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Hellō Guiding Tenets

Our tenets guide us in making decisions. When we are choosing between two or more courses of action, we will choose the one that best aligns with our tenets.


1. Privacy as a Human Right

We use Kim Cameron’s “Laws of Identity” for guidance to protect people’s privacy. See Hellō and the Laws of Identity for details.


2. Be a Neutral Platform

The Hellō service may be used by anyone in any way that is compliant with the Laws of Identity.

We will strive to enable permissionless innovation wherever possible.

Hellō has no position on any topic outside the scope of its mission.


3. For the Members, by the Members

We operate in the best interest of our members. Hellō is a multi-stakeholder cooperative with three membership classes. Every user is a user member, any organization may join as a corporate member, and all Hellō employees are employee members.

We will not prioritize the interests of one membership class to the detriment of any other membership class.

We will strive to serve our customers with services that are complementary to our corporate members rather than competitive.


4. Rough Consensus and Running Code

Borrowing from the IETF’s decision-making process, we don't let a single individual dictate decisions, nor should decisions be made by a vote, nor do we want decisions to be made in a vacuum without practical experience. Instead, we strive to make our decisions by the consent of all participants, though allowing for some dissent (rough consensus), and to have the actual products of engineering (running code) trump theoretical designs. See RFC 7282 for details.


5. Be Transparent

When not in conflict with one of the other tenets, we will choose to make information public rather than private. Making our tenets public here is an example of this tenet.