On May the Fourth, Fedi Started the Process to Become Open Source. Here’s Why.

On August 6, Fedi launched the first full release of our Community SuperApp, with an emphasis on exciting new strategic partnerships with humanitarian groups working in the Global South, and a goal to seed ground-up growth of federations in those same areas, where for too long millions, even billions, have lacked access to freedom technologies for digital and financial empowerment. 

One beautiful thing about Fedi and the Fedimint protocol is that, by design, we will never have a full picture of when, where, and how those federations are growing around the world. That’s the way it should be. Federations exist for the communities that constitute them, and with those communities’ needs and security in mind. 

Fedi’s doesn’t monitor or control federations. We don’t custody their bitcoin or collect their data. Fedi’s mission is to empower communities everywhere, to help them level-up with freedom technology and onboard them into a powerful and limitless future. 

Fedi will become Open Source

It was with that mission and the moment in mind that, months before we launched Fedi to the world, we made the decision and the irrevocable commitment not just to promote Freedom Technology, but to become Freedom Technology. 

On May 4th we included a cryptographic hash of a PDF memo from Fedi in the Bitcoin Blockchain making an important announcement. The transaction id is:

895dc327c63be97282917acca3b2b47fde52c0b3df6be70f15e454585615ff1d

And you can view the transaction at:

https://mempool.space/tx/895dc327c63be97282917acca3b2b47fde52c0b3df6be70f15e454585615ff1d

It’s been sitting there ever since. Here’s what the memo says:

TO: The World

FROM: Fedi, Inc.

DATE: May 4th, 2024

RE: Fedi To Make Our Software Open-Source

____________________________________________________________________________

Fedi combines the world’s most fundamental human technology–community–with pioneering freedom technologies to level up humanity. But in order to truly achieve our objective, we need to do more than use the power of community and freedom technologies. We need to give back to our community and become a freedom technology.

That is why today, May 4th, 2024, Fedi begins the process of going open source by transitioning to a Business Source License for our software.

This means that Fedi is already fully “source available” for anyone to freely review, check, and verify that we are doing what we say we are doing.

Furthermore, as part of the terms of the Business Source License, on January 3, 2026 (or earlier if we so decide), our Fedi software will automatically transition to a full AGPL open-source license–making it fully open-source from that point onwards.

This is a mark of our commitment to using freedom technologies to make Fedi itself a freedom technology, so that we can do our very best to help some of the most disempowered communities around the world.

Verifying the Announcement

Here are a couple ways for you to verify the announcement yourself:

1. Using this link OP_RETURN Verifier Link:

• Drop the file into the verifier

• Input the txid of the announcement transaction: 895dc327c63be97282917acca3b2b47fde52c0b3df6be70f15e454585615ff1d

• Click “Verify”

2. Manually through your terminal

• Download the open source PDF, saving the file as “Fedi - BSL Declaration-1.pdf”

• Open a Terminal on your computer and run this command where you downloaded the file to hash the PDF
  shasum -a 256 “Fedi - BSL Declaration-1.pdf”

• Compare the output hash to the hash in the OP_RETURN for txid 895dc327c63be97282917acca3b2b47fde52c0b3df6be70f15e454585615ff1d (view it on mempool.space at https://mempool.space/tx/895dc327c63be97282917acca3b2b47fde52c0b3df6be70f15e454585615ff1d

May the 4th be with you!