# Software Hub Index for `/Works/Software/` — the vault's layer of **software as authored artifact**: programs, protocols, and codebases that matter politically because of what they are and who wrote them, not because of the company that sells them. This is a new area as of August 2026, opened by [[Tornado Cash]]. It exists because the vault had three homes for software-shaped things and none of them fit code that is simultaneously a published work, a piece of infrastructure, and a criminal exhibit. ## The filing test The vault already files decentralized protocols as concepts — [[Bitcoin]] and [[Ethereum]] both live in `/Concepts/` with `type: concept`. That remains correct. The test for whether something belongs here instead: | Question | Concept | Company | Software (this folder) | |---|---|---|---| | What is the page really about? | the phenomenon, the asset class, the movement | the corporate entity that owns and sells it | the code itself, as a thing someone wrote | | Is there an owner? | diffuse | yes, that is the point | often no | | Are the authors named and consequential? | rarely | as executives | yes — authorship is the story | [[Bitcoin]] is a concept because the page is about a monetary phenomenon, not about the C++ in Bitcoin Core. [[GitHub]] is a company because the page is about a Microsoft subsidiary. [[Tornado Cash]] is a work because the page is about roughly a thousand lines of Solidity that three named people published in 2019, that no one owns, and that a federal appeals court held is **not capable of being owned** — see [[Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury]]. When a page would need to be about both the code and the company, the company gets its own page in `/Companies/` and this folder covers the artifact. ## Contents - [[Tornado Cash]] — Ethereum privacy mixer, 2019. Sanctioned by OFAC in 2022, delisted in 2025 after the Fifth Circuit held immutable smart contracts are not property. Its authors are the test case for whether writing code is a crime. ## Candidates not yet built Plain text, deliberately — these are queue items, not links: - Linux and the GPL — the license as political instrument - PGP and the Crypto Wars — Zimmermann, the ITAR munitions-export theory, the printed-source-code workaround - Signal — end-to-end encryption as a policy fight - Monero and Zcash — privacy coins as the successor argument to mixers - Bitcoin Core — the reference client as distinct from [[Bitcoin]] the phenomenon - Grokipedia is already covered as a platform, not a codebase ## Related - [[Works Hub]] — parent folder - [[Cryptocurrency Ecosystem]] — the sector map - [[Crypto-Political Machine]] — the political-money layer - [[Cryptocurrency Lexicon]] — vocabulary