What useful systems should exist, because people need them?

Here, "open" means public and free to use. It does not mean the source code is published or available for reuse.

The Society isn't defined by a headquarters or a closed membership list. Volunteers participate by proposing, testing, documenting, translating or maintaining. Projects still have named stewards — decentralization isn't the absence of responsibility.

We prefer small, reliable systems designed around real human contexts:

• UTILITIES Small, focused utilities that do one job reliably.
• OFFLINE-FIRST Offline-capable tools that work anywhere, without requiring a permanent network.
• BROWSER-FIRST Browser-first and lightweight client applications with zero friction.
• PORTABILITY Portable data: people and organizations retain their information and can leave without friction.
• MINIMAL DATA Minimal data collection: no unnecessary telemetry, tracking, or invasive identity gates.
• DEPENDENCIES Few dependencies, clear documentation, and maintainable architectures.

The Society weighs demonstrated need, common usefulness, feasibility, risk, maintenance capacity, whether an existing solution already works, and community requests.

The current steward is responsible for maintaining the Society's public infrastructure and coordinating its initial projects with volunteers. This site does not invent a board, membership count, chapters or partners that don't exist.