The Co-op
PLANET is operated by The Open Co-op — a cooperative owned by its members. Not a startup. Not a charity. A cooperative, in the oldest and most straightforward sense: an organisation run by and for the people who use it.
A bit of history
The Open Co-op has been building cooperative digital infrastructure for over twenty years. PLANET is its flagship project, but it didn't come out of nowhere — it's the product of two decades of work on decentralised identity, trust networks, and the regenerative economy. You can read more about the history on open.coop.
Why a cooperative
Most digital infrastructure is built by startups funded by venture capital. The investors want a return, so the company optimises for growth and extraction — your attention, your data, your lock-in. Eventually the product gets worse because the incentives demand it.
A cooperative has no investors to satisfy. The members are the owners - the infrastructure exists to serve them. PLANET's cooperative structure is a commitment: this infrastructure will never be sold, never be enshittified, and never put investors before the people who depend on it.
Membership
Anyone can join The Open Co-op. Membership means agreeing to our purpose and principles — putting people and planet before profit — and getting a voice in how PLANET is built and run.
| Tier | What you give | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Member | Your email and agreement to our principles | Community access, governance votes, founding member status |
| Supporter | Financial or equivalent support | Everything above, plus deeper project visibility and input on priorities |
| Contributor | Time, skills, or resources | Everything above, plus access to active workstreams and collaboration tools |
| Core Team | Stewarding the project | Full access, operational decision-making |
Membership is open regardless of ability to pay. Non-financial contributions — code, design, writing, testing, translation, community organising — are valued equally alongside financial support.
How decisions get made
At this stage — pre-launch, small team — governance is deliberately minimal:
Operational decisions (what to build this week, which tools to use) are made by the core team and documented openly.
Strategic decisions (partnerships, major direction changes, accepting grants, governance changes) are proposed by the core team and decided by membership vote on Loomio with a minimum 7-day discussion period.
Feature priorities are influenced by members directly, through feature bounties on Open Collective — members fund the features they want built.
This governance is designed to evolve. At 500 members, we review it. At 1,000, we draft a formal constitution. The process will be democratic.
Transparency
All finances are transparent via Open Collective. Every contribution in, every expense out, visible to anyone. Member-funded, member-directed.
Future generations
Inspired by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 — the world's first legislation requiring decisions to consider their impact on people not yet born — The Open Co-op makes a voluntary commitment to the same principle. We build infrastructure to be held in trust across generations, not optimised for short-term returns.
This is a structural choice. A cooperative with no shareholders and no exit strategy is designed to persist. The digital commons we're building today should still be serving people decades from now.
Principles
- Member ownership — owned by members, not shareholders or investors.
- Transparency — every financial transaction public, every strategic decision documented.
- Future generations — decisions consider their long-term impact, not just immediate needs.
- Progressive governance — start minimal, add structure when needed, not before.
- Practical cooperation — best tools for the job, getting things done over ideological purity.
- Trust as foundation — we operate the way PLANET works: through real relationships and earned trust.