Newfoundcodes projects are developed in public and remain technically independent while sharing standards for openness, continuity, and contributor trust.
Anyone who improves a project through code, testing, documentation, design, research, review, security work, or maintenance is a contributor.
Maintainers are trusted contributors responsible for reviewing changes, managing releases, protecting project quality and security, and keeping decisions legible. Maintainer authority is limited to the projects and responsibilities assigned to them.
Organization stewards maintain shared policy, infrastructure, identity, and cross-project coordination. They should avoid overriding project-level technical decisions unless an organization policy, legal obligation, security risk, or continuity concern requires intervention.
Routine decisions are made through issues, pull requests, and code review. Maintainers seek rough consensus while weighing requirements, evidence, maintainability, security, interoperability, and measurable performance.
Changes with broad or lasting consequences should be proposed publicly before implementation. This includes major architecture changes, new protocols or public interfaces, compatibility breaks, project lifecycle changes, and organization-wide policies. The proposal should document context, alternatives, tradeoffs, and the resulting decision.
When consensus cannot be reached, the maintainers responsible for the affected area make the final decision and record the reasoning publicly. Conflicts of interest must be disclosed.
Projects may move through Proposal, Experimental, Incubating, Active, and Graduated stages. A project may also enter maintenance or archival when active development is no longer sustainable. Lifecycle changes should consider maintainership, adoption, security, documentation, release practice, and long-term stewardship.
Material governance changes should be proposed publicly and allow reasonable time for community review before adoption. Individual repositories may define additional governance appropriate to their scope, provided it does not conflict with organization-wide policy.