Independence
is infrastructure

Software you depend on can be sold, closed, or quietly turned against you. Not because anyone is a villain, but because the money usually comes from somewhere other than you.

Europe has spent a decade regulating the symptoms and almost no time building the alternative. Workshop Europa is a small attempt at the second thing: build the software, publish the commitments, and keep a public list of everyone else doing the same.

Independence is infrastructure.

Europa was carried across the sea and gave the continent its name. Europa was also the name of Europe’s first launcher programme, in the 1960s — an attempt, mostly unsuccessful, to reach orbit without depending on anyone else’s rockets.

Both readings are the point. The second one more than the first.

Workshop Europa is a name, not an institution. It publishes a handful of products and it publishes the commitments they answer to.

There’s no approval step, no fee, and no board. The commitments are written to be repeated rather than attributed, so holding to them doesn’t go through anyone. Our own projects declare against them in public, and can be held to the same tests as anyone else.

If this outgrows one person looking after it, stewardship moves to an association. That’s a promise about structure, not about intent.

Started in Copenhagen by Alfred Nerstu, an independent designer and developer. Twenty years of work for other people’s brands, turned toward software that answers to the people using it.