For Family, Friends, Colleagues and Neighbors
Gardens are planted for those who can care. Humans can care.
We believe technology should be built the same way: for humans, not for corporations looking to profit from you.
When they build for extraction, they design to keep people inside, not to help them grow.
Build it. Run it. Host it. Share it.
There's a reason people still keep chickens, bake bread, mend clothes. It's not efficiency; it's about sovereignty.
The more of your technology you can run yourself, the less you depend on corporations whose interests will never fully align with yours, not even if you are their CEO!
Nobody should be able to lock your photos, data, and emails behind a login.
Why would you stop having features you love and be bombarded with "features" and advertising that you don't want?
This doesn't mean radicalization and living as a hermit. But that one should be able to. The option matters.
Protocols Over Platforms
Protocols are the commons, Platforms are feudal serfdoms.
Platforms can change the rules, lock you in, or disappear entirely—taking your history, your connections, your work with them.
Protocols belong to no one, which means they belong to everyone. Email outlived AOL. The web outlived Geocities. RSS outlives Google Reader.
Privacy is non-negotiable
Privacy isn't secrecy. Privacy is dignity, safety, and consent.
It's not about "I have nothing to hide", it's just that "I don't want to give away this information".
Your digital life should not be designed as surveillance by default. We will not treat people's behavior, relationships, location, identity, or attention as a resource to be mined.
Right to repair, right to understand
"Fix, learn, share" over "Replace, discard, rebuy".
This means designing for:
- repairability (open and free source code, and open formats)
- understandability
- long-term maintenance
The ability to repair is the ability to remain free.
Our Pledge
We build software tools for humans to flourish.
We make export, interoperability, and backups normal. We choose open protocols. We treat privacy as a baseline. We design for families, friends, and neighbors.
Contact
Email us at manifesto at opengarden.tech
Inspirations
- The Resonant Computing Manifesto (2025), a call to build technology that nourishes attention and human flourishing rather than extracting it.
- Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud (2019), an argument for local data ownership with optional sync and collaboration.
- IndieWeb Principles (2012), a practical philosophy for owning your data and publishing on your own site first.
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), an overview of how human experience is used as raw materials by the industry of massive behavior manipulation.
- Permacomputing Principles (2020), principles for regenerative, resilient, low-impact computing inspired by permaculture.
- Protocols, Not Platforms (2019), an essay explaining why open protocols create healthier ecosystems than centralized platforms.
- A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (1993), a foundational statement on privacy as a social and technical necessity.
- What is Free Software? (1986), an explanation of software freedom as a matter of user rights and community.
- Right to Repair (2013), advocacy and background on the right to fix and understand the tools you own.
- Calm Technology (1996), an organization fostering technology that informs without demanding attention.
- Center for Humane Technology (2018), research and writing on the harms of attention-extractive tech and healthier alternatives.
- The Timeless Way of Building (1976), Christopher Alexander's exploration of why some environments make us feel more alive and at home.
- Slow Media Manifesto (2010), a critique of commercialized media and a call for sustainability, quality, and trust.