About the Circles Protocol

Circles is a vision for a fair and social form of money. It is also the culmination of the efforts of multiple teams over several years, working to bring this vision to life through organizing and building concrete instantiations.

Various teams have collaborated with varying degrees of coordination and autonomy, all in the spirit of open-source development, to continually advance Circles forward. This protocol improvement to Circles is presented in that same spirit by the "About Circles" team, acting as a "Circles Ambassador."

We do not claim any authority over what Circles should be or become. Instead, we humbly propose this as a way to make Circles better, and invite people to vote with their feet by adopting it if they find value in it. Our aim is simply to contribute to the Circles ecosystem and vision in a positive way.

Ultimately, the path forward for Circles will be shaped by the collective actions and decisions of the community. We are merely one voice and one effort among many in this collaborative, open-source endeavor to create a fair and socially-embedded form of digital money. We are excited to be part of this journey and to see how Circles evolves.

Disclaimer

Circles is not owned or controlled by any single entity, including the "About Circles" team. Instead, it is a collective vision and effort, intended to be cared for and shaped by the wider community. The "About Circles" team acts as an ambassador and contributor to this vision, but does not claim any special authority or ownership over Circles.

Licensing

In alignment with our open-source ethos, Circles Protocol is developed and released under the following licenses:

  • All code is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0), a strong copyleft license. This ensures that any derivative works or modifications of the code are also released under the same license, maintaining the open and shared nature of the codebase.
  • All documentation is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This is a copyleft license that allows others to share and adapt the material, as long as they credit the original creation and license their new creations under identical terms.

We believe in the power of open collaboration and sharing, and these licenses reflect our commitment to keeping Circles open and accessible to all.