Transparent Development

Our codebase is open source, so feel free to audit how our decentralized architecture works from the ground up, and even contribute to the open source project.

Our Open Source Commitment

Our team believes that openness and transparency are critical to everything we do at Storj Labs. The internet of tomorrow will be open, decentralized, and will incorporate design principles that prioritize people's privacy. Because of this, it is critical that every aspect of the codebase of our public decentralized network be open source to ensure the highest levels of quality and security. We commit to licensing our code as permissively as possible and creating revenue streams for other open source projects that will support their efforts to drive innovation and create sustainable businesses.

The Challenges of Centralization

While our team continues to fight to decentralize the internet, traditional cloud providers have made it difficult for open source companies to monetize the cloud. These providers take open source software and use it as a loss-leader to drive billions of dollars in revenue for other parts of their businesses. While they have the right to do this, we think this presents a fundamental challenge to the health, sustainability, and continued innovation of the industry. The cloud market generates $200 billion in revenue per year, while combined earnings for all public open source companies total a mere $5 billion per year. There is more we can do to elevate open source projects. Open source software is recognized for its ability to accelerate innovation, so supporting the community should be a priority for all software companies.

When open source projects have the resources they need to build sustainable businesses, it accelerates innovation, which is good for developers, communities, companies, and even end-users whose well-being relies on open source technology. As open source development quite literally runs the world, everyone benefits when it is allowed to thrive.

Decentralization and Open Source -
Allies Bound by Shared Goals

We believe our strategy - one that marries decentralization, cloud and open source software - can help many open source companies find a pathway to monetization by returning revenue to their projects every time their software is used in the cloud. As web 3.0 permeates the internet over the next decade, decentralization and open source will become one of the most iconic duos written into the technological history books. Decentralization takes the principles of open source and applies them to the very infrastructure on which software runs.

The combination of open source and decentralization can bring many benefits to the world. Together, they will:

  • Enhance the security and privacy of users through transparency, allowing them to audit code and participate in the network while also combating hackers and cyber attacks. Because decentralized networks use client-side encryption, data can only be accessed by the data owner.
  • Unite developers and the open source and decentralization communities by allowing them to leverage one another´s technologies and sustainably create ecosystems of collaboration, trust and innovation.
  • Empower millions of developers, projects and users by giving them control of their data, providing pathways to revenue, and helping them build platforms they believe in.
  • Drive innovation across all realms of the cloud by leveraging underutilized resources, lowering costs and enabling architectures that create new possibilities for the builders of the internet.
  • Data is the lifeblood of any organization. When people upload data to the Storj network, they are entrusting our ecosystem with their most valuable asset. Using open source software ensures our community can see what we are building, as anyone can look through our public codebase at any time and know for certain that we are handling their data correctly. The idea of trust through transparency is key to both the decentralization and open source communities.

    Get Involved

    Developers who are interested in contributing to Storj’s open source project are invited to contribute code. Any pull requests that help the network and improve upon our open source software will be welcomed and accepted into the Storj platform, after code review. Any changes that could impact network stability or data reliability will be rejected.

    We choose to make the code of our public decentralized network available for audit and contribution to deliver the highest levels of quality and to ensure we can meet the service level agreements (SLAs) we commit to. We are also committed to protecting the network from satellites and storage nodes that attempt to impede us from delivering on these SLAs. Network participants whose actions could result in data loss or other negative outcomes will be categorically removed from the Storj network. We will also use open source licensing and branding to ensure the integrity, performance, and security of the network. This ensures that Storj’s decentralized network remains healthy, stable, and reliable.

    To view the code behind Storj’s open source decentralized cloud storage platform, or to contribute to the project, visit our GitHub. If your open source project stores data in the cloud, join our Open Source Partner Program to earn revenue every time your users store data on the Storj network.