Opencatechesis has several guiding principles

1) Free. "Freely you have received, freely give" (Mat 10:8) Creative commons is a new initiative to freely share resources and copyright them for sharing. There are several creative commons licence types and opencatechesis seeks to use the most free version. That means anyone is free to copy the resouces developed on this site, modify them and sell them. See this video or go to creativecommons.org for more info. This is an expression of the Catholic social teaching principle of the common good. 

2) "Freely you have received, freely give" (Mat 10:8). This website seeks to live this out by making all resources free. By creating resources from scratch and licensing them creative commons we are able to freely share them with the world. Anyone can then modify them to suit their audience and even sell them. I see this as a new kind of evangelical poverty. To share my resources and this technology with the world I respond to Christ's invitation to give to the poor what I have.

3) There are two basic theological principles that guides all the resources on opencatechesis, personal relationship with Jesus and faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

4) Why reinvent the wheel? If there are already good resources on the web or in books, we try to integrate them into the formation courses developed on this website.

5) Service. This site is meant to be of service to others. The aim is to create three communities. One is a set of web developers to develop the technology. cathnet.org is the place for this community to grow and it has links to open source Catholic. Second is a community of catechists who write the resources. This is the website for them. At this stage the first curriculum is being developed. The aim is that this website will allow any approved member to copy a curriculum and modify it to suit their audience with the technology tracking the changes. Any changes in one curriculum can be integrated into other curriculums. There is meant to be as much freedom and sharing as possible in resource development. Thirdly, users. A curriculum developed on this site can be used on this site, but also deployed onto other sites with their own user base. Currently the curriculum developed on this site will be deployed onto mayostudios.org (where it was first incubated). Anyone or any organisation can make use of this platform in several ways. A) just use the technology and write their own curriculum. B) Use the formation on this site. C) deploy it on their own site, D) create their own curriculum on this site, and E) deploy their own curriculum on to their own site.