---
title: Core Principles
date: 2025-07-06
weight: 80
---
The Civil Society Technology Foundation operates according to the following core principles that guide all our work, partnerships, and initiatives.

## 1. Sovereignty by Design

**Users must own their data and control their computing environment.**

Digital systems should be designed with sovereignty as a foundational requirement, not an afterthought. This means:

- Data remains under user control by default
- Consent must be explicit, informed, and revocable
- Infrastructure should be designed for individual or community ownership
- Privacy is a fundamental right, not a premium feature

## 2. Tools Before Policy

**We build alternatives rather than asking for permission.**

While policy reform has its place, we prioritize creating technical solutions that enable autonomy regardless of regulatory environments:

- Direct action through tool-building creates immediate paths to freedom
- Self-determination cannot wait for legislative or corporate reform
- Working alternatives demonstrate what's possible and accelerate change
- Technical empowerment reduces reliance on regulatory protection

## 3. Open Source, Always

**Software must be libre—free to use, study, modify, and share.**

Open source is not simply a development methodology but a foundation for digital freedom:

- Source code transparency enables trust verification and community oversight
- Freedom to modify ensures tools can adapt to evolving needs
- Rights to redistribute create resilience against capture or abandonment
- Collective improvement leads to higher quality and security

## 4. Self-Hosting Infrastructure

**Individuals and communities should control their own infrastructure.**

Centralized hosting creates fundamental risks of capture, surveillance, and dependency:

- Local infrastructure ownership provides true digital autonomy
- Self-hosting creates resilience against external disruption
- Community-scale infrastructure balances efficiency with sovereignty
- Infrastructure design should prioritize simplicity, reliability, and maintainability

## 5. AI for the People

**Artificial intelligence must be open, efficient, and serve civil society.**

As AI becomes increasingly central to digital systems, its governance and accessibility are critical:

- AI systems should run on commodity hardware where possible
- Models and training data should be publicly available and auditable
- Development should be guided by public needs, not commercial imperatives
- Benefits should accrue to communities, not just model owners

## 6. Transparent Governance

**All governance must be visible, accountable, and auditable.**

How we govern ourselves models the world we seek to create:

- Decision-making processes should be documented and accessible
- Influence should be earned through contribution, not financial control
- Community participation in governance should be substantive, not symbolic
- Accountability requires both transparency and mechanisms for change

## 7. Healthy Ecosystems Win

**Projects succeed through their value to communities, not popularity or funding.**

We evaluate success by contribution to civil society, not market metrics:

- Genuine utility to real communities outweighs vanity metrics
- Sustainability matters more than rapid growth
- Complementary projects create more value than competitors
- Diversity of approaches strengthens the ecosystem as a whole

## 8. Forkability is Freedom

**Divergence is a right. Balkanization is not failure—it is resilience.**

The ability to take a different path ensures true independence:

- Projects should be designed for potential forking from inception
- Architectural choices should facilitate independent operation
- Community disagreement should be respected through supported divergence
- Diversity of implementations creates antifragility in the ecosystem

## 9. Interoperability via Consent

**Standards emerge from alignment, not imposition.**

True interoperability respects sovereignty while enabling cooperation:

- Protocols should be open, documented, and implementable by anyone
- Standards adoption should be voluntary and beneficial
- Federation should respect boundary decisions of participants
- Gateways between systems should preserve user sovereignty

## 10. Contribution Defines Membership

**Participation is earned through action. Identity is contextual and optional.**

Communities grow stronger through active contribution:

- Value is created through doing, not just affiliating
- Multiple forms of contribution should be recognized and valued
- Identity verification should be proportional to the context
- Privacy and pseudonymity are valid choices in appropriate contexts

## 11. Critical Adoption over Blind Use

**Pragmatism means understanding trade-offs.**

We advocate informed choice rather than ideological purity:

- Users should understand what rights they give up and why
- Perfect sovereignty may be balanced against practical needs
- Transition paths from closed to open systems are valuable
- Transparency about compromises builds trust and education
