As an open source non-profit, we understand that some people may feel a bit squicky when they hear something about us offering “pay as you go” technologies. So let's break down what exactly PAYG is, why we developed it, and how it's used.
Endless OS is a free operating system available for anyone to download or even build customized versions of. No payment is ever required when you download, build, install, or use Endless OS on your own hardware.
PAYG is a separate set of technologies designed for use by certain partner organizations in very specific circumstances. Even when PAYG is used by an organization, any payments are arranged between the customer and that organization from which their computer was purchased—and users are not paying for Endless OS itself.
Pay As You Go (PAYG) is a set of optional technologies that Endless OS Foundation has developed to help organizations who serve those who couldn't otherwise afford computer hardware up front. It enables organizations that offer alternative financing options to their communities—like employers, community cooperatives, and other non-profits—to offer immediate use of a computer with Endless OS without their customers having to pay its full price in advance.
Broadly, the PAYG system includes: specifically-defined firmware behavior, open source code in Endless OS, a proprietary PAYG implementation only active in the separate PAYG version the OS, and integration between the partner organization and PAYG back-ends.
An open source implementation of PAYG to be used for demonstration purposes is included in the public version of Endless OS. For technical reasons, a proprietary PAYG implementation is also present in the shared OSTree for Endless OS, but is only able to be activated when using the separate PAYG edition of Endless OS used by partner organizations.
We developed PAYG after talking first-hand to people in communities that would be powerfully impacted by access to a real computer with the resources Endless OS provides, but who couldn't afford to purchase one up front. Over the years we worked with traditional banks and financial institutions to help these folks secure small loans to purchase computers, but more often than not, the banks were not interested and would mass-deny the applications.
In some regions, PAYG is a more common part of life; for example, we noticed families in Kenya paying for solar-powered refrigerators using SMS-based PAYG arrangements. We built our PAYG system on top of some of those same technologies to enable affordable access to computers as part of our mission.
Endless OS Foundation is a non-profit, not a bank or financial institution—we are generally not interested in financing or soliciting payments for computers.
Instead, we partner with institutions that offer alternative financing options to their communities. Our set of PAYG technologies help those partner organizations offer affordable hardware with all of the benefits of Endless OS and its included resources while providing a built-in mechanism for their customers to unlock the usage of the computer they are financing.
Endless OS does not directly make money from financing computers; when we've performed limited pilots e.g. to validate the technology, payments only cover the costs of the computer.
While we can't publicly provide great technical detail around PAYG due to third-party licenses and agreements, the gist is that it uses a computer's firmware protections and trusted keys to only boot a special PAYG version of Endless OS while the PAYG system is enforcing. A PAYG computer thus requires specialized firmware; this is arranged between Endless OS Foundation, the partner financing organization, and the OEM.
A computer with PAYG firmware is "provisioned" which assigns it a unique PAYG ID and begins enforcing the PAYG system. Specialized code in the PAYG version of Endless OS prompts the customer to enter a key code (derived from the computer's PAYG ID) which adds the appropriate amount of time to the system. If that time expires, the customer is prompted for another code, and so on.
Once the correct total amount of time has been added, the final key code disables the PAYG system and completely unlocks the computer—it's 100% the customer's, and they can do whatever they want in Endless OS or even install any other operating system.
Like Endless OS itself, the PAYG system was designed around the concept of no or low Internet connectivity. It does not communicate over the Internet or with a centralized server; instead, it uses asymmetric cryptography to verify pre-determined key codes and their associated amounts of usage time.
Due to our agreements and licensing of third-party PAYG technologies in the separate PAYG version of Endless OS, the PAYG system is not entirely open source. However, we have publicly developed as much as we are able (including an implementation that does not rely on those third-party licenses) as a dual-licensed MPL/LGPL daemon. We have plans to replace this with a fully open source implementation in future.
For more background on PAYG you can learn more on our website or by reading this blog post from our CEO. If you're an organization interested in integrating with Endless OS and PAYG, please get in touch!