An open commons license, not an open-source one
The Regenerative Commons License (RCL) governs the standards, methods, data, and narrative work of the regenerative commons — the Verified Living Asset Standard (VLAS), the Five Capitals frameworks, Story of Place methods, and related works.
It is not an open-source license in the OSI sense. It is an open commons license — open to qualifying participants who commit to public benefit, and closed to use that would extract value from places, communities, or living systems without measurable regeneration of the Five Capitals: Natural, Human, Social, Built, and Financial.
Learn, build, and steward
If you qualify and your use is non-extractive, you can:
- Read, study, and cite the work
- Build with it — adapt methods, run pilots, teach, and write
- Make derivative work that flows back to the commons
- Operate on a place you steward, with full economic rights to that place's outputs
Choose the path that fits you
You enter the commons through one of three eligibility paths. You need qualify under only one.
Eligible Entity
Public-benefit corporations, B-Corps, nonprofits, cooperatives, Indigenous nations, public bodies, academic institutions, foundations — plus individuals for personal use.
Credentialed Educator
Full-time teachers, accredited faculty, recognized independent educators, Indigenous knowledge faculty, and doctoral candidates.
Designated Steward
Individuals, families, watershed councils, Indigenous nations, and land trusts holding ongoing, place-based stewardship responsibility.
The conditions of participation
- Attribute the work — originator, version, steward, and a link to the canonical license
- Preserve provenance on any derivative work
- Don't claim conformance you haven't earned
- Respect FPIC — Free, Prior, and Informed Consent — with Place Communities
- Honor Indigenous data sovereignty — Local Contexts TK and BC Labels apply
- Share back — derivative methods, datasets, and learnings flow to the commons
The field-of-use restrictions
No participant, at any level, may use the work to optimize fossil-fuel extraction, industrial monoculture, deforestation, surveillance of communities or workers, military targeting, greenwashing, or speculation against the communities and places the work describes. These restrictions cannot be waived.
Compliance with the letter of the license is necessary but not sufficient. Participants are expected to act in the spirit of regeneration — increasing the capacity of living systems — not merely the letter of the license.
Read the canonical license
This page is a plain-language summary. The legally binding text is the Regenerative Commons License v1.0 published by the Steward. When this summary and the license differ, the license controls.
commons.zoen.earth/license/v1.0
Read the full license →