Funding and Transparency Policy

Komms has a nonprofit public-benefit mission but no legal entity is represented as existing. It is not described as a registered charity, tax-exempt entity, foundation, or incorporated nonprofit. Until that changes through a dated public record, this policy is a founder governance commitment rather than a jurisdiction-specific restriction on funds.

The initial machine-readable report is operations/v1/funding-report.json. It does not infer a zero balance from missing repository records.

1. Permitted official funding

Official project activity may receive:

• individual donations;
• grants and sponsorship;
• operator fees or cost recovery;
• paid development, support, training, or review work; and
• in-kind infrastructure or professional services.

Acceptance must not sell message content, contact graphs, stable user identifiers, attention, preferential protocol authority, hidden placement, or an assurance claim the evidence has not earned. A sponsor receives no release, merge, roadmap, moderation, incident, user-data, or provider-directory control unless a separate public governance decision delegates a narrowly defined role.

2. Use of funds and surplus

Official income may pay for infrastructure, accessibility, localization, security and legal review, field hardware, release engineering, maintenance, development, documentation, community support, and reasonable compensation. The report separates compensation from infrastructure and professional fees.

Any official surplus is committed by project policy to the public-benefit mission rather than private profit distribution. Until a suitable entity and banking/accounting structure exist, that statement is not represented as a statutory asset lock or tax rule.

3. Reporting cadence

Publish one report for every calendar quarter and within 30 days of a material funding, sponsor, conflict, or infrastructure-cost change. Each report records:

• period, currency, opening/closing balance where a dedicated account exists;
• income by category and source name, with a justified privacy exception only for a person who requests anonymity;
• expenditure and committed liability by category and payee class;
• hosting, domains, stores, signing, hardware, review, legal, and support cost;
• grants, sponsor deliverables, paid work, and in-kind support;
• founder or maintainer compensation and related-party transactions;
• actual or potential conflicts and the recusal/disposition;
• surplus and intended next-period use; and
• the person approving the report.

The source report remains append-only by period. A correction retains the prior value, reason, date, and approver rather than silently rewriting history.

4. Founder-paid and personal activity

A personal expense or payment is not automatically an official project transaction. If the founder pays a project cost personally, the next report labels it as unreimbursed, reimbursed, donated in kind, or outside project accounts. If personal paid work uses the Komms name, code, operator status, or project access, the report discloses that relationship and any conflict.

The initial report states that no dedicated project account or legal entity is represented and that personal amounts, if any, have not yet been attested. This is an open data request to the founder, not a claim that income and expenses were zero.

5. Sponsor and operator independence

Funding does not make two services administratively independent. Private-mode non-collusion requires actually distinct controlling domains, not separate invoices, brands, cloud accounts, or containers under common control.

An official operator publishes its funding source, cost model, subsidy, and any sponsor capable of influencing host, DNS, service credentials, or retention. An operator may charge commercially under AGPL. It is “official” only through the project designation and policy, not through licence use alone.

6. Conflicts and approval

The decision owner discloses financial, employment, family, vendor, grant, sponsor, and competitive interests that could affect a selection or disposition. A conflicted person does not approve their own payment, contract, operator qualification, or conduct decision when an unconflicted reviewer is available. When none exists, the conflict and founder decision remain public and the independent-review gap stays open.

No spending, contract, grant acceptance, sponsor promise, bank/store enrollment, or legal-entity creation is authorized by this document. Those boundaries require explicit human approval and, where proportionate, qualified accounting or legal advice.

7. Current evidence status

The report structure and validation are implemented. A founder financial attestation, dedicated account, external accountant, legal entity, real operator cost history, and independent transparency review do not exist in the current evidence. P1-06 therefore remains open.