A FLOSS incubator for ethical AI

Build the AI we'll actually want to live with.

We incubate open-source AI projects — from half-baked idea to graduated standard — in the open, under licenses you can actually read. Bring your code, your conscience, and a strong opinion or two.

12projects incubating
4standards bodies, one membership
$0to join, forever
100%OSI-licensed
The lineage

Founded and funded by CleverThis.
Beholden to no one.

CleverThis built CleverLibre and pays the bills — then cut every commercial string on the way out. No products to upsell, no roadmap to serve, no veto over a single line of code. What the two share is a conviction: that AI should be explainable, fair, and built in the open. CleverThis is our patron. The commons is its own.

Why join

Free to join. Stacked with things that aren't.

Joining is free. The things you get are emphatically not — we just decided you shouldn't have to pay for them.

Standards access

A seat at the standards table

We hold membership in four standards bodies that shape how AI and the web actually work. Contribute here and you take part through us.

Infrastructure

Free Git, with GPU runners that mean it

Self-hosted Forgejo, generous CI, and runners with real GPUs attached — the kind you would otherwise rent by the minute and resent by the hour.

Bounties

Get paid for open source

Our bounty program puts real money behind useful features and honest bug fixes. Open-source labor is not supposed to be free for everyone except the person doing it.

Stewardship

Bring your project to a real home

Hand us a promising library, an unfinished idea, or a one-line RFC. We incubate it — infrastructure, governance, and a community — without ever taking it away from you.

Community

Mentorship and the right rooms

Maintainers with decades of shipping behind them, contributors who review in good faith, and connections across the standards world. Knowing the right people, for free.

Mission

Shape AI ethics, in public

Help write the guidelines and build the tools that confront bias, opacity, and consent in AI — in the open, where everyone affected can inspect the result.

Join us, join them

One membership. Four standards bodies.

A seat at the standards table normally costs more than a decent car. With us, you get there by writing good code and showing up.

How it works
W3C ADVISORY COMMITTEE

World Wide Web Consortium

Open web standards — the semantic web, decentralized identity, and the protocols ethical systems are built on. We sit on the Advisory Committee, one level above ordinary membership.

ANSI / ISO MEMBER

American National Standards Institute / International Organization for Standardization

Through our ANSI membership we participate in ISO standards development — the same route national bodies use to shape global AI and IT standards.

IEEE‑SA MEMBER

IEEE Standards Association

Ethically aligned design and the IEEE 7000 series for autonomous and intelligent systems.

ITU MEMBER

International Telecommunication Union

The UN agency for information and communication technologies — global ITU-T standards and the AI for Good platform.

Participation is routed through CleverLibre's memberships and subject to each body's working-group rules.

In the commons

Projects incubating right now.

Real repositories, real maintainers, real bug reports filed at 2 a.m. Pick one and dive in.

Browse all projects

Software that reasons on our behalf must be inspectable by everyone it reasons about.

— ARTICLE 1, THE CLEVERLIBRE CHARTER

Read our ethics & charter
Who steers

Stewards, not bosses.

The commons is governed by the people doing the work. Funding keeps the lights on; it does not get a vote.

JF

Jeffrey Phillips Freeman

Founder & lead steward

Set CleverLibre loose from CleverThis and has been refusing to attach strings ever since.

EW

The ethics working group

Charter & guidelines

Researchers and ethicists who turn principles into requirements engineers can actually ship.

PM

Project maintainers

Per-project governance

Each incubated project is governed by the people doing the work — not by a board, and definitely not by a sponsor.

The commons is built by hand. Lend one.

No application fee, no sales call, no badge that expires. Clone the Git, say hello on Matrix, and pick something to push forward.