Governance & stewardship

Non-normative as to the protocol

Governance binds the editors and stewards of this document. It does not constrain implementers, and nothing here is a conformance requirement. It is published because a specification whose change process is private is not auditable, whatever its git history says.

The two bodies

FlowBond Foundation — steward

Status: forming. Jurisdiction pending counsel.

The Foundation stewards the specification and the marks. Its remit:

• Custody of the specification as a public good — that it stays readable, implementable and free of privileged consumers.
• Custody of the marks, so that “conformant to FlowBond vX” remains a verifiable claim rather than a permission granted commercially.
• Final say on the license question and on MAJOR version changes.
• Appointing and, if necessary, replacing the editor.

Being honest about status matters more than the appearance of structure: the Foundation does not yet exist as a legal entity, its jurisdiction is an open question with counsel, and until it is formed, its remit is exercised by the author of record with the constraints below applying in full. This paragraph will be replaced — via a changelog entry, not silently — when that changes.

FlowBond Labs — initial editor

FlowBond Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Labs is the initial editor. The editor’s job is narrow and procedural:

• Maintain the specification text: clarity, consistency, structure, correctness of cross-references.
• Run the RFC process — triage, schedule review windows, merge or decline with reasons stated in public.
• Cut releases: tag, write the changelog entry, publish.
• Maintain reference implementations and the conformance test vectors.

The editor’s job explicitly does not include deciding what the protocol is for, granting anyone privileged access, or shipping a change without a changelog entry.

Why they are separate

Labs builds products on the protocol. That is a conflict of interest, and it is disclosed rather than denied. The separation exists so the conflict is bounded:

• Labs, as a consumer, has exactly the same protocol rights as every other consumer.
• The editor role gives Labs procedural power — scheduling, drafting, merging — and no substantive power to introduce a rule that favours its own products.
• Rule 01 (the protocol does not know its consumers) is the enforcement mechanism. Any change that names a consumer, or that only makes sense for one, is refusable by anyone on those grounds alone.
• The Foundation, once formed, can replace the editor. Until then, that check is weaker than it should be, which is stated here rather than papered over.

Standing commitments

These bind the editor and the steward, permanently:

1. No silent changes. Every normative change ships with a changelog entry naming the date, the author and the rationale. A change without an entry is a defect, and MUST be corrected by appending a further entry.
2. Append-only history. CHANGELOG.md entries are never edited and never deleted. A mistaken entry is corrected by a later entry that says so.
3. Public review. No normative change merges without its review window having run in public. See RFC process.
4. Reasons in public. A declined RFC gets a written reason on the RFC itself. “No” is an acceptable answer; an unexplained “no” is not.
5. No privileged consumers. No consumer gets a protocol capability another consumer cannot have.
6. Tags are the truth. Every release is a signed git tag. The rendered site is a convenience; the tag is the artefact. See /audit.

Credits

Author of record and steward: Steph. Contributors are credited in the changelog entry of the release that carries their change, and in the git history, which is the part that cannot be rewritten.