License

What this is

Trust Architecture is a framework for building organizations where the truth survives contact with power. This body of work, the framework and its thirteen principles, the Specification, the deep explainers, the diagram, and the essays published here, is my original work. I have published all of it openly, in full, dated, and under my own name. That was deliberate.

I wrote it to be used. If the phrase “that’s a Trust Architecture problem” ever enters the way your team talks about a hard decision, the work has done its job. So the terms below are not here to lock the ideas away. They exist for one reason: to keep the work free, keep it attributed, and make sure it is never quietly sold out from under the people it was written for.

How you may use it

You are welcome, at no cost and without asking, to:

Read, share, and quote it, in whole or in part, as long as you credit it.
Use it inside your own organization to think, to teach your team, and to run the thirteen tests on how you actually operate.
Reference it, link to it, and build on the ideas in your own writing and conversation, with attribution.

How you may not use it

Without written permission, you may not:

Use it commercially, sell it, place it behind a paywall, or use it to market a product or service.
Publish an adapted, renamed, rebranded, or restructured version of the framework, or anything presented as “based on” it.
Remove or obscure the attribution, or present the framework or any part of it as your own.

The license

The written and visual works are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). In short: share it with credit, do not sell it, do not remix it into your own version.

Full legal text: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

How to credit

Use this line:

Trust Architecture, a framework by Ankush Chowdhary, trustarchitecture.blog

When you quote a specific principle or the Specification, cite it by name and link back to this site.

The name and the mark

“Trust Architecture“ and the feather mark are trademarks of Ankush Chowdhary. The Creative Commons license covers the writing and the images; it grants no right to use the name or the mark to identify your own work, product, or framework.

Commercial use, workshops, and adaptations

Teaching this for a fee, running workshops or executive education based on it, licensing the assessment, or any other commercial use, needs permission. I am glad to talk about it. Write to hello@trustarchitecture.blog.

Why it is open

Publishing this openly, in full, and under my name is the whole point. A framework about trust that you had to pay to read would be its own kind of joke. The ideas are meant to spread and be used. The license simply makes sure that as they spread, they stay free, stay attributed, and keep belonging to the people they were written for.

This page explains the licensing terms in plain language and is not legal advice.