87 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "What is Tane"
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slug: "about"
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translationKey: "about"
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description: "Tane explained for everyone."
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---
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**Tane** (種) means "seed" in Japanese; the full name, *tanemaki* (種まき), means "to sow / scatter seeds".
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## In one sentence
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A simple, free app to **keep your seeds and share them** with whoever you like. It works
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**without internet** and with no company in the middle.
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## Why it's needed
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Today a handful of companies control much of the world's seed. Many seeds are made so they
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won't serve again: they give one harvest, but their seeds don't germinate well, so you have
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to **buy them again every year**. Meanwhile the traditional varieties — grown and improved
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over thousands of years — are being lost, and with them the knowledge of how to grow them.
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Sharing seeds is one of the oldest and most natural things there is, yet in some places it
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has become complicated or even fined (in France an association was penalised for handing out
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varieties that weren't on the official approved list). And the people who care for seeds
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still do it with notebooks and spreadsheets.
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## What it does, made easy
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- **Keep** — your seed inventory: what you have, from which year, how much, where it came
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from, under **the name you use** (no Latin required). The same whether you have four
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packets in a drawer or a group with hundreds of varieties.
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- **Share** — you say what you offer; someone nearby sees it and writes to you, to **give
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away, swap or sell** if you want. You close the deal yourself, directly. No company steps
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in or takes a commission.
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## Why it's different
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- **It's free and belongs to everyone.** It isn't owned by any company: anyone can use,
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copy, translate or improve it, free and forever. It's more a *recipe that gets shared*
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than a closed product — this is called **free software**. And whoever improves it is
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bound to share those improvements just as freely, so no one can "close" it later (that's
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**copyleft**).
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- **It works offline.** The basics run even out in the field with no signal.
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- **Your data is yours.** Your information is kept on **your own phone**, protected with a
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key, not on some company's computers. We don't sell it or upload it anywhere. No ads.
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- **No one can shut it down or control it.** There's no central computer that everything
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passes through: people communicate **directly with each other**, like passing seeds from
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hand to hand. So no one can censor it or charge you to use it (that's what being
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**decentralized** means).
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- **You trust by word of mouth.** You deal with people you know and with those vouched for
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by people you trust — the way it's always worked in a village or at a fair — without
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having to give your real name or phone number unless you want to.
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- **In many languages.** For anywhere in the world, not for a single country. Volunteers
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translate it.
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## Who it's for
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Seed groups and networks, gardens and collectives, growers… and anyone with a few packets
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put away. For all ages, from 10 to 80.
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## A Japanese name
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**Tane** means "seed" (種); *tanemaki* (種まき) means "to sow seeds". And it's no accident
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that the name is Japanese. In much of rural Japan, farming life rested on mutual aid —
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*yui* (結): neighbours lent one another their labour, and their seed and rice too. Whoever
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received grain or seed in a hard year gave it back after the harvest — a little of the
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much that seed had multiplied. That way the common stock never ran dry: every loan, once
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grown, gave back more than it took.
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That very idea is the heart of Tane. When you share seeds you can attach a **Plantare**: a
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promise to return, when you can, a similar amount of free seed. It isn't a debt — it's a
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pledge to keep the seed alive and moving. And because returning it means growing it, and
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growing multiplies it, every loan makes the commons grow instead of shrinking it.
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## Where it stands and how to help
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In its early days. You can help by trying it out in a real seed group, translating it,
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sharing what you know about the varieties, or coding. It has no price and never will: it's
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sustained by volunteers, by the communities themselves, and by public funding for projects
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of common interest.
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---
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> *The idea underneath: traditional seeds are a heritage of humankind — everyone's and no
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> one's. Against those who would privatise them, Tane aims to make it easy for you to keep
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> them, multiply them and keep them moving.*
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