Australian not-for-profit ● ACN 699 651 771Open research ● Open software ● Public benefitPublic record →

Mission

Open technology, directed towards public benefit

Our mission is to advance education, protect digital rights, and improve access to secure, resilient digital infrastructure. We pursue that purpose through open research, software development, and public learning resources.

Who this work serves

Knowledge people can use and question

Our public resources serve students, independent learners, researchers, developers, and infrastructure operators. People can study the designs, inspect the source, and contribute improvements without Foundation membership.

The current outputs are software, specifications, documentation, and research explanations. Better access, privacy, and safety are intended benefits, not claims of measured outcomes. Explore our activities and program status, or find a way to get involved.

01Clause 6.1

The four purpose pillars

The constitution defines four purpose areas. The examples below describe how our research and development work is intended to advance them.

01

Advancing education

Public research, open technical education, open specifications, standards, documentation, safety materials, and implementation guidance for privacy-preserving digital infrastructure, distributed computing, and trustworthy artificial intelligence.

cl 6.1.1

What this looks like in practice

  • Publishing the VirtEngine protocol documentation, module reference, and operational guides in the open at docs.virtengine.com.
  • Maintaining open specifications and standards work for privacy-preserving identity (VEID), usage settlement, and provider operations.
  • Releasing safety materials and implementation guidance — consent frameworks, biometric data handling, security policies — alongside the code they govern.
  • Publishing Bosun, the foundation's experimental autonomous-engineering orchestrator, whole and Apache-2.0 — the machinery, its documentation, and its operator guides.

02

Advancing public welfare

Developing and supporting technology that improves public access to secure, privacy-preserving, resilient, and affordable digital infrastructure.

cl 6.1.2

What this looks like in practice

  • Developing VirtEngine as an open, decentralized cloud marketplace so that compute capacity is not gated by a handful of hyperscale gatekeepers.
  • Researching distributed infrastructure that can reduce dependence on a single operator; resilience must be assessed through implementation and testing.
  • Requiring any income and assets to be applied to the constitutional purposes rather than distributed for private benefit.

03

Protecting human rights

Promoting privacy, dignity, autonomy, and equality of access — and protection from unlawful surveillance, coercion, discrimination, and private capture of essential digital infrastructure.

cl 6.1.3

What this looks like in practice

  • Designing VEID — the identity program behind identity.org.au — so verification minimises disclosure: zero-knowledge proofs, selective scopes, encrypted payloads, and consent-first flows.
  • Constitutionally prohibiting the foundation from building technology for unlawful surveillance, coercion, or discrimination.
  • Keeping essential digital infrastructure out of private capture — as a Protected Provision, not a policy.

04

Security of Australia and the public

Research, education, standards, and public-benefit technology that improves cyber security, identity safety, AI safety, data protection, and infrastructure resilience.

cl 6.1.4

What this looks like in practice

  • Contributing research, standards, and working systems for cyber security, identity safety, and data protection in Australia.
  • Advancing AI safety through the DSEMA program: verifiable audit trails, constitutional constraints, and accountable autonomy.
  • Operating Bosun as the open, applied testbed where multi-agent coordination, review gates, and recovery mechanisms meet real engineering — grounding the safety research in evidence.
  • Investigating how distributed capacity and explicit recovery mechanisms can improve infrastructure resilience.

02Clauses 6.2.6–6.2.8 and 9

Commercial activity exists to fund the mission — nothing else

The foundation may charge fees, sell services, license technology, and compete with for-profit companies. The constitution permits this for exactly one reason: funding, scaling, securing, and sustaining the charitable purposes.

Earn only to fund

Commercial activities — fees, services, licensing, hosting, integration, research — are permitted only as a means of funding and sustaining the charitable purposes. cl 6.2.6 cl 9.2

Reinvestment doctrine

Earnings are reinvested into research, engineering, operations, infrastructure, resilience, security, compliance, staff, volunteers, ecosystem growth, and public-benefit delivery. cl 6.2.7 cl 9.3

Charitable programs

The directors may establish free or subsidised technology, subsidised infrastructure, public-interest services, education, and access programs. cl 6.2.8 cl 9.5

This is the inversion that makes the model coherent: in a conventional company, public-benefit work is a cost centre that serves the profit engine. Here, the profit engine is constitutionally the cost centre — it serves the public-benefit work, and the not-for-profit clause cl 8 makes sure nothing leaks out the side to private hands.

03Clause 10

Code of conduct and the public-interest duty

The constitution requires the directors to adopt and maintain a Code of Conduct that gives practical effect to the purposes — it is a governance obligation, not an HR formality.

What the Code must cover

  • The foundation's purposes and public-interest duties
  • Confidentiality requirements
  • Conflict-management requirements
  • Privacy commitments
  • Safety commitments
  • Anti-private-capture principles

cl 10.1

Who it binds

Directors, officers, employees, contractors, volunteers, members — and anyone with privileged or material access to the foundation's systems or Transferred Assets — must comply with the Code. cl 10.2

Before privileged access is granted to systems, confidential information, digital assets, or intellectual property, the directors may require a signed confidentiality, conflict-of-interest, or access undertaking. cl 10.3

04Continue

See the purposes at work

VirtEngine program DSEMA program Bosun program Identity program Governance structure