Legal

Licence, privacy, and terms. Written to be read, not to be clicked past.

The short version The software is MIT licensed — do what you like with it. This website collects nothing. If you run your own instance, you are its operator and its data is yours alone; we never see it and cannot access it.

Three different things

"SOVRGNnet" means three separate things, and the rules differ for each. Muddling them is how privacy policies end up dishonest.

Thing	Who runs it	Governed by
The software	Nobody — it's source code	The MIT licence, below
This website sovrgnnet.cc	Formicaria	The privacy notice and terms below
Your instance	You	Whatever you decide — see "If you run an instance"

Licence

SOVRGNnet is released under the MIT licence. In practice: use it commercially, modify it, distribute it, run it privately, fork it and never speak to us again. Keep the copyright notice, and understand there's no warranty.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Formicaria

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

SOVRGNnet builds on other open-source projects under their own licences, including Matrix/Conduit, IPFS/Kubo, PostgreSQL, React, and the rest of the dependency tree.

Privacy notice — this website

This applies to sovrgnnet.cc, the static site you're reading. It does not apply to any SOVRGNnet instance, including your own.

What we collect

Nothing, deliberately. There are no analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising, no third-party embeds, and no fonts or scripts loaded from anyone else's servers. This site sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser.

There's no account to create here and no form to fill in, so there is nothing for us to store about you.

What our host sees

The site is served by Cloudflare Pages. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes technical request data — IP address, user agent, requested page — to deliver the page and defend against abuse. We don't attach identities to it or use it to build a profile of you. This is handled under Cloudflare's privacy policy.

Links elsewhere

We link to GitHub and other sites. Once you follow a link, you're under that site's policy, not ours.

Your rights

Rights over personal data — access, correction, erasure, portability, objection — apply to data a controller actually holds. We hold none from this website, so there's nothing to disclose or delete. If you believe otherwise, write to [email protected] and we'll answer.

If you run an instance

Once you install SOVRGNnet, you are the operator. Your instance runs on your hardware, under your control. Formicaria has no access to it, receives no telemetry from it, and cannot see, moderate, retrieve, or delete anything on it. We could not comply with a request about your instance's data even if we wanted to, because we don't have it.

That also means the responsibilities are genuinely yours:

You are the data controller for everyone on your instance. If you're in the UK or EU and running it for anyone beyond your own household, data protection law likely applies to you.
Tell your users the truth about encryption. Messages are stored as plaintext on your server and you can read them. People deserve to know that before they type. The details are here.
You're responsible for what's shared on your instance, and for your own backups and security.
Local law applies to you, not to us.

Running one for other people? Write down what you collect, how long you keep it, who can see it, and how someone gets their data removed — then tell your users where to find it. It takes twenty minutes and it's the difference between sovereignty and just moving the problem.

Terms — this website

You're welcome to read, link to, and quote this site. The software's terms are the MIT licence above; nothing here narrows it.

The site and its documentation are provided as they are, without warranty. We try to keep them accurate, but SOVRGNnet is alpha software under active development and documentation drifts. To the fullest extent the law allows, Formicaria isn't liable for loss arising from use of this site or the software — including data loss on an instance you operate. Take backups.

The SOVRGNnet name and logo belong to Formicaria. The MIT licence covers the code, not the branding: fork freely, but don't imply your fork is the official project.

Reporting a security problem

Email [email protected] rather than opening a public issue. Include what you found and how to reproduce it. You'll get an acknowledgement, and credit in the changelog if you'd like it.

Contact

SOVRGNnet is a project of Formicaria.

Privacy — [email protected]
Security — [email protected]
Everything else — GitHub issues

Last updated 15 August 2026. This page is written in plain language and is not legal advice; if you operate an instance for others, get advice appropriate to where you are.

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