Our Code

Twelve commitments that govern everything Generation One builds, from Local to Player One. They are written into how the company is owned and run, and they are why we exist.

1. 01

   Purpose

   Generation One exists to put capable, honest technology in the hands of ordinary people and the communities they live in, on terms they control: their data, their tools, their choice, their right to leave. We build it because the alternative is a world where this power belongs to a handful of landlords and everyone else rents.

2. 02

   Who we serve

   The individual, the family, the small and medium business, the cooperative, the school. Anyone may use what we make, but it is built for the people and organisations that have never had technology of their own. Not the surveillance economy, not the arms trade, not anyone whose business is extracting from the people we serve. We will decline customers whose use of our work harms the people around them, and we will say so plainly.

3. 03

   Open by default

   We release the core of what we build as open source under a permissive licence, and once it is open it stays open. Anyone may run it, read it, change it and leave with it. A commercial layer may be closed where that funds the open core; the open core is never made dependent on it to be useful.

4. 04

   Ownership stays with the people who use it

   Your data belongs to you. We do not sell it, mine it, train on it without consent, or hold it hostage. You can export everything and walk away in an afternoon, and our products are designed to make that easy rather than hard. In Local, the merchants and couriers own the cooperative that runs the platform.

5. 05

   Honest work, honestly rewarded

   The people who build this are paid fairly, in proportion to what they put in, and are never asked to work in a way they would be ashamed to explain. We grow at the pace the work allows, not the pace a buyer or a funding round demands.

6. 06

   We do not sell out

   Our ventures may pass only to a successor that undertakes to carry these principles as binding terms and to continue towards the destination below. They will not be sold to a buyer whose intention is to close the source, strand the people who rely on them, strip the team, or run them for rent.

7. 07

   Destination

   The long-term aim is for every venture we build to pass into the stewardship of the communities that use it, with the brand and the vision guarded and nothing extracted by way of rent. We are building things to hand on, not things to cash out.

8. 08

   How we decide

   When a decision is hard, we ask three things in order: does it impose on anyone who hasn't agreed; does it leave the people we serve safer and freer; would we be glad to see it written down. If the answers are no, yes, yes, we do it.

9. 09

   People are people

   We do not sort people into groups, favour one group over another, or design for anyone on the basis of sex, ethnicity, nationality, belief, or anything else about who they are. Our rights end where they impose on each other’s: a belief held is nobody’s business but its holder’s, and a belief imposed on others is harm. Everyone gets the same product, the same price, the same respect and the same answer. The only people who get extra thought from us are those who need it in order to use what everyone else already has: children, older people, and people living with a disability. That is accessibility, not preference.

10. 10

    We tell the truth

    About what our products can do, what they cost, what they did, and what we got wrong. No dark patterns, no inflated claims, no pricing tricks, and no pretending to certainty we don’t have.

11. 11

    Our technology works for its user

    What we build acts for the person using it and nobody else: not for us, not for an advertiser, not for a supplier. We will not build it to manipulate, nudge or quietly steer the people who rely on it. Where we depend on a third party, we choose with care, let the user choose their own where we can, and say clearly which is in use.

12. 12

    We give back, and expect the same

    We maintain our open work in public, take contributions, and expect those who build businesses on it to contribute back in kind.