OpenRevolt

Abstract. A small number of companies own the software most people work with, and they set its price, its terms and its lifespan. Free software has shown that the alternative can be built. It has not shown how to pay the people who build it, or how to give the people who use it a say. We propose a cooperative that funds open-source alternatives to dominant proprietary products, records every accepted contribution in a public ledger, and gives ownership to contributors and users in proportion to what they put in. Decisions are made by members, one member one vote, never by holdings. This paper describes the first twelve projects, the budget proposed for each, the contribution unit, and what is still undecided.

1. Introduction

Most of the software people use to work, write, draw and talk to each other is owned by a handful of companies. They set the price, change the terms and withdraw products when it suits them. The people who write that software own none of it and can be removed from it in an afternoon.

Free software proved decades ago that the alternative can be built in the open [2]. What it has not settled is who pays the people doing the building, and who decides. Most projects depend on volunteers, on a single sponsor, or on a company that is free to change the licence.

Bitcoin showed that a public record can coordinate strangers with no company in the middle [1]. Cooperatives have shown for much longer that the people who do the work and use the product can own the organisation [4], and that shared resources can be governed by those who depend on them [3]. OpenRevolt combines the two: a cooperative that funds open-source alternatives and keeps a public record of who built them.

2. Principles

• Open source. Everything the cooperative funds is published under an OSI-approved licence, with copyleft where it protects the work.
• Upstream first. Where good free software already exists, we fund it and contribute to it. We do not fork what we can help.
• Owned by members. Contributors and users are the owners. There are no outside shareholders.
• One member, one vote. Holdings never buy influence.
• Lawful by construction. Interoperability work follows the rules written for it, including clean-room practice and the decompilation limits of EU law [5].
• Public accounts. Budgets, payments and the contribution record are published.

3. Projects

The first twelve projects each replace a product that many people pay for and cannot inspect, in a field where free software to build on already exists. Table 1 lists them with the budget proposed for each. Budgets are in contribution units (Section 4) and pay for work. Cash costs are handled separately (Section 6).

No project has started. The contributor column is a count, not a target, and it stays at zero until someone has work accepted.

Each project has a public proposal in the governance repository at github.com/openrevolt-org/governance, where it is discussed and where its status changes are recorded. The status column links to it.

Each project is run by its maintainers. They review work in public and release units from the project budget when work is accepted. If a project is closed, its unreleased budget returns to the pool.

4. The contribution unit

Every accepted contribution is recorded on a public ledger and earns units. Units are a record of ownership in the cooperative. They are not a currency, and none are for sale.

A salary needs an employer and equity needs a company. A cooperative needs a record of who contributed what. We propose a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 units, issued over time against accepted work.

4.1 How units are earned

Contributors earn units from the budget of the project they work on. Users earn from a separate pool when they pay for a hosted service, so that the people who depend on the software own part of the organisation that maintains it.

Example. A developer fixes a colour-management bug in Open Image. Two maintainers review the change in public and accept it. The ledger records the contribution, the reviewers and 1,200 units issued from Open Image's budget, which falls from 30,000,000 to 29,998,800. Anyone can check the entry without asking the cooperative. The figures are illustrative.

4.2 Supply and allocation

4.3 What a unit is for

A unit is a record of contribution. When the cooperative earns a surplus, what remains after costs and reserves is returned to members in proportion to the units they hold, in the way cooperatives have long returned surplus to the members who generated it [4]. Units carry no votes (Section 5).

4.4 The ledger

A spreadsheet kept by the founders would be simpler, but members would have to trust whoever keeps it. Ownership that can be edited by its custodian is not ownership. The record must be public and verifiable by anyone without trusting the cooperative. A public blockchain with low fees is one way to do that, and Polygon and Base are candidates. A signed, append-only log is another. The choice is open.

4.5 What it is not

No unit has been issued and none is for sale. The legal form of the unit under EU law [6][7], including whether it can be transferred, will be settled with counsel before the first unit is issued.

5. Governance

Members elect a board, and the board decides. Members can overrule the board at a general meeting. Every member has one vote, whatever they hold.

There are two kinds of member: contributors, who have had work accepted, and users, who pay for a hosted service. Both vote.

The founder sits on the first board for a fixed founding term and stands for election after that like any other member. The purpose of the cooperative (open source, member ownership, one member one vote) can be changed only by a supermajority of all members.

The intended legal form is a cooperative under EU law, either a European Cooperative Society [8] or a national cooperative. It has not been registered.

6. Costs and income

Servers, security audits and legal work are paid in euros, and units cannot pay for them. Income is expected to come from membership dues, hosted versions of the software, sponsorship and public grants. Each project has a cash budget alongside its unit budget, and both are published. Surplus goes first to reserves and then to members.

7. Status and open questions

As of November 2026 this is a proposal. The cooperative is not registered, no project has started and no unit has been issued.

The following are undecided:

• The legal form and seat of the cooperative.
• The legal character of the unit under MiCA and MiFID II [6][7].
• How to measure contribution without rewarding whoever games the measure. This is the hardest problem in the design.
• Which project starts first.
• The ledger technology.

8. Conclusion

We have proposed a cooperative that funds open-source alternatives to proprietary software, pays for work with ownership, records contribution in public and keeps control with its members. None of it needs permission from the companies it competes with. It needs people willing to do the first piece of accepted work.

References

1. S. Nakamoto, "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," 2008.
2. E. S. Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," O'Reilly, 1999.
3. E. Ostrom, "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action," Cambridge University Press, 1990.
4. International Co-operative Alliance, "Statement on the Co-operative Identity," 1995.
5. Directive 2009/24/EC on the legal protection of computer programs, Article 6.
6. Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets (MiCA).
7. Directive 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments (MiFID II).
8. Council Regulation (EC) No 1435/2003 on the Statute for a European Cooperative Society (SCE).