Governance

This document defines how the Open Ledger Runtime Standard and the reference implementation are maintained.

Roles

• Maintainers: stewards of the repository with merge rights and release responsibilities.
• Contributors: anyone proposing changes via issues or pull requests.
• Reviewers: subject matter contributors who provide technical review.

Decision Process

• Decisions are made by rough consensus and maintainer approval.
• Maintainers seek broad input for changes that affect the standard or interoperability.
• No single organization or jurisdiction has privileged authority in the decision process.

Standard Change Process

Changes to STANDARD/ MUST follow this process:

1. Open an issue describing the change, rationale, and compatibility impact.
2. Draft the change in the relevant STANDARD/ documents.
3. Update STANDARD/CONFORMANCE.md and CONFORMANCE_TESTS.md if requirements or verification steps change.
4. Record the decision in docs/adr/ (use the next available ADR number).
5. A maintainer merges the change after review.

Registry Updates

New registry values defined in STANDARD/REGISTRIES.md follow the same process as standard changes.

Transparency

• Decisions and rationale are recorded in issues, pull requests, and ADRs.
• All standard documents are public and versioned in this repository.