CARL follows an open-core with company-owned governance model. This page describes the project-level decision process — who makes decisions, how, and under what rules. For governance of the CARL Standard (the versioning, ratification, and lifecycle of the spec itself), see Governance of the Standard.

Maintaining entity

Wentzel.ai is the sole maintaining entity for CARL. Wentzel.ai holds the trademarks, domain names, and final decision authority on changes to the standard, the reference implementations, and the governance process itself.

CARL's source, spec, and prompts are proprietary to Wentzel.ai — all rights reserved, with no open-source license grant in effect today (see License). Contributions are accepted from authorized contributors — Wentzel.ai staff and invited collaborators — with a DCO sign-off; there is no separate CLA for authorized contributors, but being authorized is a prerequisite. It is not a multi-stakeholder foundation at this time. Earlier plans contemplated an openly-licensed model with contributions welcomed from anyone; that plan is not in effect today. Wentzel.ai MAY open-source CARL and/or transition governance to a neutral foundation in the future; no such transition is committed.

Roles

Role promotions are owner decisions. No formal voting process.

Decision-making

Day-to-day decisions

Maintainers decide. This includes:

• Accepting or declining individual PRs.
• Triaging issues.
• Choosing dependency versions.
• Fixing bugs in existing functionality.
• Editorial polish in the spec — typos, formatting, clarifications that don't change normative meaning.
• Adding or modifying criteria in the catalog that don't change the assigned level of existing assessed subjects.

Strategic or normative decisions

Owner decides, typically after public discussion on GitHub. This includes:

• Major version bumps to the standard.
• Renaming or restructuring the 8 pillars or 5 levels.
• Adding, removing, or re-levelling criteria in a way that would change a subject's level.
• Changing license terms.
• Transitioning governance to a foundation.
• Policy changes to this document.

Disagreement is welcomed at the issue or PR level. The owner's decision stands once articulated, but MAY be revisited in writing with new information.

Communication

• Security — security@wentzel.ai (see SECURITY.md)
• Conduct — conduct@wentzel.ai (see CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)
• Trademark — trademarks@wentzel.ai (see trademark)
• General — hello@wentzel.ai

Related

• Contributing — how to propose a change.
• Changelog — project release history.
• License — proprietary, all rights reserved.
• Trademark — how CARL marks may and may not be used.
• Governance of the Standard — versioning and lifecycle of the spec itself.