Network principles
Public operation does not mean protocol fragmentation.
Bigfoot welcomes public node operation, public inspection, and source-readable software under published terms. Canonical network participation still requires conformance.
Principles
- Bigfoot is a publicly operated, privately stewarded social/search economy for the web.
- The web is the primary interaction surface.
- Public nodes operate the infrastructure.
- Soliton Group LLC privately stewards the canonical protocol at this stage.
- Bigfoot Browser is free.
- The code is source-readable and free to run under the project terms.
- Canonical network participation requires conformance.
- BFT is used for accepted network work and resource usage.
- The protocol sustainability fee is disclosed and fixed at 0.5%.
- Bootstrap nodes receive no paid-work preference.
- Everything published to Bigfoot is public.
- Filtering is local through filters, blocks, and lenses.
Why private stewardship now
At this stage, private stewardship prevents fragmentation into incompatible forks or a Mastodon-shaped network. Bigfoot needs one coherent protocol for route state, settlement, paid infrastructure work, public records, and user trust.
Source-readable, not open source
Bigfoot moved away from the phrase open source because it creates the wrong promise. The code is available to inspect and run under the project terms, but canonical Bigfoot is not an invitation to present incompatible implementations as equivalent.