Open by contract

Bring the open back to AI.

The frontier is closing — the best models gate to vetted partners, and public tiers silently reroute your sensitive traffic. Bike4Mind is the open hedge: own the layer, make the model a swappable commodity, and run open-weight on your own iron.

The frontier is closing.

The story of this AI cycle isn't “the frontier got smarter.” It's “the frontier got closed.”

The best tier is gated

Frontier labs increasingly reserve their strongest models for vetted partners. If you're not on the list, you don't get the model.

Your traffic gets rerouted

Public tiers now silently reroute sensitive queries to a different, safer model — without telling you, and without your say.

One directive away from dark

A price hike, a revoked key, an export directive, a deprecation. Your stack is one decision — that isn't yours — from breaking.

Your AI keeps running when theirs doesn't.

Every notch the frontier closes, the value of owning the layer goes straight up. Here's the hedge.

Own the layer

The orchestration runtime is yours — full source, in your cloud. The part that can't be switched off is the part you control.

Make the model a commodity

Route by task across any provider. When one closes, raises prices, or reroutes you, you swap one line and keep serving.

Run open-weight on your iron

Self-host open-weight models on hardware you own. No vendor in the data path, no list to be on, nothing to revoke.

Open by contract — not just open-source theater.

Anyone can open-source code and quietly relicense it later. We're publishing a signed covenant with the open-core release so we can't.

Today

Source-available (BSL 1.1)

Read it, run it, self-host the whole thing — and build & sell your own products on it. The only line we draw: no competing hosted Bike4Mind service.

In two years

Fully open (Apache-2.0)

Every release converts on a two-year clock written into the license itself.

Forever

Covenant-locked

An irrevocable commitment — we can't quietly take it back.

Open by contract — the BSL 1.1 to Apache-2.0 ratchetA conveyor belt of releases. Each ships BSL 1.1 and converts to Apache-2.0 automatically 24 months later, per release, irrevocably.BSL 1.1 — source-availableApache-2.0 — fully opentime — 24 months belt to belt, ~8 releases24 mo → openRelease NBSL 1.1just shippedN-2BSL 1.1N-4BSL 1.1N-6BSL 1.1N-7BSL 1.1nearly 24 moN-8Apache-2.0now fully open

A ratchet, not a promise: every release converts to Apache-2.0 on a 24-month clock you can read. It only ever loosens — we can't quietly take it back.

Source-available is not OSI open source — we won't pretend otherwise. Each release converts to real Apache-2.0 on a two-year clock written into the license itself.

In a week when the frontier gated itself, an irrevocable open commitment is the highest-trust signal we can send.

Can I actually do that?

Plain English, no lawyer required. When in doubt, the answer is almost always yes.

Self-host the whole thing in your own cloud

Your AWS, your keys, your data — run it for your entire company.

Fork it and build your own product on it

A vertical AI app for lawyers, clinics, accountants, game studios? Build it.

Sell that product and make real money

Charge for it. Raise on it. It is yours to build a business on.

Use it in your consulting or client work

Deploy and operate it for the companies you serve.

Modify it, rip it apart, contribute back

It is source-available for a reason — PRs welcome.

Run it air-gapped for full sovereignty

No hyperscaler and no model vendor in your data path.

Say “built on Bike4Mind”

Please do — we would love the credit.

Resell it as a competing “Bike4Mind-as-a-service”

The one line we draw: don’t offer our workbench to third parties as a rival hosted service.

Rename that service and do the same thing

Renaming doesn’t change what it is. Still the one no.

Pass it off as ours or imply we endorse you

Build on us — don’t pose as us. “Bike4Mind” isn’t your product’s name.

And in two years? Every “no” becomes “yes.”

Each release converts to Apache-2.0 on a two-year clock written into the license itself. The one restriction is temporary; the openness is permanent. That's the covenant — the exit is the trust.

This is a plain-language summary. The LICENSE is the authoritative text.

Not vaporware ideology. A revenue-bearing core.

We're opening a core that already runs real products and real enterprise workloads — bootstrapped and profitable, monetized through enterprise forks and “your AWS” deployments.

Profitable

bootstrapped, no outside capital

Multiple products

BedrockNews, StocksAndVibes — one core

Your AWS

full source, deployed in your cloud

Even our acceptable-use policy has an exit.

Section 0 of our hosted Usage Policy says it plainly: the rules of the shared service exist because it's shared — the law, our providers' policies riding on our keys, and the duty to protect everyone on the same infrastructure. If your work needs freedoms the shared service can't offer, you don't ask our permission — you self-host or fork, and the shared-service rules have nothing left to attach to. The law follows you everywhere; our rules don't. No lab can offer that. No cloud will.

The law

Follows you everywhere

Forking is never an exit from section 1 — it's the law, not us.

Provider policies

Ride on our keys

Bring your own keys — or open weights — and they detach.

Shared-service rules

Physics, not ideology

Rate limits and key protections don't exist on your own iron.

Read §0 of the Usage Policy in the repository — it ships with the source.

Read it. Run it. Own it.

The source is open and a signed covenant ships with it. Browse the code and read the covenant — each piece converts to fully open on the schedule written into the license itself.