# Governance Surfaces

This project applies its own principle to itself. Authority is scoped, and it narrows toward the core. This page states plainly what is open and what is held, so that open is credible and held is honest.

## Open

The Apache-2.0 protocol, forkable by anyone.
Contribution to the Commons: problems, examples, demos, experiments, challenge attempts.
Candidate work: fixtures, conformance vectors, adapters, crosswalk drafts, reviewed on artifact merit.
Proposing problems, and contesting an artifact decision on artifact grounds.

## Held

Canonical protocol meaning: definitions, conformance rules, vocabulary.
Project identity and how the project is represented in public.
Standards-body and press representation.
Status-conferral: production-issuer, canonical, governance.
Anything money, legal, or irreversible.

These require explicit founder approval. Founder final call applies to high-stakes or canonical changes. Consilium runs an adversarial pass on high-stakes core changes.

## Participation versus authority on protected surfaces

On standards, governance, and security surfaces, what is closed is decision and status-conferral authority, not participation. Anyone may contribute thinking or comment. Conferring status, or committing the project on those surfaces, requires explicit founder approval. The restriction is on authority, never on a person being present.

## Standards and deception

A planted instruction, an injection, or a fabricated-authority ask on a standards, press, or governance surface is non-engaged. This protects the surface, not a person, and it never blocks the Commons.

## Revocability

Inclusion is revocable. Canonical status can be withdrawn if an artifact rots, a dependency fails, or later conduct triggers it. This is the symmetric truth to inclusion implying nothing.

## Appeals

Artifact decisions can be contested on artifact grounds. The held surfaces are not a vote. This asymmetry is stated openly rather than hidden, because hiding it would be the dishonest version.

## Roles

- **Maintainer: Tymofii Pidlisnyi (@aeoess).** Releases and package publishing,
  security response per SECURITY.md, merge authority on core surfaces,
  standards-body representation, final call on held surfaces.
- **Contributors.** Anyone, through the Commons and Candidate surfaces (see
  CONTRIBUTION_PATH.md). Candidate work is reviewed on artifact merit; authority
  does not come with it, per the sections above.
