FAQ

KIPs – KERI Improvement Protocols so that there will also be space for market-driven instead of only technically driven.

Good proposal; we’ll extend the current KIDS in this direction.

After a careful exchange of terms and the donor contract, there is the usual cooling-off period to sign the contract.

However, as soon as the contract is signed, the donor is obligated to pay the donorship, and we will have to strictly enforce that. A donor can only lay off the obligation by having another donor replace him/her.
This strict debtor management is necessary because we must deliver on our promises and need the finances to do so.

Having presented the general rule, individual cases can be discussed with the chairman of the Foundation to see if there is a way out.

Look for existing projects on our website or submit your proposal. Within a foundation project, roles will be selected for assignment, candidates will be assessed, and officers will be appointed and paid for their deliverables.

Example calculation

Suppose you suggest that Developer Y code with us. Great idea and a lovely proposal!
Suppose we agree on Y’s suitability for any vacant project roles (it could be your own freshly established KERI foundation project).

In that case, we hire Y for the same amount that Y’s gross salary involves.

The extra step is needed to keep the foundation independent of individuals and their bosses.

The KERI Foundation has a long-term and global scope. However, can direct part of the team and its agenda to a local scope, directly funded by interest groups for this particular local scope.

In terms of execution, they are the only roles you can currently translate operationally into functions.
See the other parts of the website to dive deep into their competence profiles that lay out their task, responsibilities, and rights as foundation managers.

Besides the managers of the Foundation, whose rights are laid out in the Operational Agreement (Feb 2025: status concept) and the Memorandum of Understanding (Feb 2025: status concept), we have the members of the steering L3C.

There are no veto rights for the members of the L3C should there be a draw in the votes of the L3C, and Sam Smith is still a member of the L3C; he gets the privilege to add one extra member vote to get out of the stalemate.

The KERI Foundation decided to maintain its own repositories to focus more on further maturing the KERISuite and to establish a governance structure that is clearer and more streamlined.

While the WoT community remains volunteer-driven, KF aims to manage directed funds and funded projects more efficiently. This setup allows KF to work on targeted developments while ensuring the code remains open and licensed under Apache 2.0. The decision was not made to split the community but to provide a more structured way to advance the KERISuite.

The primary concern is that newcomers may find it confusing to understand the relationship between the different repositories and their purposes.

Historically, there have been multiple overlapping initiatives like ToIP, IETF, WoT, and DIF, which already caused confusion. Adding KF repositories could further complicate things for those unfamiliar with the ecosystem. Newcomers might ask, “What lives where?” and feel that the community is fragmented. Ensuring clarity through proper documentation and syncing practices could help address this issue.

The main reason for having separate KF repositories is that the open-source code that belongs there will have an enhanced balanced legal framework and decision-making unit.

Security and reputation are key here.

A responsible tech team should manage this auditing/steering under Technical Managers’ leadership.

Compliance and API compatibility with the reference installation should be the deciding factors. More of those key criteria could be noted in the organizational regulations.

There will be a tech team managing all technical and security issues. Under the Technical Managers’ leadership, but not on a day-to-day basis. This role will be gatekeeping to ensure all operations are aligned with the strategic objectives and vision.

Technical Management of the KERI Foundation is appointed to Sam Smith as long as he wishes to perform this role and is capable of doing so. Because of his special background as the KERISuite inventor and co-founder of the KF, implementations should be in full width and non-negotiably vetoable by him for as long as he’s in a Technical Management position.
Apart from him, no other individual in this future position will have a veto right.

The inventor has well-educated opinions on licensing an IP and is very well-suited to assess future changes and adapt to them for the well-being of the open-source KERI Suite.

That is why his role needs to be able to veto changes. In the future, when Samuel Smith steps back for any reason, we could adjust the statutes so that no board can change that decision in the future.

It could be a parallel approach to our effort via the ToIP/Linux foundation. However, it takes a lot of work and time to pursue ISO-TC individually.

Our take is to go through a recognized body like the Linux Foundation. Because ISO does not allow them to go straight to them.

After a careful exchange of terms and the donor contract, there is the usual cooling-off period to sign the contract.

However, as soon as the contract is signed, the donor is obligated to pay the donorship, and we will have to strictly enforce that. A donor can only lay off the obligation by having another donor replace him/her.
This strict debtor management is necessary because we must deliver on our promises and need the finances to do so.

Having presented the general rule, individual cases can be discussed with the chairman of the Foundation to see if there is a way out.

We envision frain-grained methods to onboard international sponsors and donors to (directly funded) projects under supervision and value-adding by the foundation.

That doesn’t mean we’re perfect. Supposing you have a better proposal in mind, these are the questions that we pose ourselves in a local context but bearing the greater picture in mind:

• Who will step on board and donate? How much? Probability?
• How do I envision the strategy and bringing in funding partners outside of my local scope? We need those because the geographical scope needs to be international.
• What contribution do my strategy and my group make to the broader foundation goal? 
• What would be my forecast for raising funds in the next 2 to 3 years? Targets/industries and anticipated amounts? What conditions would I offer and agree upon?
• How do I value the global objectives compared to the local scope?
• What share of the total required funding (5Ws phase) do I estimate that my local jurisdiction will put on the table?
• How would I propose to widen the geographical scope and attract international partners?

Thank you for considering donating. This is how we onboard donors:

1. We formulate portfolios in which money will flow
2. We accept donors who want to sign a donor contract matching the portfolio
3. An obligation to pay the donorship money is established via a donor contract

Look at the projects currently at hand and the vacant positions we’re filling in on this site!

We’re ready to accept donors from March 2025. Because we can’t make a deal, we can talk to donors in a non-binding way.

We have quite a few people on Zoom calls who have these capabilities.

Yes, we’ve described the fundraiser in a competence profile, so we’ll get there to install an officer for this task and consult the current team of participants when the position is vacant.

The status of early 2025 is that the L3C + Operational Agreement + MoU legal structure was set up by the end of 2024.

Foremost, we need the organization, the donor contract, and the bank account because otherwise, any deal can’t be closed. Of course, enthusiasts can always start the preparatory/exploratory work.

Our plan is to get the funding rolling, immediately start the development of the 5Ws with this, and raise more funds to support developers who completed the 5Ws. Only then will KERI adoption be sustainable.

A sales tiger selling projects too early invokes a large user base too-early, and this might backfire.

We have to keep the community together as well as we can. But not at all cost. How important do you think it is to operate as a unit?

Anyone would prefer to be “Sam Smith Certified,” and to get there; any donor has to establish a connection with the one and only KERI foundation supported by the inventor.

We consider any other foundation that claims to be the KERI foundation a business. We will happily and in a friendly way offer services to them and could coopetively move forward.

Donating money and donating time are two distinct things. Money donors have a say in the outcome.

Our foundation offers fine-grained benefits and influence models through donations. The website has information on direct funding, advisory boards, marketing, and events. You have a tiered say from tiered donations.

The KERI Foundation won’t be able to accept donations in kind directly. The process will be as follows: roles will be selected for assignment, candidates will be assessed, and officers will be appointed and paid for their deliverables.
We do not want a dependency on individual contributors with a greater reach than their roles, tasks, responsibilities, and deliverables.

At the start of 2025, we only have two! We’re engaging parties to bring in the leader of the Advisory Board and one of the board managers.

But we agree that we need more shoulders, eventually. First, we want to start the donation flow and complete the 5Ws to meet the adoption expectations.

Phase 2 adds more shoulders to the board. It can be prepared in a (directly funded) working group in Phase 1. Feel free to take an advance on this point.
We’ve heard of a four-manager board up to the sixteen-managers board. All good to consider in Phase 1, but we postpone establishing any solution of more than three right after delivering on Phase 1, the 5Ws.

The reason is that we want to free the crucial development from endless discussions and decision-making.

So authorities can audit, and the board has to decide on changes?

A Utah-registered L3C, a not-for-profit organization, steers the KERI Foundation.

Processing everything into articles of association is very static. You have to make dynamic decisions based on constantly changing insights. You want to keep adjusting.

We have two principal guidelines in this perspective:

1. Adjust as standardized as possible in the Operational Agreement, which is based on a template Muli-member L3C, Manager-Managed from the state of Utah,
2. Put everything else in the Memorandum of Understanding plus the Competence Profile of the key management positions in the foundation. These latter documents are an integral part of – and bi-directionally referred to and from 1, the Operational Agreement.

I wonder whether a 3-person board of directors is so functional and effective.
The foundation design is a cathedral (from The Cathedral and The Bazaar, by Eric S. Raymond) with just three people on the board.

Yes, it is a team of managers (because we’ve reserved the term members for the steering L3C).

However, the cathedral is a mischaracterization. In history, there have been numerous successful foundations to support the development and implementation of open-source software that started with a three-person board of directors, including the inventor/benevolent dictator:

1. The Free Software Foundation (FSF). When it was founded by Richard Stallman in 1985, it had a board of directors with three members.
2. The Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI was founded in 1998 by Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens, along with a third initial member, to promote and protect open-source software by certifying licenses and advocating for open-source principles. While the exact composition of the board has evolved, the foundation initially had a small core group of influential members guiding its mission.
3. Apache Software Foundation (ASF): Founded in 1999, the ASF initially had a small group of individuals instrumental in its creation. The initial board included several key contributors to the Apache HTTP Server project, though the specific number of members can vary over time.
4. Python Software Foundation (PSF): The PSF started with a small board in 2001 to support the Python programming language. The initial board of directors was composed of a few key figures in the Python community, including Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python.
5. Linux Foundation: Although the Linux Foundation (founded in 2000 as the Open Source Development Labs) had a larger initial advisory board, its governing structure initially included a small, focused group of influential members from the open-source community, including Linus Torvalds, who played a significant role in guiding the foundation’s early direction.

I believe the structure is too narrow. We need more Board members.

One of our design principles is that we run it like a company, but it IS a board in a legal sense.

It is only reasonable, safe, and logical to first finish things in a small technical team and only then start diversifying.

We’ll reverse the question: How do you balance board managers over interest groups and continents? Does it become a political mess quickly?