Source-available, BUSL-1.1
Audit the parser that touches your files — source public at launch. Every version becomes Apache-2.0 after four years.
01About · the association
A product company,
shaped like a non-profit.
Rendlio Sheets is built and sold by the Purpose Source Association, an association under Swiss law seated in the canton of Aargau. Rendlio is a brand and an activity of that association, not a company of its own. The structure is unusual on purpose: no private owner holds Rendlio Sheets, no member can ever take a distribution, and the product competes on commercial-grade terms. The public-benefit commitment, and where the money goes, are stated below.
02Mission · why this exists
Honest rendering,
honest economics.
The mission is a piece of infrastructure the world keeps rebuilding badly: rendering Excel workbooks exactly as they print, self-hosted, with every limitation disclosed instead of hidden. The Rendlio activity exists to build that engine, publish its source, sell licences at a flat per-entity price — and give away what is left after its published operating needs.
Product terms, source access, and enterprise support remain commercial-grade. Buying from a non-profit should feel like buying from the most trustworthy vendor you know, not like making a donation.
Our public-benefit commitmentRendlio keeps no profit. 100% of profit beyond published operating needs goes to charity and to charity programmes.Charity programmes means the published running costs of the Purpose Source movement, a charity-routing programme of the same Association, listed by amount on its transparency page.
No phone-home. Ever.
Offline licence files, ES256-signed. The analyzers that forbid network calls run on every commit.
Escrow & provenance
Source escrow for Enterprise, signed releases, and an SBOM per build—procurement questionnaires welcome.
Public fidelity corpus
Acceptance scores are published and reproducible. We show the corpus, not adjectives.
03Governance · how the association works
Written into the statutes,
not into a pitch deck.
The Association is in formation: its statutes are being drafted with Swiss counsel, and registration in the commercial register follows the founding assembly. Until counsel signs, the statutes are a draft — but their substance is decided, and this is it, summarized honestly.
Legal form and purpose
The Purpose Source Association is an association under Art. 60 et seq. of the Swiss Civil Code, seated in the canton of Aargau. It pursues public-benefit purposes and seeks no profit for its members, and it may carry on other activities as separate activities, each with its own published policy for its own income. Today those activities are: developing, publishing and selling the Rendlio software family — publishing the source under BUSL-1.1 with staged transition to Apache-2.0, and selling commercial licences worldwide through a merchant of record (Paddle) — a commercial enterprise, for which the Association is to be entered in the commercial register once founded; and running the Purpose Source movement, a charity-routing programme. Each activity speaks only for its own income; this page speaks for Rendlio's.
No profit to members — ever
Members receive no distribution, in any form. That is the mechanism behind the commitment above: what Rendlio earns beyond its published operating needs is given away, and there is no shareholder it could legally go to instead. Even on dissolution, remaining assets must go to Swiss tax-exempt organisations — never to members, founders or board members.
Where the money goes
Rendlio's revenue pays Rendlio's costs, then the published running costs of the Purpose Source movement, then a reserve of 24 months' costs, and the remainder is donated each year. The movement's table lists what Rendlio paid, by month. The table is on the movement's transparency page: purposesource.org/transparency.
Bodies
The general assembly of members is the supreme body; a board runs day-to-day operations. Membership is granted by an explicit board decision under published criteria.
Volunteers and membership
Rendlio is built with a volunteer team, and one clause matters to every contributor: working on the project — code, docs, infrastructure, community — does not by itself create membership or any claim on the association. This keeps contribution generous and governance deliberate, and it protects contributors from ever being presumed to owe the association anything either.
Provenance, disclosed
Development of the engine is substantially AI-assisted under a documented internal provenance policy, with a clean-room rule prohibiting contributor contact with competing products' source code. We disclose this openly on the product pages and in the EULA, and the engineering practices — deterministic builds, signed releases, the compatibility report — are designed to make the output verifiable regardless of how it was written.
04Contact · one address per subject
Talk to a person.
No ticket portal, no chatbot. Mail the address that matches your subject and a human answers.
- Generalhello@rendlio.com — anything, including press and partnership questions
- Supportsupport@rendlio.com — product support for licence holders and trialists
- Securitysecurity@rendlio.com — vulnerability reports; responsible disclosure appreciated
- Billingbilling@rendlio.com — purchases, invoices, refunds, licence re-issues
Mail reaches the Purpose Source Association, a Swiss association; Rendlio is a brand and activity of it · Canton of Aargau, Switzerland