Should you wish to work with us, it is useful to become familiar with our values and how we will work together.
The Foundation is committed to openness, integrity, commitment, accountability, and respect for others, and expects the same from all partners.
Openness is vital for ideas to become stronger and spread through replication. It shortens the feedback cycle, enables many test implementations and creates opportunities beyond what we could even imagine. That is why we insist upon open communications, open reporting, open source software, open resources and open licences.
The Foundation funds all over the world. We need regular, open and honest communication to; learn, be accountable, report to our stakeholders and ensure contractual compliance.
As a privately funded Purpose Trust, the Foundation is not legally bound to disclose its financial or impact reports. However, since 2004 the Foundation has demonstrated its commitment to speak openly and transparently about its workings by publishing audited financial statements, including reports on all investments in Fellows and their projects.
The Foundation subscribes to the ethos embodied in free and open source software - collaboration and the freedom to use, adapt and share resources. We apply the free and open source philosophy as the underlying principle to our work. We use open licences to allow learning and resources to be used, adapted and shared widely. We give preference to the use of free and open source software in our own initiatives and require partners to do the same.
The Foundation is committed to opening knowledge resources. By knowledge resources we mean software, designs, project reports, manuals, research results and other intellectual creations. Knowledge resources are open when they are available for revision, translation, improvement and sharing under open licences, open standards and in open formats, free of technical protection measures. In order to do this, all knowledge resources must have clear ownership.
Knowledge Resources subject to or governed by copyright and database rights must be made open, as defined in the Open Definition: “A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.”
Software must be licensed with a license that complies with the Open Source Definition. Hardware is made open according to the Open Source Hardware Definition.
Considerations of privacy, confidentiality, security and utility may sometimes offer specific compelling reasons for us not to make certain documents or information available outside the Foundation and partners. Fear of unforeseeable consequences, of the negative reactions of others, or the desire to use patents to raise capital, are not compelling reasons to depart from our commitment to open.
If you wish to understand in more detail, please look through our contracts.
