Spine Ecosystem Constitution

Purpose

This document defines the constitutional boundary between:

• the Spine Foundation,
• the commercial entity operating Spine Pro and Spine Enterprise,
• the commercial marketplace for Spine models.

The point of the split is simple: the commercial entity must add value, not capture the language, compiler, verifier, or ecosystem standards.

Core Principle

The Foundation governs the truth of Spine. The commercial entity monetizes leverage around Spine.

In practical terms:

• the Foundation governs semantics, standards, and conformance,
• the commercial entity sells workflow, persistence, collaboration, marketplace quality, hosting, and support.

Foundation Authority

The Spine Foundation is the steward of the public core. It governs:

• the language specification,
• the compiler and verifier core,
• the standard library,
• the community reference LSP baseline,
• open interoperability protocols,
• package and model exchange specifications,
• dependency, compatibility, provenance, and signature schemas,
• conformance definitions and compatibility test suites,
• public governance and release policy for Spine Community.

The Foundation must ensure that Spine Community remains a complete and credible language platform rather than a crippled teaser for paid editions.

Commercial Authority

The commercial entity may build and sell value-added products around Spine, including:

• Spine Pro,
• Spine Enterprise,
• the primary commercial marketplace,
• hosted services,
• managed registries and mirrors,
• premium LSP and MCP capabilities,
• persistent learning and memory,
• collaborative agent infrastructure,
• enterprise governance, audit, and policy controls,
• support, onboarding, and integration services.

The commercial entity competes on implementation quality, trust, productivity, service, and operational excellence.

It does not own the semantic definition of Spine.

Open Standards That Must Remain Open

The following must remain openly specified and Foundation-governed:

• model and package formats,
• dependency metadata,
• compatibility metadata,
• provenance metadata,
• signing and verification formats,
• registry and discovery protocols,
• registry client and server conformance tests,
• public cache semantics for registry-backed package consumption,
• install and publish protocol semantics,
• compatibility and conformance claims.

The commercial entity may offer the best implementation of these standards, but may not close the standards themselves.

Marketplace Boundary

The marketplace may be commercially owned and operated, but it may not define the language or the package standard.

This means:

• marketplace packages must use public Spine formats,
• compatibility claims must refer to public Foundation-governed rules,
• publication and installation must remain possible outside the commercial marketplace,
• ordinary fetch, resolve, publish, and install interoperability must not depend on unpublished APIs, unpublished metadata, or marketplace-only services,
• third parties must be able to build alternative registries, mirrors, and package tooling against the open specifications.

More generally, third parties must be able to build commercial products and services around Spine without requiring permission from the commercial entity, so long as they comply with public standards and do not imply official endorsement.

The commercial marketplace is allowed to differentiate through:

• discovery quality,
• ranking quality,
• provenance and trust scoring,
• curation,
• billing and licensing,
• reputation systems,
• hosted delivery,
• premium update and support workflows.

Community, Pro, Enterprise Boundary

Spine Community must include:

• the language,
• the compiler,
• the verifier core,
• the standard library,
• local single-user workflows,
• solid baseline LSP support,
• a compliant baseline registry client with a local cache,
• file-based operation without mandatory infrastructure.

Spine Pro may add:

• PostgreSQL-backed persistence,
• diagnostic history and repair retrieval,
• project memory and local learning,
• richer LSP and MCP flows,
• marketplace convenience and premium discovery,
• solo and small-team productivity features that still fit ordinary laptop development.

Spine Enterprise may add:

• replicated PostgreSQL,
• collaborative agent workflows,
• organizational memory,
• governance and audit features,
• enterprise-private registries,
• larger-scale machine learning infrastructure.

The paid editions may improve workflow materially, but they must not redefine what the language means.

Non-Closure Rules

The commercial entity must not:

• create a proprietary package format for core Spine interoperability,
• create hidden compatibility rules that supersede Foundation standards,
• make the marketplace the de facto semantic authority,
• materially fork the meaning of the language between Community and paid editions,
• reserve essential interoperability information for commercial customers only.

Trademark and Branding

The preferred structure is:

• the Foundation owns the Spine trademark,
• the commercial entity licenses the right to market products as Spine Pro and Spine Enterprise,
• Foundation governance defines what may truthfully be called Spine Community.

This keeps brand legitimacy tied to public stewardship.

Trademark policy must preserve safe harbor for truthful claims of compatibility, integration, service provision, hosting, and other ordinary commercial participation in the Spine ecosystem. The marks may prevent deception; they may not be used to suppress legitimate competition.

Governance Test

Any proposed commercial feature should pass this test:

1. Does it add value rather than take away a public standard?
2. Does it preserve the semantic unity of Spine?
3. Could a third party interoperate through open specifications?
4. Does the Foundation remain the source of truth for meaning and conformance?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, the feature violates this constitution.

Summary

The Foundation owns the grammar of participation. The commercial entity owns the quality of participation.

That is the intended Spine settlement.