The Pirate Charter · JRCv1 draft
Free. Libre. Truly Free.
You can't pirate what belongs to everyone.
The software is free. The process is open. The costs are visible. Your data remains under your control. Anyone can carry the work forward.
If we can explain how to build it, we should explain how to run it. If we can explain how to run it, we should explain what it costs. And if someone can make it better or cheaper, they should be free to try.
Six freedoms
- Creation Anyone may reuse, fork and sell eligible project code without asking.
- Development The specs, decisions, agent sessions and build steps are published, not just the output.
- Data People control their records and can leave, with AT Protocol as the default.
- Stewardship Another provider can operate and maintain the software.
- Economics Operating costs are public, sourced and dated.
- Governance Independent contributors can improve the work or continue it without us.
What ties them together is the freedom to continue: the work should stay useful when its creator, host, maintainer, AI vendor or sponsor disappears.
Could your software survive without you?
That's the test we're asking every project to take, starting with this one. A person with no inside knowledge should be able to clone this repository, build the site, deploy it somewhere else and find every cost and decision. The challenge explains how to try it and how to report what failed.
An old idea, carried further
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine.”
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813. Monticello transcription (spelling normalized).
We didn't invent software freedom. GNU, SQLite, Creative Commons and many others came first. The history page credits them and says what we're adding.
Where things stand
This is a draft. JRCv1 is a proposed conformance standard, not a software licence, and nothing has been independently certified. No founding transcript has been published yet, and no timestamp proof has been issued. The provenance page lists every digest and its state, and the costs page lists every expense, including the ones we don't know yet.