Why This Page Exists
FearlessCMS is maintained by a small team (currently one: PKA Will Michaels / Fearless Geek Media), but it's licensed as free software precisely so it doesn't have to depend on that continuing forever. This page explains how the project is governed today, and — more importantly — what happens to it if that ever changes.
Licensing
FearlessCMS core is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 (GPL v2). Themes and Plugins are covered separately under the FearlessCMS Extension Exception, which allows them to be licensed independently, including commercially. See Licensing Policy for full details.
The Fork Neutrality Principle
FearlessCMS is built on the belief that a project's users should never be hostage to its maintainer — including this one.
The Fork Neutrality Principle states:
No governance decision, technical choice, or policy change made by the FearlessCMS project should make it harder than necessary for the community to fork the project and continue independently, should that ever become necessary.
In practice, this means:
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No proprietary lock-in of core functionality. Anything essential to running a FearlessCMS site stays in the GPL-licensed core — it is never held back as a paid or closed add-on.
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No trademark traps. A fork is free to call itself something else and carry the codebase forward without legal obstruction, provided it doesn't claim to be FearlessCMS or use the Fearless Geek Media name/branding.
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Documentation and architecture stay legible. Design decisions and internals are documented well enough that a fork maintainer — not just the original author — can actually pick up the project.
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Community data and content formats stay open. Site content, config, and theme/plugin structures use plain, documented formats (flat files, standard PHP), not anything proprietary to a single maintainer's tooling.
This isn't a promise that FearlessCMS will always be a one-person project, or that it won't. It's a commitment that if it needs to become something else — community-maintained, forked, handed off — nothing in how it's built or licensed will stand in the way.
Current Stewardship
FearlessCMS is currently maintained by PKA Will Michaels under Fearless Geek Media. Decisions about the core roadmap, releases, and license are made by the current maintainer(s), consistent with the Fork Neutrality Principle above.
Contributions, issues, and forks are welcome under the terms of the GPL v2.
Questions
Governance or licensing questions: service@fearlessgeekmedia.com.