Recursive-LD Governance

Structure, Maintenance, and Community Participation

1. Purpose of Governance

The governance structure for Recursive-LD ensures that the standard evolves responsibly, transparently, and in alignment with its foundational purpose: providing a uniform, open framework for cognitive transparency in intelligent systems. This document defines how changes are proposed, reviewed, approved, and published.

2. Governance Principles

Openness — All decisions, discussions, and proposals are public.
Stability — Core structures evolve conservatively to maintain compatibility.
Transparency — Motivations, authorship, and revision history are always documented.
Neutrality — The standard is not tied to any company or commercial interest.
Safety — Revisions prioritize clarity, interpretability, and system integrity.

3. Maintenance Body

Recursive-LD is maintained by the Recursive Architecture Intelligence (RAI) Core Observatory. This group oversees:

Specification drafting and edits
Versioning and releases
Public discussion and feedback review
Security and safety considerations
Long-term direction and standard stability

4. Change Proposal Process

Any participant may submit a change proposal. A proposal must include:

Description of the change
Motivation and use case
Compatibility considerations
Potential safety or interpretability impacts

After submission, proposals enter public review. The Core Observatory then evaluates the proposal and either:

Accepts it for the next version
Requests revisions
Defers for additional research
Rejects with explanation

5. Versioning Rules

Recursive-LD follows a simple versioning scheme:

v1.x — Additive, backwards-compatible refinements
v2.0+ — Structural changes that may break compatibility

All changes MUST be documented in the Releases page to maintain a full historical trail.

6. Public Participation

Recursive-LD is an open community standard. Researchers, developers, auditors, and institutions are encouraged to:

Submit proposals
Conduct experiments using the standard
Report limitations or inconsistencies
Publish tools, validators, and extensions

7. Long-Term Direction

Future versions aim to expand support for multi-agent systems, branching recursion structures, probabilistic reasoning metadata, and large-scale cognitive graph interoperability.