Spine Anti-Capture Checklist

Status

This document is a practical review checklist for preventing commercial or institutional capture of the Spine ecosystem.

It is intended to be applied by repository maintainers today and by the future Spine Foundation once formal governance exists.

Purpose

Spine should be friendly not only to users and contributors, but also to third parties who want to build sustainable businesses with Spine.

The commercial entity behind Spine Pro, Spine Enterprise, or the initial marketplace may compete on quality, convenience, trust, and support. It must not gain structural control over who is allowed to participate commercially in the Spine ecosystem.

Core Rule

No policy, trademark rule, marketplace term, technical standard, or product boundary should make the commercial entity the only legitimate provider of commercial Spine-compatible goods or services unless it is so only by ordinary market competition.

Safe Commercial Participation Test

Any governance or product decision should pass all of the following tests:

1. Can an independent third party build and sell Spine-compatible tools, hosting, training, integration, consulting, registries, or models without asking the commercial entity for permission?
2. Can that third party truthfully say it is compatible with Spine, provided it does not imply endorsement or certification?
3. Can that third party distribute packages, models, or services without being forced through the commercial marketplace?
4. Can that third party rely on public standards, conformance rules, and metadata formats rather than unpublished private criteria?
5. Can users leave a commercial offering without losing access to their models, metadata, compatibility claims, or ordinary ecosystem participation?

If the answer to any question is no, the proposal is capture-prone and should be rejected or revised.

Trademark Safe Harbor Test

Trademark policy must preserve the following safe harbors:

• truthful claims of compatibility with Spine,
• truthful statements that a business offers services for Spine,
• truthful statements that a tool, model, or registry works with Spine,
• truthful identification of forks as forks of Spine so long as they do not imply official status.

Trademark policy may stop deception. It must not stop legitimate commercial competition.

Marketplace Anti-Capture Test

The commercial marketplace must not become mandatory by policy or by hidden technical dependency.

Check all of the following:

1. Publishing outside the marketplace remains possible.
2. Installation outside the marketplace remains possible.
3. Compatibility claims remain defined by public rules.
4. Provenance and signature formats remain openly specified.
5. Alternative registries and mirrors remain technically viable.

Product Boundary Test

Paid offerings may add value through:

• better search and discovery,
• hosted services,
• collaboration,
• learning and memory,
• enterprise governance,
• trust and provenance scoring,
• support and integration.

Paid offerings should not win by withholding essential ecosystem legitimacy.

The following are red flags:

• official compatibility only through the commercial platform,
• official naming rights only for paying providers,
• hidden conformance criteria,
• critical interoperability metadata unavailable to third parties,
• migration barriers designed to trap users inside a commercial service.

Governance Discipline

The Foundation should periodically ask:

1. Are we protecting users from confusion, or are we protecting incumbents from competition?
2. Are we stopping false endorsement, or are we suppressing truthful commercial speech?
3. Are we preserving public standards, or are we quietly relocating authority into private services?

If the answer trends toward the second clause in any of these questions, the ecosystem is drifting toward capture.

Summary

Spine should allow multiple businesses to exist around one public language.

The commercial entity may be first. It must not become exclusive by rule.