The Naamio Foundation will be a new not-for-profit cooperative entity. This project is intended to provide the basic structure for the cooperative designed to provide support for the development of ethically-driven open source projects aimed at decentralized and distributed technologies. This project will provide the rules of the cooperative, the articles of association and / or the memorandum of association, and the primary ethical source draft license.
To ensure that the cooperative is built to align with the goals of the community and the cooperative members, these documents exist in markdown format for ease of editing, collaboration, and debate.
To work on the formation of this cooperative issues and PRs are welcome.
The objectives of the Foundation are as follows:
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support and develop decentralized technologies (including software, hardware, and protocols) to improve availability and access to technology across borders, regardless of geography;
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support the development of ethically-driven open source technologies without commercial drivers;
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remove obstacles of adoption for open source software;
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restrict the capability of surveillance, tracking, or restrictions within open source software, beyond those of ethics;
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support projects which provide personal security and protect the privacy of individuals;
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provide a flat and equal structure for all members that will provide sustainable reimbursement for efforts into ethical open source projects;
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provide a metric-driven and sustainable reimbursement model for third-party technology entities who build technologies that are vital to the Foundation's operations.
Initially it is envisaged that this cooperative will support a small number of open source projects focused on decentralized communications and data.
The cooperative will attempt to use and promote decentralized open source alternatives where available, and will simultaneously target as many platforms as possible for greater accessibility.
The cooperative will be self-funded where possible, and will not accept sponsors or funds, directly or indirectly, without the explicit approval of the cooperative members. In the rules of association the cooperative will lay out an initial set of foundations with which sponsorship can be considered, which will strive to prohibit the influence of the cooperative by companies focused on personal data acquisition, tracking, or surveillance.
The cooperative will set out a code-of-conduct within its articles of association to ensure that the cooperative is founded on ethical and equal treatment of its members, the community, and the greater public. The use of platforms and services which are proven to contradict the cooperative's rules will not be used by the cooperative.
The following include the complete list of articles required for incorporation of the cooperative:
Naamio Cloud will fall under the Foundation as a infrastructure project to provide easy distribution and use of ethical software.
The infrastructure project will operate as a "cloud company", providing paid-for services with technologies developed within the Foundation and externally. Examples of external projects supported under the Naamio Cloud services portfolio may include the Matrix reference implementation; Synapse, and the ActivityPub project; Mastodon.
The goal of Naamio Cloud is to create sustainable revenue and reduce the technical challenges present in using open, distributed, and decentralized technologies.