About

The IANUA initiative is for a better integration of open technologies & knowledge with commercial interests & platforms. We propose to make a clear distinction between software & knowledge assets, which should be open technologies, and commercial distribution channels, which can offer many methods of access and convenience for different price points. This would incentivize commercial platform providers to innovate on service, efficiency, speed, & bundling instead of moats & lock-in techniques. Currently probably half of the software industry is focused on building moats to this or that cloud or SaaS platform, instead of building useful & sustainable features for users. Users, especially in companies & governments, but also individuals, suffer from advanced lock-in & subscription techniques to get feature packages that often fail to live up to the marketing promises, especially in the mid to long term, and by then it’s too late and costly to switch to a different provider. We can and should change this.

The IANUA Manifesto

• We hold that knowledge & software assets should be open technologies, with few exceptions. That means software assets are licensed with GPL or LGPL only, and media content with Creative Commons. Commercial models should only be used for providing better ways to access and use the assets, for example through SaaS hosting, printed or e-books and media, or other ways for users to more easily consume, use and benefit from the technology and information.
• We pledge to the responsible use of energy & resources. Compute, and the energy & water needed to power it, are finite, and service providers, for example SaaS or information providers, have the responsibility to use clever methods of delivering passive services, meaning scale-to-zero when not being used, and do not waste resources on “bells & whistles” features designed to sell users on proprietary, lock-in and moat-protected platforms.
• Core functionality, form & user-outcomes over featuritis. Most commercial software products are overloaded, feature-bloated monstrosities, and waste countless resources (see point 2) trying to make bloated, slow core products run with acceptable performance to hide the gross waste & bloat that is powering the product behind the scenes. Only a very few commercial software & service providers have managed to avoid this trap (you immediately notice an intentionality & elegance, but it is rare indeed). Open technologies benefit from public scrutiny, distributed contributions & improvements, and would encourage providers to innovate with on-boarding, operations, support, speed, etc.., and not in working to lock users into their particular platform.
• We pledge to only offer up-sells ONLY for the better running and operating of the services (higher reliability, support, speed, etc..), and NOT for more features. All features should always be available in all versions, and also to self-host, because software & knowledge assets should be open technologies, as outlined in point 1. Commercial models are only for the bundling, running and operating of the services, in ever more convenient, innovative & reliable ways, not for extra proprietary features that lock users into a particular provider.

Are you interested in contributing and supporting this mission? Reach out to [email protected] for more info.