COMMONS
Code Open to Mutuality by Mortals; Organizations Negotiate with Steward
A software license for stewarded digital commons. COMMONS is not an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license.
What it seeks to support
- learning and transparency;
- mutuality and collaboration among natural persons;
- sustainable stewardship of software;
- negotiated participation by organizations.
Principles
- Individuals may use, study, modify, and share the Software.
- Organizations require permission or an exception from the Steward, except where the Steward enables a limited Evaluation in the Steward Record.
- A Steward-configured Evaluation is not a general organizational license and does not change Natural Person rights or stewardship duties.
- Commercial exploitation is reserved to the Steward unless expressly authorized.
- Stewardship is accountable and transferable.
- Improvements shared with the commons may be reincorporated by the Steward.
Comparison
| Question | MIT | AGPL | BSL | COMMONS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Individuals collaborate freely | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Organizations need permission | ✗ | ✗ | Sometimes | ✓ |
| Accountable Steward | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Distributed improvements return | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Documents
Full texts are hosted here. Source of truth for editing remains the COMMONS repository on Codeberg.
- License text · Markdown · Plain text
- FAQ
- Rationale
- Steward Record specification
- SPDX information
- Changelog
- Contributing
- Governance
- Example Steward Record
- Example license header
Status: COMMONS License v1.0 — draft for public review.
SPDX-License-Identifier:
LicenseRef-COMMONS-1.0