The project
Why a Steward?
A plain answer for contributors about who owns what, and why that protects the mission.
If you contribute to this Project — writing, hosting, testing, or just showing up — you deserve a straight answer about who owns what and why. Here it is.
Why does anyone need to “own” this at all?
Because the law gives every piece of writing an owner automatically, whether we like it or not — the only question is whether ownership is organized or scattered. Someone must be able to sign for the whole: grant a school permission to use the materials, register the copyright, defend the name from misuse, run the website, and hand everything to a successor if that day ever comes. If ten contributors each own their paragraph, none of that is possible — the work becomes “orphaned,” and orphaned work can never be licensed, published, transferred, or even given away properly. Ownership is unavoidable. What we can choose is to make it accountable. That accountable owner is called the steward.
Who is the steward, and why them?
Someone has to go first: buy the domain, pay the hosting, file the paperwork, carry the insurance, and do it before there is any money or any certainty this succeeds. For now that is Savio Standard, a founder-managed entity acting under the Project’s own name. It may reorganize over time — to a dedicated LLC, a nonprofit, or no change at all — quietly, as circumstances warrant. The written commitments travel with it regardless of form: whatever holds the mission assets inherits every promise on the Stewardship Commitment.
Isn’t this a power move?
Judge it by what the steward gives up in writing. The Stewardship Commitment — published and signed — promises that the content and website stay free for families forever; that license terms are never tightened retroactively; that contributors are credited permanently; that any product built by the steward’s owners is disclosed as such and recommended only under published criteria that apply equally to competitors; that mission assets can never be privately captured, whatever form the steward eventually takes; and that if the Project ever winds down, the core content is released under an open license so any community can carry it on. A power move needs the opposite of every one of those promises. This is also the arrangement the open-source software world has run on for decades: an accountable rights-holder, a free public license, and many contributors — it works because the deal is public.
Who actually runs the repository day to day?
Not the steward — the maintainers: individual people, at least two at all times, who organize contributions, keep collaboration healthy, and give final approval to changes. The steward is an organization that holds rights and makes promises; maintainers are the humans who tend the work. Keeping these separate matters: it means no single person is a bottleneck or a single point of failure, and it means the repository keeps running smoothly even if the steward entity’s form ever changes.
Why not just form a nonprofit now?
Weight before proof. A nonprofit means a board, filings, accounting, and governance overhead — real cost, and today the Project is a content repository and a website run on sponsorship money, not an operation that needs it. The pilot needs content and families, not bylaws. If the Project ever reaches a scale where that overhead buys real protection or credibility it doesn’t already have, the option is there — but nothing here commits in advance to that specific destination. What’s committed to is narrower and simpler: the promises on the Stewardship Commitment survive, whatever the steward’s form turns out to be, forever.
What do contributors give, and what do they keep?
If you author content, you agree to the Contributor License Agreement, giving the steward the rights needed to keep the whole work licensable — including the commercial licensing that helps fund the mission. You keep ownership of your contribution, permanent public credit, and free use of everything, always. Ideas, feedback, event-hosting, and testing involve no paperwork at all — most contributions never touch this question.
What belongs to the Project, and what doesn’t?
The Project owns the core content and the website that delivers it — free, forever. Apps and other products that build on the framework (including any built by the steward’s owners) are not Project assets: they are licensed, optional, sometimes paid, always disclosed, and never required to participate.
What if the steward breaks its promises, or disappears?
Three protections, in increasing order of force. The public license already in your hands cannot be revoked — the community’s right to use the content for the mission survives anything. The never-tighten rule is in the signed commitment. And the graceful-death clause releases the core content under an open license if the Project winds down. Beyond all that stands the same check that governs every open project: the deal is public, and a community that is wronged can simply take the freely licensed content and walk. The steward’s only durable asset is trust — which is exactly how it should be.
Questions not answered here deserve real answers — ask. The full details live in Stewardship & Operations, available to anyone who wants it.