# steading: every page > You decide what to build. Agents plan it, build it, review it, and ship it, with proof at every step, on machines you own. Steading is the open-source stack for building software this way, and you can start running it today! Each page below starts with its own frontmatter, including its address, and pages are separated by horizontal rules. --- title: Open for good canonical: https://stead.ing/open-for-good/ summary: Why Steading can't be relicensed, and what that means for anyone building on it. site: steading --- # Open for good Steading is open source, permanently. If there is ever a hosted offering, it exists to support the project, not to capture the market. That's a promise, and promises about licenses have been broken before. So Steading is set up to make breaking it impossible: - **Contributors keep their copyright.** Contributions come with a sign-off (the [Developer Certificate of Origin](https://developercertificate.org/)), not a contributor license agreement. With many copyright holders, nobody, including the people who started Steading, can relicense the code later. - **A permissive license: ISC.** Anyone may host Steading, including better than we do. - **The name can't be held hostage.** In time the names and marks move to a neutral home. - **Money serves the project.** Education, support, and hosting for people who'd rather not run it themselves can fund the work. None of them will ever gate it. ## Why not the GPL? Steading spreads by one engineer adopting one project without asking anyone, and many companies forbid GPL and AGPL code outright. Many Steading projects are also meant to be built into other people's tools, which copyleft would push onto them. Copyleft protects code from being taken private. Steading protects itself differently: contributors keep their copyright, so nobody can ever relicense it. What makes Steading worth joining is the people building it together, and that can't be forked. Build on it however you like. See [how we work](how-we-work.md) for how decisions get made. --- --- title: How we work canonical: https://stead.ing/how-we-work/ summary: Who decides, and how your idea becomes a Steading project. site: steading --- # How we work How decisions get made, and how your idea becomes a Steading project. It's short on purpose: there are no committees, no sponsors to line up, and no foundation to petition. Bring an idea, build it, and we'll talk. ## Who decides Ivy started Steading and has the final say. She loves hearing ideas, loves it when people get excited, and wants to build things with them. - **Decisions are made in the open.** Big ones are written up as decision records: what was decided, what else was considered, and why. Anyone can write one, and anyone can argue with one. - **Decisions are fast.** A proposal gets a yes, a no, or a "not yet", with reasons, in public. Nobody waits months to hear. - **Each project's maintainers run their project.** Day to day, the people who build a project decide how it works. Ivy steps in on what a project is for, how it fits with the others, and [staying open for good](open-for-good.md). - **Disagreeing is fine, and so is forking.** Everything is ISC licensed and contributors keep their copyright. If we can't agree, take it and build your version. No hard feelings. ## How a project joins Steading ### 1. Say hi Tell us what you're building, in an issue: what it does in one line, who it's for, and what it isn't. Half-formed is fine. ### 2. Build it, under your own name Build in your own repository. Show your work as you go, and ask for opinions whenever you want them. ### 3. Meet the bar A Steading project: - does one job, and says what it isn't - is useful on its own, with none of the other projects installed - has an open interface someone could build a replacement for - works with at least one other project - is ISC licensed, with contributions signed off - has docs a person can follow, and an `llms.txt` an agent can - stays open for good: no gatekeeping, no relicensing ### 4. Get an answer Ivy says yes, no, or not yet, with reasons, in public. ### 5. Move in When the answer is yes: - the repository moves to the `steading-ai` organization, and you stay its maintainer - it gets a name, picked together, and its own `.stead.ing` - it gets a place on the product map, its own color, and a "built by" credit with your name - it shows up in the console, on this site, and in `llms.txt` ### Not yet, or no? A project that isn't a fit can still be a neighbor: built on Steading, linked from the projects it works with. Plenty of good ideas belong next door rather than inside. ## Leaving A maintainer can step away at any time, and someone else can pick the project up. A project can leave Steading too; the code stays ISC, so nothing is lost. --- --- title: We hit the same wall canonical: https://stead.ing/history/ summary: How Steading came about. site: steading --- # We hit the same wall This page is being written. It will tell how Steading came about.