Skip to content

Governance.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
193 lines (115 loc) · 5.82 KB

Governance.md

File metadata and controls

193 lines (115 loc) · 5.82 KB
Raw

Governance

Meta-Universe Specification

Document ID: MU-V2-CONST-002
Title: Governance of the Meta-Universe Standard
Document Class: Normative
Version: 2.0 (Draft)
Status: Working Draft
Normative References: Meta-Universe Constitution (MUC), MMAS, MUFP
Informative References: Change-Process.md, Conformance.md
Copyright: © Orkestron.AI
License: Apache-2.0

1. Purpose

This document defines how the Meta-Universe family of standards is governed, evolved and maintained.

Its purpose is to preserve long-term stability while allowing continuous improvement.

2. Governance Principles

The governance of Meta-Universe SHALL follow these principles:

  • Openness
  • Transparency
  • Traceability
  • Backward compatibility whenever practical
  • Long-term stability
  • Community participation
  • Constitutional supremacy

3. Standards Hierarchy

The Meta-Universe standards SHALL be governed by the following hierarchy:

  1. Meta-Universe Constitution (MUC)
  2. Meta-Model Architecture Standard (MMAS)
  3. Meta-Universe Federation Protocol (MUFP)
  4. Domain-specific standards
  5. Reference implementations

Lower-level standards SHALL NOT contradict higher-level standards.

4. Standard Ownership

Each standard SHALL declare:

  • Owner
  • Maintainer(s)
  • Current Version
  • Status
  • Change History

Ownership implies stewardship of the specification, not ownership of implementations.

5. Decision Principles

Changes SHOULD be evaluated according to:

  • consistency with the Constitution;
  • impact on interoperability;
  • backward compatibility;
  • implementation complexity;
  • long-term sustainability.

6. Evolution Model

Meta-Universe evolves through published versions.

Each released version SHALL be immutable.

New functionality SHALL be introduced through new versions rather than silent modification.

7. Freeze Rule

The specification is developed incrementally.

Once a document has been reviewed and approved, it enters the Frozen state.

Frozen documents:

  • become normative references for subsequent documents;
  • SHALL NOT be silently modified;
  • MAY only change through an approved Change Request.

8. Change Requests

Any stakeholder MAY propose improvements.

A Change Request SHOULD include:

  • motivation;
  • affected documents;
  • compatibility analysis;
  • migration considerations;
  • proposed wording.

Accepted changes SHALL appear in a future version of the specification.

9. Compatibility

The governance process SHOULD preserve compatibility whenever reasonably possible.

Breaking changes SHALL be clearly identified and accompanied by migration guidance.

10. Conformance

Conformance levels are defined by the corresponding standards (MUC, MMAS and MUFP).

Governance SHALL ensure that certification criteria remain publicly available and versioned.

11. Transparency

The following SHOULD remain publicly accessible:

  • published specifications;
  • version history;
  • governance decisions;
  • change requests;
  • compatibility statements.

12. Intellectual Independence

Meta-Universe is intended to remain technology independent and implementation neutral.

No programming language, vendor, platform or storage technology SHALL become a normative dependency of the standards.

13. Governance Bodies

The governance of Meta-Universe is described in terms of architectural roles, not a real organization. The roles below define which responsibilities exist and which standard each responsibility owns. They do not name, mandate or presuppose any particular institution, company or foundation. Any conforming organization or community MAY assume one or more of these roles.

The following roles are defined:

Constitution Council

Owns the Meta-Universe Constitution (MUC). It is responsible for the constitutional principles, their interpretation and any constitutional change. It is the final authority on whether a change preserves constitutional supremacy.

Architecture Board

Owns the Meta-Model Architecture Standard (MMAS). It governs the architectural model, validation levels and meta-model conformance, and SHALL ensure MMAS never contradicts the Constitution.

Federation Working Group

Owns the Meta-Universe Federation Protocol (MUFP). It governs federation rules, federation profiles and the protocol-level guarantees that allow sovereign Universes to collaborate.

Domain Registry Authority

Maintains the registry of compatible meta-models. It records published semantic metadata, compatibility declarations and discovery entries, enabling discovery without transferring ownership.

Certification Authority

Owns the conformance and certification framework. It defines and publishes conformance levels and certification procedures across MUC, MMAS and MUFP, and SHALL keep certification criteria publicly available and versioned.

These roles are organization-independent. The standard SHALL remain valid regardless of which entity holds any role, and assuming a role SHALL NOT grant ownership of implementations or of knowledge published by sovereign Universes.

14. Future Directions

The roles above are framed around the governance of documents. As the Meta-Universe matures, governance must eventually cover the whole ecosystem — registries, certified implementations, federation networks, AI agents acting as participants, and the trust relationships between them — not only the specifications. A future governance standard would describe how these roles operate as a living ecosystem authority while preserving the organization-independence and semantic sovereignty established here.

Final Statement

Meta-Universe governance exists to protect the long-term consistency, openness and interoperability of the standards family while enabling continuous evolution through transparent, versioned and community-driven processes.