Who owns the software

Software a company runs on
should not have one owner.

Melusina is moving out of any single owner’s hands — ours included — so that it cannot be sold, switched off or changed against the companies that depend on it.

Why it matters

Why a promise
is not enough.

A company that runs on software it does not control can be priced out, locked out, or sold along with whoever supplies it. Promises do not fix that, because the next owner did not make them. The only lasting answer is a different kind of owner.

How it is set up

Decentralised control,
in three parts.

Each part does one job, and none can act alone.

Two bodies owned by their members.

Most of Melusina is moving to two bodies owned by their members rather than by shareholders, one in Europe and one in America. Neither can be bought the way a company can.

Three independent keepers.

Three independent keepers — people outside HRBR whose only job is to guard the rulebook — will sit in three different countries. No one of them will be able to change it alone, and neither will we.

Different countries, deliberately.

Each keeper sits under a different country’s law, and the rulebook cannot be changed by any one of them. That is why they are in different countries.

What it means for you

Three things
you can count on.

Whatever happens to us or to our investors.

Nobody can buy it out from under you.

Buying HRBR will not buy the software. HRBR holds a permanent right to use Melusina, and no more than that.

You always get the code.

Whoever runs Melusina gets its full source code. Four years after a version comes out, that version becomes free for anyone at all to use.

You can always keep a copy.

A customer holds its own copy of the software and of its records from the first day, so the company keeps working whether or not we do.

Today

The founders own it today.
The move is under way.

Melusina is moving from its founders to the two member-owned bodies, with the three keepers guarding the rulebook.

Questions

Questions people ask.

Does HRBR own Melusina?

Today its founders do. HRBR will hold a permanent right to use Melusina, not the software itself.

Can the rules be changed later?

Once the keepers are in place, only with their agreement, and they sit in more than one country. No single party will be able to change the rules alone, and that includes us.

Does this spread our data across countries?

No. Your records stay where you run the software. It is the ownership of the software that is spread out, not your data.

See the software

This is what is being
looked after.

Melusina is the software everything runs on, and the thing a company keeps.

Talk to us See the software