The institutional constitution.
I — Public benefit
Projects must primarily address a legitimate humanitarian, scientific, environmental, educational, accessibility, health, infrastructure, or civic problem.
II — Open source
Official software must remain publicly accessible. MIT is the default software license. Datasets, documentation, hardware, research, and other artifacts require an appropriate open license; MIT must not be applied blindly.
III — No commercial capture
No contributor, maintainer, sponsor, donor, company, or partner receives ownership of an official project because of financial or labor contributions. Forks and uses permitted by the applicable license remain permitted. Official governance, infrastructure, and identity cannot be privately acquired through contribution.
IV — Transparent development
Official projects should expose source, roadmap, issues, architecture, maintainers, contributors, decisions, releases, documentation, funding, deployments, and measured outcomes. Exclude security-sensitive information where publication would create legitimate risk.
V — Human outcomes
Lines of code, stars, contributors, downloads, and activity are operational metrics. They are not the mission. Measure what improved for people, communities, institutions, science, or the environment.
VI — Reusability
Whenever practical, build reusable public infrastructure rather than one-off implementations.
VII — Accessibility
Accessibility is an engineering requirement. Treat failures as bugs and include disabled people in research, design, and verification.
VIII — Privacy
Collect the minimum personal information necessary. Public-interest software must not become surveillance infrastructure.
IX — Sustainability
Open source does not mean abandoned source. Every accepted project must consider maintainership, documentation, deployment, infrastructure, security, succession, and long-term operation.