust might need to "do something", the deed has a rule that applies automatically instead. If no new price is set, the last one carries on. If a mutual meets the published criteria, it's registered — the trust can't say no.
• It can't touch your money. You pay your mutual. The trust covers its own costs from small registration fees that mutuals pay.

Three more protections are being considered for the permanent part: that the source is always available, that the right to fork can never be removed, and that only individual people ever vote. They're marked as candidates in the draft deed.

What it does

• Holds the copyright, the trade marks and the domains.
• Holds and publishes the licence.
• Keeps the paperwork that lets people contribute code.
• Registers any mutual that meets the published criteria.
• Hosts the main copy of the code, and mirrors of each mutual's copy.
• Adds up the members' price votes and records the result.
• Instructs outside lawyers if someone breaches the copyright.

That's it. It doesn't choose what gets built, doesn't run the mutuals and doesn't decide who's in charge of the code.

Who runs it

To begin with, a few named independent trustees. Over time, trustees will be chosen by lot from members who've put their hand up — roughly two-thirds from people who've worked on Kanecta in the last year and a third from members in good standing. There's no election to buy and no appointment power to seize. The founder gets no special seat.

Why a trust, and why not a charity

In a trust, the people in charge can control the property but can never benefit from it. That's exactly the shape we wanted. It isn't a charity: Kanecta exists for the benefit of its members, not the public at large, and we're happy to pay tax like everyone else. No halo.

If the trust ends

The deed doesn't hand Kanecta to anyone. If the trust is wound up, the licence's conditions simply stop applying and Kanecta becomes ordinary permissive open source, free to everyone. Leftover things like cash and domain names go to an open-source or digital-commons organisation.

That means killing the trust to grab Kanecta achieves nothing: the moment it becomes possible to take, it's already free to everyone.