Owned for public benefit

The legal form is the commitment

My Words is owned by C2 Discovery Labs CIC, a community interest company. That is a deliberate structure rather than a description of intent, and it carries obligations that an ordinary limited company does not.

1. An asset lock. The product and other assets cannot be sold for private profit. If the company closes, its assets must go to another organisation with similar aims, not to shareholders.
2. A community interest test. The company must show the CIC Regulator that it works for the benefit of the community and report each year on what it does..
3. Surplus is reinvested. Any surplus goes back into building the product, extending the languages and ongoing research.

This is why the application moved. It started as a proof of concept in a commercial company, but was moved into the CIC so it could not simply be sold once it became important to the ice.si ng it. The research page covers where it came from.

People

Everyone who works on My Words is paid above the National Living Wage. Nobody working on this product is on an unpaid internship, and the postgraduate research collaborations being arranged are academic placements with a supervisor and an output, not free labour.

Environment

The technical footprint is small where we control it and unmeasured where we do not, and the detail is on its own page: environmental footprint.

How we behave commercially

1. No lock-in. Every plan is rolling month to month with no minimum term, no notice period and no exit fee. A service stays because the tool earns it.
2. The limits are published. The safeguards page sits with the product explanation and is linked from the footer of every page, not buried in the terms of service, and it is written to be handed to staff as it stands.
3. No invented evidence.We do not make claims about accuracy, savings or results unless they have been properly measured. If academic research produces results that challenge our claims, we publish them openly with the research method.
4. We will argue against a bad business case. We are not focused on making sales. If My Words is not right for what you need, we will tell you. We would rather lose a sale than have the tool used where it should not be.

If you are procuring this, social value covers what we can evidence against the Social Value Act, and environmental footprint covers the technical side. If something your policy needs is not on any of them, ask for it.