Intent of Licencing

The aim of the licencing scheme is to enable worker owned cooperatives to use the source code to whatever ends they need, and to ensure that they have advantage over traditional businesses. It is believed that worker owned cooperatives inherently contribute to the quality of the commons by the nature of the profits of the cooperative being shared amongst the workers. The latter statement is enforced by the peer-production licence.

Generally there is a desire that privately owned companies who stand to gain from this source code should make a contribution either to the commons through the terms of the GNU Affero Licence or by supporting the co-op maintaining this repo.

However, in order to have it actually be a part of the commons, another option is granted: the GNU Affero Licence. This means that people can use the source as much as they like, but if they modify it and put it 'in the cloud' (which is defined by the license as making it accessible over a network) or redistribute it otherwise then they must contribute back to the source code base. This is the strictest form of the GPL and many businesses find that the terms are too stringent for their operations.

As such there is a third and final option, if you wish to use this source for commercial purposes as a non-worker-owned company, then you must contribute back to the ad-hoc collective who maintain this source code - something which is to be organised between the repo's maintainers and whoever would like to use this source. While the price is negotiable, the asking price is £100,000 per annum which will buy you the rights to use and modify the source as you see fit with no support, warranty or guarantee. Contributors to this repository also agree that this is part of the bargain - however the exact terms have not been worked out for this yet as I (jshulver) am the only current contributor to this repository. It is imagined that equity based 'salaries' would be paid for some reasonable amount of time so long as the coop has money in the bank (which it does not at the moment).