Spine Foundation Charter Appendix

Status

This document is a proposed appendix to the future charter of the Spine Foundation. It is intended to formalize the institutional boundary between the Foundation, the commercial entity, and the Spine marketplace.

It should be read together with the Ecosystem Constitution.

Article I: Mission

The Spine Foundation exists to steward Spine as a public language, verification, and interoperability platform.

Its mission is to preserve:

• the semantic integrity of the Spine language,
• the openness of the Spine ecosystem standards,
• the long-term availability of a complete Spine Community core,
• public trust in Spine as shared infrastructure rather than vendor-locked software.

Article II: Reserved Foundation Powers

The Foundation has sole stewardship authority over:

• the Spine language specification,
• the compiler and verifier core semantics,
• the standard library surface designated as Community,
• public conformance rules and compatibility suites,
• package and model exchange standards,
• dependency, compatibility, provenance, and signature schemas,
• registry and discovery protocol specifications,
• public governance of Spine Community releases.

These powers may not be delegated in a manner that makes the commercial entity the de facto semantic authority for Spine.

Article III: Commercial Delegation Boundary

The Foundation may permit a commercial entity to build, market, and sell value-added products and services around Spine, including Pro, Enterprise, hosted services, and a commercial marketplace.

Such permission is limited by the following rule:

The commercial entity may add value, but may not narrow, redefine, or capture the public meaning of Spine.

The Foundation shall not authorize any arrangement that gives the commercial entity exclusive policy control over who may participate commercially in the Spine ecosystem.

Commercial exclusivity may arise from ordinary market success. It may not be created by governance rule, trademark overreach, hidden compatibility criteria, or mandatory marketplace dependency.

Article IV: Community Completeness

Spine Community must remain a complete and credible public offering.

At minimum, Spine Community must include:

• the language,
• the compiler,
• the verifier core,
• the standard library designated for Community,
• local single-user workflows,
• baseline LSP support,
• file-based operation without mandatory infrastructure.

The Foundation shall not approve a commercial arrangement that turns Community into a materially crippled teaser edition.

Article V: Open Standards Covenant

The following layers must remain openly specified and publicly documented:

• package and model formats,
• dependency metadata,
• compatibility metadata,
• provenance metadata,
• signature and verification formats,
• install and publish protocol semantics,
• registry and discovery protocols,
• conformance and compatibility claims.

The Foundation may certify implementations of these standards, but it may not allow any single commercial implementation to become the only legitimate path to ecosystem participation.

Article VI: Marketplace Limitation

The Spine marketplace may be commercially owned and operated, but it may not serve as the source of semantic authority for the language or for ecosystem standards.

Accordingly:

• packages listed in the marketplace must conform to public Spine formats,
• compatibility claims must refer to Foundation-governed rules,
• alternative registries and mirrors must remain possible,
• marketplace participation may not be made the exclusive condition for model distribution or installation.

Official marketplace listing shall not be a prerequisite for truthful commercial claims of compatibility, service provision, hosting, training, integration, or other ordinary economic activity around Spine.

The commercial marketplace may compete on quality of discovery, trust, reputation, curation, billing, licensing, hosted delivery, and operational convenience.

Article VII: Premium Product Limitation

Spine Pro and Spine Enterprise may provide superior workflow, persistence, memory, collaboration, governance, and marketplace convenience.

They may not establish a separate semantic dialect of Spine.

No paid edition may alter the truth conditions of the language, the meaning of its conformance claims, or the public package and interoperability standards.

Article VIII: Trademark Policy Principle

The preferred policy is:

• the Foundation owns the Spine trademark,
• the commercial entity may use Spine branding only under license,
• the Foundation retains the power to define what may truthfully be described as Spine Community.

Trademark licensing must reinforce public trust, not weaken it.

Trademark policy must preserve safe harbor for truthful statements of compatibility and ordinary commercial participation, including services, hosting, tooling, training, and support for Spine, provided such statements do not imply endorsement, certification, or official status without authorization.

Article IX: Governance Review Test

Before approving any commercial feature, license, or marketplace rule, the Foundation shall apply the following test:

1. Does the proposal add value rather than remove a public standard?
2. Does it preserve one semantic Spine across Community and paid editions?
3. Does it preserve third-party interoperability through open specifications?
4. Does the Foundation remain the source of truth for meaning and conformance?
5. Does it preserve the right of third parties to participate commercially in the Spine ecosystem without needing permission from the commercial entity?

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

Article X: Continuity Protection

If the commercial entity fails, dissolves, is sold, or changes strategy, the Foundation must remain capable of preserving:

• the Community core,
• the public standards,
• the compatibility and conformance definitions,
• the right of third parties to build interoperable tooling, registries, and services.

No commercial agreement should leave the Foundation structurally unable to protect the public Spine ecosystem.

Closing Principle

The Foundation protects the grammar of participation. The commercial entity competes on the quality of participation.

This appendix exists to keep those roles distinct.