TC-ADR-0002: Adopt the POP specification change process
- Status: accepted
- Date: 2026-08-25
- Participants:
@naoi - Conflicts and recusals: none disclosed
- Related:
STD-006 - Supersedes: none
- Superseded by: none
Context
POP Core 0.1, portable schemas, and conformance fixtures are public, but their first publication predates a defined proposal, vote, deprecation, and project-name usage process. Applying a future multi-maintainer quorum to the rule that creates that quorum would make initial adoption impossible.
Options considered
- Leave changes to ordinary repository permissions.
- Let one maintainer approve every future change indefinitely.
- Adopt a transparent bootstrap rule now, then require public review and multi-maintainer approval for breaking, governance, and name-usage changes.
Decision
Adopt option 3 and publish docs/specification/pop-governance.md.
This record is the sole bootstrap exception. Compatible normative proposals
require at least 14 days of public review. Incompatible, governance, and
project-name proposals require at least 30 days, at least two non-recused
release-capable maintainers, and two-thirds approval.
Compatibility and migration
Existing POP Core 0.1 artifacts are unchanged. Future normative publications must use immutable versioned identifiers. Deprecated portable artifacts remain publicly addressable, with at least 180 days before active support withdrawal.
Consequences
The current single-maintainer project can accept compatible proposals but cannot finalize breaking, governance, or project-name changes until another qualified maintainer participates. This intentionally favors legitimacy and interoperability over unilateral speed.
Evidence
- Contract tests verify review periods, quorum, versioning, deprecation, and project-name claim boundaries.
- The published POP 0.1 conformance suite and independent validator establish the evidence model required for later normative proposals.