root@kryptonwolf:~$

philosophy

what is FOSS?

FOSS means Free and Open Source Software. "Free" refers to freedom, not price. You are free to run it, study it, change it, and share it — for any purpose.

The four essential freedoms, as defined by the Free Software Foundation:

That's it. No secrets. No lock-in. No corporation deciding what you're allowed to know about the tools you use every day.

why FOSS is better

Not because it's free of charge — it often isn't. Because it's auditable. When the source is open, anyone can read it, test it, find bugs, find backdoors, find surveillance. When it's closed, you're trusting the vendor's word. FOSS replaces trust in corporations with trust in evidence.

FOSS is also sustainable. A proprietary product dies when the company abandons it. FOSS can be forked, maintained, and continued by anyone who needs it. The community owns the future of the software, not a balance sheet.

why we prefer copyleft

There are two families of FOSS licenses: permissive and copyleft.

Permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, Apache) let anyone take the code, modify it, and close it. They can turn your work into a proprietary product and sell it back to you. The freedom is given away — including the freedom to remove freedom from others.

Copyleft licenses (GPL, AGPL) require that modified versions stay free. If you distribute the software, you distribute the source. If you improve it, your improvements are shared. The freedom travels with the code. You can build a business on it, but you can't lock it down.

Permissive licenses share with everyone, including those who won't share back. Copyleft licenses share with everyone who's willing to share too. We prefer the latter. Freedom should be a condition, not a suggestion.

why AGPLv3

The GPL has a gap: if you run software as a network service — a website, an API, a cloud platform — you never "distribute" it. So you never have to share your modifications. This is the SaaS loophole. A company can take GPL code, improve it, run it as a paid service, and keep their improvements proprietary.

The AGPL (Affero General Public License) closes that gap. If you offer the software over a network, you must share the source — including your modifications. The freedom extends to the user at the other end of the network, not just the person who downloaded the binary.

For a company building sovereign cloud infrastructure, this matters. The tools we deploy — Matrix, Pelican, and others — should stay free even when they're running as services. If someone improves them, the community gets those improvements. No SaaS provider can wall off the garden.

the WTFPL

We also like the WTFPL — Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License. It's the most permissive license that exists. Zero conditions. We use it for content where we want maximum freedom — like this website. No attribution required, no restrictions, no fine print.

There's a tension between copyleft and WTFPL. Copyleft protects freedom by requiring it. WTFPL gives freedom by removing all limits. We use both, in different contexts, for different reasons. The code that runs infrastructure needs copyleft to stay free. The words on this page can be free without conditions because ideas should flow without friction.

what this means for you

When we deploy your infrastructure, every line of code is auditable. You can read it, patch it, fork it, and own it. No vendor can audit your system remotely. No corporation can revoke your license. No update can slip in a backdoor without you seeing it. That's not a feature — it's the foundation.

And when you become self-sufficient and want to take everything we built and go your own way — that's not just allowed. That's the goal.