IRCNow

Here is our commitment to you, the people:

All works on our website ircnow.org, as well as all apps and server software will guarantee these freedoms:

1. The freedom to use the work
2. The freedom to study the work
3. The freedom to modify the work
4. The freedom to share the work
5. The freedom to reproduce the work

…for any purpose, without fee, without requiring permission.

We are committed to the following:

Our project will be functional using only open protocols and standards. These include protocols such as XMPP, IRC, and SIP. There will be no requirements to use proprietary protocols. We allow interoperability with proprietary protocols, but we will not require customers to use proprietary protocols.

Specifically, our project will not require the use of Telegram, Signal, Facebook, Discord, WhatsApp, LINE, Facebook Messenger, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, Gmail, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google App Engine, or Google FireBase. The app must be functional without any of these apps or protocols.

Customers must be able to run a functional app using only open-source software on BSD and Linux. Project software can depend on proprietary software (such as Windows or iOS) but must never be required from customers.

This project's software must respect users' freedoms. There must be no copyrighted content in the project that forbids reproduction, modification, or usage.

Specifically, it must be possible to reproduce and self-host this software on outside infrastructure. We must guarantee that our servers work on open source Linux and BSD operating systems.

The rules below are flexible goals which cannot always be fulfilled, but which we strive for:

1. Security and correctness are top priorities, not performance, cost, popularity, or appearance
2. We prefer software with a long history of reliability and portability, not features
3. We prefer software with a permissive license rather than the GPL. The ideal is the public domain.
4. We strive for accurate, complete, and fully open documentation.
5. We prefer software that is simpler for the programmer to understand
6. We strive to avoid 3rd party dependencies

We strive to follow the UNIX philosophy:

1. Software should do one thing and do it well
2. Programs are designed to work together
3. Text streams are the common interface between programs