128 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
128 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Core Principles
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date: 2025-07-06
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weight: 80
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---
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The Civil Society Technology Foundation operates according to the following core principles that guide all our work, partnerships, and initiatives.
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## 1. Sovereignty by Design
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**Users must own their data and control their computing environment.**
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Digital systems should be designed with sovereignty as a foundational requirement, not an afterthought. This means:
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- Data remains under user control by default
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- Consent must be explicit, informed, and revocable
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- Infrastructure should be designed for individual or community ownership
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- Privacy is a fundamental right, not a premium feature
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## 2. Tools Before Policy
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**We build alternatives rather than asking for permission.**
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While policy reform has its place, we prioritize creating technical solutions that enable autonomy regardless of regulatory environments:
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- Direct action through tool-building creates immediate paths to freedom
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- Self-determination cannot wait for legislative or corporate reform
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- Working alternatives demonstrate what's possible and accelerate change
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- Technical empowerment reduces reliance on regulatory protection
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## 3. Open Source, Always
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**Software must be libre—free to use, study, modify, and share.**
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Open source is not simply a development methodology but a foundation for digital freedom:
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- Source code transparency enables trust verification and community oversight
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- Freedom to modify ensures tools can adapt to evolving needs
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- Rights to redistribute create resilience against capture or abandonment
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- Collective improvement leads to higher quality and security
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## 4. Self-Hosting Infrastructure
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**Individuals and communities should control their own infrastructure.**
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Centralized hosting creates fundamental risks of capture, surveillance, and dependency:
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- Local infrastructure ownership provides true digital autonomy
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- Self-hosting creates resilience against external disruption
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- Community-scale infrastructure balances efficiency with sovereignty
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- Infrastructure design should prioritize simplicity, reliability, and maintainability
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## 5. AI for the People
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**Artificial intelligence must be open, efficient, and serve civil society.**
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As AI becomes increasingly central to digital systems, its governance and accessibility are critical:
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- AI systems should run on commodity hardware where possible
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- Models and training data should be publicly available and auditable
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- Development should be guided by public needs, not commercial imperatives
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- Benefits should accrue to communities, not just model owners
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## 6. Transparent Governance
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**All governance must be visible, accountable, and auditable.**
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How we govern ourselves models the world we seek to create:
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- Decision-making processes should be documented and accessible
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- Influence should be earned through contribution, not financial control
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- Community participation in governance should be substantive, not symbolic
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- Accountability requires both transparency and mechanisms for change
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## 7. Healthy Ecosystems Win
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**Projects succeed through their value to communities, not popularity or funding.**
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We evaluate success by contribution to civil society, not market metrics:
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- Genuine utility to real communities outweighs vanity metrics
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- Sustainability matters more than rapid growth
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- Complementary projects create more value than competitors
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- Diversity of approaches strengthens the ecosystem as a whole
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## 8. Forkability is Freedom
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**Divergence is a right. Balkanization is not failure—it is resilience.**
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The ability to take a different path ensures true independence:
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- Projects should be designed for potential forking from inception
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- Architectural choices should facilitate independent operation
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- Community disagreement should be respected through supported divergence
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- Diversity of implementations creates antifragility in the ecosystem
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## 9. Interoperability via Consent
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**Standards emerge from alignment, not imposition.**
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True interoperability respects sovereignty while enabling cooperation:
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- Protocols should be open, documented, and implementable by anyone
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- Standards adoption should be voluntary and beneficial
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- Federation should respect boundary decisions of participants
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- Gateways between systems should preserve user sovereignty
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## 10. Contribution Defines Membership
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**Participation is earned through action. Identity is contextual and optional.**
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Communities grow stronger through active contribution:
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- Value is created through doing, not just affiliating
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- Multiple forms of contribution should be recognized and valued
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- Identity verification should be proportional to the context
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- Privacy and pseudonymity are valid choices in appropriate contexts
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## 11. Critical Adoption over Blind Use
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**Pragmatism means understanding trade-offs.**
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We advocate informed choice rather than ideological purity:
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- Users should understand what rights they give up and why
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- Perfect sovereignty may be balanced against practical needs
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- Transition paths from closed to open systems are valuable
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- Transparency about compromises builds trust and education
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