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content/foundation/core-principles/index.md

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+---
+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