Research preview · 0.1.0-draft

No compatibility guarantee. Not for consequential production decisions.

Judgment Pack Specification
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Governance

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Status: early research preview

Judgment Pack is an open, vendor-neutral specification developed in public by its maintainers and community contributors. It is not controlled by any required commercial runtime. Conforming implementations may be open-source or proprietary; conformance is defined by the specification and its conformance cases, not by any single vendor's product.

The current status is an early research preview (0.1.0-draft). There is no compatibility guarantee for 0.x drafts. Concepts may be revised or removed as the specification is exercised against real implementations.

Technical discussion, proposals, decisions, and compatibility analysis are expected to occur publicly in this repository. Payment, employment, or commercial membership does not by itself establish the technical merit of a proposal.

Decision principles

Maintainers evaluate changes in this order:

  1. demonstrated interoperability need;
  2. safety and semantic clarity;
  3. independent implementability;
  4. compatibility and migration cost;
  5. author and operator usability;
  6. implementation complexity; and
  7. ecosystem adoption potential.

The convenience of any single implementation is not sufficient reason to add a Core feature.

Decision process

  • Minor editorial changes may use ordinary pull requests.
  • Material or normative changes require a Request for Comments (RFC) and a public review period.
  • Stable features should have two independent implementations and conformance cases.
  • Maintainers publish the disposition and rationale for an RFC.
  • Material objections and minority positions should be recorded rather than silently discarded.

During the research preview, maintainers may reject or remove concepts aggressively. There is no compatibility promise for 0.x drafts.

Maintainer conflicts

A maintainer with a direct commercial or personal conflict should disclose it. Another maintainer should lead disposition when practical.

Evolving the governance model

The specification intends to evolve through real implementations and interoperability feedback. As independent conforming implementations, production adopters, and sustained outside contribution accumulate, the maintainers intend to formalize multi-party governance.

That transition should be proposed through a public governance RFC covering technical steering, release authority, trademarks, intellectual property, and the project's long-term home. Until the supporting implementation and contribution base exists, adding heavier governance ceremony would create process without creating independent technical power.

Participate

Participation is open. No membership or commercial relationship is required to propose changes, report problems, or contribute implementations.