05 — ManifestoKyleThe HagueApril 2026

Public-interest infrastructure cannot be someone else's problem.

The structural case for sovereign, independent infrastructure — and why Trelvio exists.

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The institutions that protect rights and hold power to account run on software that was never built for them.

Courts, investigators, newsrooms, parliaments, and civil society organisations depend on tools designed for corporate customers, hosted by a handful of providers, and governed by the laws of countries that are not their own. When those providers change their terms, their prices, or their political priorities, the institutions relying on them have no say.

Work that serves the public should not depend on someone else's jurisdiction.

This is not a theoretical concern. Foreign laws can compel providers headquartered outside the EU to disclose the data they hold, regardless of where the servers sit. Sanctions, export controls, and shifting foreign policy can cut off access overnight. For any organisation handling sensitive testimony, investigative material, or politically contested data, that is an unacceptable structural risk.

The response cannot be better contracts with the same providers. It has to be structural. The software itself must be sovereign — built, hosted, and governed within the jurisdiction of the people who rely on it.

II — Definitions

Four kinds of sovereignty.

01

Jurisdictional sovereignty

The legal entity is Estonian. Operations are Dutch. Infrastructure is in EU data centres. No component of the stack is subject to non-EU jurisdiction.

02

Code sovereignty

Where the code can be open, it is. You can read it, audit it, and verify what it does instead of taking our word for it.

03

Data sovereignty

Data stays in the EU, under EU law. No telemetry, no selling or sharing of user data, and clear answers about where information lives and who can access it.

04

Operational sovereignty

Bootstrapped. No investors, no board, no one with incentive to compromise sovereignty for growth.

III

Why open source is the default.

When your users are the people who hold power to account, "trust us" is not a security model. The only credible position is "read the code."

AGPL-3.0 is deliberate. It's the strongest copyleft licence available. Anyone who deploys our software as a network service must make their modifications available. This prevents proprietary forks.

Open source also addresses the bus factor honestly. Trelvio is a solo operation. If something happens to the founder, the code is there. Institutions can fork it, hire a maintainer, and continue.

The software must survive the company that built it.

IV

Why bootstrapped.

Venture capital creates misaligned incentives for infrastructure that serves institutions. VC-backed companies optimise for growth and exit. Public-interest infrastructure needs to optimise for durability and trust.

Venture-backed infrastructure faces pressure to move upstream, compromise on openness, chase whichever contract pays most, and build lock-in. Bootstrapping means making architecture decisions without explaining them to a board.

V

The work ahead.

Trelvio is early. None of this is finished — but the structural commitments are fixed. Every venture starts from the same question: where does an institution that serves the public depend on infrastructure it doesn't control?

We're building for institutions that measure time in mandates and decades, not quarters. The infrastructure should match.

— Kyle, The Hague, April 2026

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