The agreement, in plain language

1 · The software is free of charge

Software released under the nosource agreement carries no license fee, no per-seat cost, and no paywall — permanently. Patrons may run and use it at zero cost. Fixing the price at zero is deliberate and is the point of difference from both open source and free software, neither of which requires software to be free of charge.

2 · Community first option

The agreement asks every patron, when they need support, to give their own community the first opportunity to provide it. This rewards the people closest to the work — the local knowledge, relationships, and trust that make software actually usable — before support is sought elsewhere.

3 · Published rates

Any provider who offers paid support does so at an hourly rate published before the engagement begins. Patrons can see and compare rates in the open. No opaque “call us for a quote,” no surprise invoices, no lock-in.

4 · Provider registration

When a patron needs support beyond what their community can provide, the agreement asks them to use providers registered with nosource.ai. Registration means a provider has accepted these terms — published rates and first-option respect for communities — so patrons can trust anyone on the register to operate the same fair way. Register as a provider →

5 · AI & automating intent

nosource software is developed and supported with AI. The intent is explicit: AI augments the provider — it does not replace them. Providers use AI to move beyond writing code toward capturing and automating what patrons actually want, so patrons receive more value for a fair, transparent price.

6 · How we handle your data

When you submit the contact or registration form, we store what you send us in order to reply and to operate the provider register. Specifically:

• Contact form: your name, email, topic, and message — kept to respond to you.
• Provider registration: your name, organization, email, website, country, published rate, skills, and description — kept to verify you and, once approved, to list you on the register.
• We record basic technical metadata (submission time and, where applicable, IP and browser) to prevent abuse.
• We do not sell your data. You can ask us to correct or delete it at any time via our contact form.

7 · Status & how this differs from open source

The nosource agreement is a novel license, currently in draft. It is not an OSI-approved open-source license and we do not describe it as open source. Open source and free software protect freedoms and explicitly permit charging for the software; nosource instead fixes the price of the software at zero and moves paid value to transparent human-plus-AI service. When the formal text is ready it will be published here in full.