I built a complete alternative
to the Internet.
Now I'm giving it away.
FrogNet is a self-forming mesh that runs full applications — web, database, AI, sensors — over WireGuard tunnels, radio, LoRa, or satellite. No cloud. No ISP. No public-Internet attack surface. It has been running across Seattle, New York, and Amsterdam for over a year.
I'm 67. I've spent over $500,000 and more than a decade of my life building it. Now I'm giving it away.
I need $10,000 to file defensive patents and form the Foundation that will hold them. Then the whole codebase opens.
Here's what it actually does for your family.
Imagine a small box — about the size of a deck of cards — plugged in at your house. Your mother has one at hers. Your sister has one in London. Plug them in and they find each other. No accounts. No service plans. The boxes form a private, encrypted network that runs a photo gallery, a family chat, a shared calendar, a family map, and video calling — on hardware that belongs to your family and nobody else.
| What you do | Typical monthly cost today | On FrogNet |
|---|---|---|
| Store family photos (iCloud+, Google One) | $3–$10 | Included |
| Know where family is (Life360) | $15 | Included |
| Monitor your home (Ring, Nest) | $10–$20 | Included |
| Check on an aging parent (Life Alert) | $30–$60 | Included |
| Share files with family (Dropbox, Drive) | $10 | Included |
| Typical family total | $60–$120 / mo + unlimited access to your personal data |
A few $ / mo + your data stays yours |
The companies in the middle column read your messages, scan your photos, sell your location, and train their AI on your schedule. You pay them, and then they monetize you on top. FrogNet is the offer to stop paying both prices.
Not a prototype. Not a mock-up.
See it running — end to end.
Yesterday (April 17, 2026) a collaborator in New York completed the first independent closed-loop demonstration: a web dashboard, a sensor, and a physical actuator — all on a WiFi network served by New-York-1 — coordinating through the transient database on SeattleDB, 2,400 miles away, entirely over FrogNet's semantic compression protocol.
New-York-1's WiFi, coordinating only through the shared transient database. The entire stack — self-forming mesh, semantic wire protocol, transient database, sensor/actuator integration — demonstrably working, by a second set of hands.
The code opens as soon as the patents are filed. You can start now.
FrogNet needs more than money. It needs people who want to shape what open infrastructure looks like when it isn't hosted on anyone's cloud. Pick a lane — I'll get you onboarded so you hit the ground running the day the repo goes live.
$10 or $1,000 — it all adds up to the $10K that stands between here and open source. PayPal · Other ways
Four papers covering the threat model, the semantic layer, the wire protocol, and what "finishing the Internet's original architecture" actually means. Start here
If you have a spare Raspberry Pi or a cheap VPS and want to join the live mesh before the code is public, email me — I'll get you onboarded. Get in touch
Networking, semantics, sockets, dashboards, technical writing, identity. If you want a role when the repo opens, say so now and we'll plan the first PRs together. Email John
Fair question. We laid out the differences, the license plan, the Foundation governance, and the refund policy — all on one page. Read the FAQ
No mailing list, no marketing, no spam. One email the day the code goes public. Send "notify me"
Apache 2.0, 501(c)(6) Foundation governance, TRL 6–7, Red Hat-style commercial services. Corporate founding-sponsor tiers available (Silver / Gold / Platinum). Start with the Foundation structure and the sponsor page, or reach out directly.
The technology A complete Private Internet, running now.
The reference application is the network we have running today — an off-Internet multinational network of networks that operates at speeds sufficient for video, and that includes the transient database, the sensor platform, and the AI host.
Sovereign nodes: Each node runs its own web server, database, DNS, DHCP, and application stack. No cloud. No permission. A single node, completely disconnected, is still a functioning platform.
Any transport: WiFi, Ethernet, LoRa, WireGuard tunnels, satellite, narrowband radio — all simultaneously. The network finds its own path. (The one transport FrogNet deliberately does not use is amateur radio; its template-based compression would run afoul of Part 97's prohibition on obscured communications.)
93.8% compression, up to 40× effective throughput on structured traffic: BLDC-1 semantic compression learns the structure of real traffic and sends only what changed. 10KB becomes 50 bytes. Full web applications run over radio links too constrained for standard Internet traffic.
An invitation It works. Help me make it what it should be.
It works. It has been running across Seattle, New York, and Amsterdam for over a year. It is not polished, it is not documented to the standards the Foundation will eventually require, and there are architectural decisions that will benefit from peer review.
That peer review is the whole point of open-sourcing it. I built this alone. It needs the community to become what it should be. Come look at the code, challenge the assumptions, find the bugs, and help make this the basis for a better way of networking.
The code opens as soon as the Foundation is formed and the patents are filed. If you want to contribute — code, testing, architecture review, deployment — get in touch. I'll get you onboarded now so you can hit the ground running the day the repo goes live.
The decision Why I'm giving away everything I've built (and what it's costing me).
I am 67, writing code since 1975. My wife and I survive on social security. I have spent more than $500,000 building FrogNet — money I did not have, borrowed against a future that was supposed to include taking this to market. Build the technology, prove it works, find investors, build a company, pay back what I owe. I don't know how I'm going to pay the mortgage next month, and I have been in that position more than once during this project.
Then Anthropic announced Claude Mythos — and everything changed. The full story of why that matters, and why hardening the software doesn't solve it, is on the Threat page. The short version: I cannot in good conscience keep this proprietary when the technology I've built directly addresses the architectural vulnerability Mythos exploits.
So here I am. Broke, with something that can help, and asking for $10,000 to file four defensive patents and form the Foundation so I can give it all away.
The plan Open source under a trade foundation.
The FrogNet Foundation (501(c)(6)) holds the code and patents — defensively. Fawcett Innovations, LLC provides consulting, training, and certification. Standard model. Same as the Linux Foundation.
The code belongs to the community. The expertise is available for hire. The Foundation earns membership dues. The commercial company earns service revenue. Neither can close the code.
The barrier $10,000 stands between here and open source.
Four defensive patent filings (~$7,500) and 501(c)(6) Foundation formation (~$2,500). Every dollar lands on a public progress bar on the sponsor page. Every threshold triggers a real filing date — June 30 for the first patent, September 30 for the full Foundation.
Individual supporters from $25 (your name on the Founding Supporters list) to $1,800 (fund a complete patent filing). Corporate founding sponsors at Silver ($500–$2,499), Gold ($2,500–$9,999), and Platinum ($10,000+, with an invitation to the inaugural Foundation board). Every contribution, at every amount, is named in the Foundation's charter in perpetuity.
Not tax-deductible. Refundable. Every dollar accounted for publicly.
The founder John Fawcett — 67, writing code since 1975.
50+ years building real-time networked systems. Boeing (Special Achievement Award), Sierra On-Line / EA / WotC multiplayer game servers, Microsoft SCCM Linux agent, and NanoString Technologies (random-access S3 driver for multi-gigabyte spatial-biology images). Three issued U.S. patents. Over $500K personal R&D invested. Living on social security. This needs to be in the public domain regardless.
Author of FrogNet: A Living Network — a technical origin story about building systems that refuse to lie. Available as foreword + Chapter One on this site or as the full book on Amazon.