Work and roles at the foundation
This page describes the rules of work at the Novus Ignis Foundation: what roles look like, which expenses the foundation can reimburse, when it could pay for work and how the results of shared work are created. If you are looking for a specific role, see the Join us page.
Today all work at the foundation, including software development, is volunteering. This is what the statute provides: board members are not paid for holding their positions, and paid services may be commissioned only from external professional service providers, for example an accounting office.
Volunteering is meant to be a way of practicing already today, within the limits of one's own strength and life situation, the freedom to devote time to what you consider valuable. The founder writes in the manifesto: “I want the foundation to have room for a small contribution, for rest and for changing the path one has chosen.” You choose a task, contribute as much as you can, and return to your own affairs. At the start we want to check whether everything we need can be created in this way; at the same time we reimburse costs and do not expect sacrifice beyond people's means.
More: statute, § 12, manifesto, section 1.1 and section 6.2, Foundation Principles whitepaper, chapter 5 and section 5.3.
Fixed-term roles#
Our model is someone who knows a given matter, takes on a task for a time, carries it out and returns to their own life. Holding roles at the foundation is not meant to grow into a profession. Every role with decision-making powers has a description of:
- its purpose and the scope of its decisions;
- the way it is entrusted and withdrawn;
- its duration and review date;
- who stands in.
Extending a role requires a public decision, and ending it includes a summary of the work, handing over documentation and updating access. You can reduce your involvement, hand over your role or leave; if there are not enough people for a given service, we reduce its scope or availability. Power also brings benefits other than money, which is why people in roles are to disclose conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from deciding their own matters, and hours worked are not to give an additional vote.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, section 5.1.
Reimbursement of costs, not payment for time#
Reimbursement of costs means returning money that someone has paid out of their own pocket to carry out a task of the foundation: for a ticket to a working meeting, or to pay for a domain or a service. It is not payment for time. Only what is necessary for a task counts as its cost; the private part of a trip is paid for by the participant. Every reimbursement requires a document and goes into the public statement of costs. For volunteers, the foundation covers the costs of business travel and per diems on the same terms as for employees, unless the volunteer releases it from this in writing.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, section 5.2 and statute, § 13(5).
When and how we could pay for work#
There will be no salaried jobs at the foundation, because that is part of its idea: the work is done by volunteers and, when necessary, by contractors carrying out specific commissions.
Only if it turns out that some of the work cannot be done through volunteering will we change the statute so that the foundation can commission specific paid work from people and companies outside the board. We will treat as such a signal, for example, a situation in which for two consecutive weeks no one takes on the on-call duty for a service or its availability falls below the announced threshold. The draft wording and justification of this change (Z2) are described in the statute change register; today it is an intention, not law in force.
A commission is specified work with a result to be accepted, not ongoing work under someone's direction, which the law treats as employment. If we ever buy our own hardware, we will commission on-call duty for it from a company as a service. The rules for commissioning would be set out in regulations, and board members do not conclude paid contracts with the foundation.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, section 5.3 and statute change register, Z2.
Tools for volunteers#
Until we have our own servers, we can cover the costs of tools that volunteers need to create and test the open source code of Suveria (a private space for working with digital intelligence) and Omniforum (a shared space for conversation, understanding and decisions), for example access to digital intelligence models. The condition is that the money comes from Pillar I funds (Pillar I is the first stage of the foundation's work and consists of these two services) or from earmarked donations. Such support has a public limit in the budget and is not remuneration; we will confirm its scope in a legal opinion.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, section 5.4.
Personal support outside the foundation#
A better quality of life for co-creators is part of the foundation's direction, but personal support, for example with needs such as housing, food or medical care, does not come from its assets; it flows directly between people, for example through patronage platforms. It is not tied to a role, a task or the right to vote, and board members, while they hold their positions, do not receive personal support from the foundation's assets. People who manage the foundation, decide on its expenses or represent it will enter the support they receive in the register of benefits, which we are preparing.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, chapter 6 and manifesto, section 6.2.
How we work: open workshops#
We divide the foundation's work into tasks: specified work with a described goal and result, for example translating a document or a cost analysis. When a task uses the shared budget or the foundation's computing power, it is to have an open workshop, that is, a public page of the task showing what is being created with shared money: the scope, the resource limit, the progress and the result. The record of work is the history of the work: working conversations, versions and decisions; the terms set before the task starts specify what part of it will be published.
You join tasks through open invitations: at every stage we publish who we are looking for, what the task involves, how much time it may take and what is already in place. An application is an ordinary message to salve@novusignis.org, without any form collecting data on our server. This application is what works today; open workshops, the list of roles and trials are at the design stage.
Open workshops (design). Your contribution is to be presented under your name, a permanent pseudonym or a name assigned only to the given project. A pseudonym limits the disclosure of identity, but does not on its own ensure anonymity. Work is to begin in a private draft; before the record is published there is to be time for removing personal data, technical secrets and unfixed vulnerabilities; automation helps, but a person always reviews the record as well. Acceptance of the result is to be decided by people, and the contribution of all participants is to be documented. You can also work in a private workshop, on your own hardware, and hand over only the result with the documentation needed to accept it, without the working conversations.
Trials before implementation (design). Before we implement something in full, it is to go through a small trial or a mock-up with a defined question, resource limit, review date, method of assessment and conditions for stopping. After a trial we are to record what we have learned, and full implementation is to require a separate decision, a budget and a plan for acceptance and maintenance.
Public goods. We make our own code and materials available so that others can use and develop them. The manifesto is under the CC BY 4.0 license (the text can be used and adapted with attribution); for the service code we are considering AGPLv3 (a license requiring anyone who makes a modified version of a program available over a network to make its code available as well); the licenses for other resources are to be determined. A public good also needs maintenance: maintainers, security reviews and a way of reporting bugs.
More: Foundation Principles whitepaper, chapter 11.
Read and tell us what you think#
The roles in which help will be needed earliest are described on the Join us page. If something puzzles you or seems wrong, highlight that passage in the Foundation Principles whitepaper and use the “I have a comment” button, or write to salve@novusignis.org.