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Governance

VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO)

The VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO) is a vendor-neutral, non-profit standards body responsible for developing and maintaining the VeritasChain Protocol (VCP), Content/Creative AI Profile (CAP), and the broader Verifiable AI Provenance (VAP) Framework.

Mission

"Encoding Trust in the Algorithmic Age"

VSO's mission is to develop open, interoperable standards for cryptographically verifiable AI audit trails, enabling third-party verification of AI system behavior without exposing proprietary information.

Governance Principles

1. Vendor Neutrality

VSO maintains strict vendor neutrality:

  • No single vendor controls the specification
  • All contributors participate on equal terms
  • References to specific products are for interoperability only
  • Commercial implementations do not influence normative requirements

2. Non-Endorsement Policy

VSO does not endorse:

  • Specific implementations of CAP
  • Particular vendors or products
  • Compliance claims by third parties

Use of VSO specifications does not imply VSO endorsement.

3. Open Process

Specification development follows an open process:

  • All normative documents are publicly available
  • Proposed changes are discussed openly
  • Meeting minutes are published (when applicable)
  • Decisions are documented with rationale

4. Consensus-Based Decision Making

Changes to CAP specifications require:

  • Technical justification
  • Review period for stakeholder input
  • Documented consensus or voting record
  • Clear versioning and changelog

Organizational Structure

Roles

Role Responsibility
Maintainer Day-to-day specification management
Technical Committee Technical direction and dispute resolution
Contributors Propose changes, review, implement
Adopters Provide implementation feedback

Current Maintainer

VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO)
Website: https://veritaschain.org
Email: standards@veritaschain.org

Contribution Process

1. Issue Discussion

  • Open an issue describing the proposed change
  • Provide technical rationale
  • Reference affected specification sections

2. Proposal

  • Fork the repository
  • Make changes following the style guide
  • Include test vectors if applicable
  • Submit a pull request

3. Review

  • Technical review by maintainers
  • Community feedback period (minimum 14 days for normative changes)
  • Address review comments

4. Acceptance

  • Consensus reached or voting conducted
  • Changes merged with version bump
  • CHANGELOG updated
  • Announcement published

Versioning Governance

See VERSIONING.md for detailed versioning policy.

Major version changes (breaking changes) require:

  • Extended review period (minimum 30 days)
  • Migration guide
  • Deprecation notice for affected features
  • Technical Committee approval

Intellectual Property

Specification License

CAP specifications are published under CC BY 4.0.

Contributions

By contributing to this repository, you agree that:

  • Your contributions are your original work (or you have rights to submit them)
  • Your contributions are licensed under CC BY 4.0
  • You have no expectation of compensation

Patent Policy

VSO operates under a royalty-free (RF) patent policy:

  • Contributors grant royalty-free patent licenses for essential claims
  • No patent assertions against compliant implementations
  • Patent claims must be disclosed during the contribution process

Related Documents

Contact

Amendments

This governance document may be amended by:

  1. Proposal via issue or pull request
  2. 30-day review period
  3. Technical Committee approval
  4. Version increment and changelog entry

Last updated: 2026-01-13