An open standard, and a community-owned commons, for BASE exit-site data.
Every app and database that records exit sites stores them differently, and none of it interoperates. When a platform shuts down, its data goes with it. OpenExits is one agreed way to write down what a site actually is — where it is, its heights, the access, the landing, the hazards — so the knowledge outlives whichever tool happens to hold it today.
| specification | The standard: normative prose, JSON Schema, and the reference validator. Spec and schema CC0 1.0, tooling MIT — free to implement anywhere, including in proprietary products. |
| commons | The database: one JSON file per site, human-reviewed before anything publishes. ODbL 1.0 (database) + DbCL 1.0 (contents). |
| web | openexits.org — the public site and the contribution panel. MIT. |
Three locks, working together. Everyone is free to copy the whole database, so thousands of copies mean nobody can delete it or hold it hostage. The licence legally forbids taking the data private — build on it freely, but share improvements back. And contributors keep the rights to what they contribute: you lend it to the commons, you never surrender it.
Its founder and a small group of maintainers, openly and under free licences from day one. An independent non-profit — the OpenExits Foundation — is planned to take stewardship of the name, the infrastructure and the data once the project has proven useful. That handover is already prepared for in the contribution terms, so it changes nothing for anyone contributing in the meantime, and no contributor will need to be contacted when it happens.
We say "planned" deliberately. The association does not exist yet. A non-profit nobody can find in the register would be worse for trust than an honest "not yet".
Read CONTRIBUTING.md.
Before you contribute a site, read SENSITIVE-EXITS.md. A submission publishes its content permanently, even if rejected — closed pull requests stay readable. Do not submit access-restricted or landowner-sensitive exits. When in doubt, ask a local before asking the internet.
If a site is published that should not be, email security@openexits.org immediately and do not describe it in public. See SECURITY.md.
Pin a tagged release; never track main. Displaying the data requires attribution;
ingesting it into your own database makes a derivative database and triggers share-alike.
Both are explained in
docs/consuming.md.
Whatever you build, surface that this is unverified community reference information and that conditions change. Erosion, tree growth and a season's snow can turn a site that was fine last year into one that is not.
Data © OpenExits contributors, ODbL 1.0 · Specification CC0 1.0 · Tooling MIT
