Prospectus · A charter
Being the founding statement of The Open Engine Company, in four articles.
The Open Engine Company has been formed in answer to a new condition in the production of software.
The means of producing code are becoming abundant. What was formerly scarce, costly and slow may now be generated with a speed that would recently have appeared impossible. Yet the ease of production must not be mistaken for the completion of the work. A system is not proved by the facility with which it is written, but by the steadiness with which it performs under use.
It is therefore not sufficient to place intelligence in the hands of the builder. Intelligence must be governed by apparatus. It must be supplied with context, bound by constraint, corrected by feedback, and examined by independent tests. Without such means, speed becomes waste, confidence becomes danger, and the apparent economy of automation is soon consumed by failure in the particulars.
We build for the point at which generated code must become working software; where intent must be preserved, where decisions must be visible, where errors must be arrested before they multiply, and where the builder must remain master of the system being built.
The purpose of this Company is to furnish that apparatus.
We hold that the coming infrastructure of software must be open. No company should be compelled to place its future upon one model, one provider, one cloud, one database, or one private gate through which all intelligence must pass. Such dependence would convert a great increase in productive power into a new form of control.
Open means that the parts may be inspected, replaced, and owned. It means that a customer may bring their own models, their own tokens, their own infrastructure, and their own manner of work. It means that continued use must be earned by usefulness, not enforced by difficulty of departure.
Software is becoming abundant. The question is whether the power created by that abundance will remain with those who build, or pass quietly into the hands of those who own the machinery around it.
The Open Engine Company is established
for the former future.
