Project stewardship
How the project is governed
MC aims to keep its shared foundations open, useful worldwide and independent of any one vendor. Jacob Schorr currently leads the work; durable governance remains to be built.
Our principles
Keep the shared foundations free and open
People should be able to use, inspect, implement, question and fork MC's shared foundations. We intend to develop open specifications, shared semantic definitions and practical conformance material that remain available as the project grows. An independent implementation should be able to work from inspectable contracts.
Build for worldwide benefit
The foundation should help people across countries, disciplines and organizations understand security behavior and improve prevention, detection and response. Participation and access should broaden as the project matures. Useful knowledge and evidence should be understandable beyond the team that first produced them.
Resist control by one company or vendor
No single company or vendor should be able to determine access to the shared foundations or become the sole authority on their meaning. Transparent decisions, independent review, compatible implementations and the ability to fork are part of the intended direction. Governance must be able to outlast its original author.
Welcome commercial development
We welcome commercial products, services and economic development built on these foundations. Companies, independent developers, researchers and public institutions should be able to create useful tools and paid work around them. Keeping the shared foundation open supports competition, investment and a wider choice of implementations.
These principles guide the intended stewardship. Durable rights and decision rules still need concrete licensing and governance instruments. The terms attached to each artifact determine the rights available today.
Current stewardship
Jacob Schorr is the principal author and current steward. During author-led discovery, he retains final responsibility for the core model's scientific and architectural decisions.
The retained 23 August 2026 governance register records the current stewardship. Its status was qualified on 5 October: a durable governance charter, participation rules and an independent decision process remain to be formalized. This project is not presented as an established standards body or a vendor-owned specification.
Where practical, a decision should retain its question, rationale, scope, alternatives and evidence. A review comment is not a decision, and a site wording change does not itself change formal semantics. Open decisions remain open until an explicit scoped disposition is recorded.
The intended maturation path
Current
Author-led discovery
Fast-changing foundations have an identifiable decision owner. Rationale and limits should remain inspectable.
Intended next stage
Maintainer-led stewardship
As the kernel stabilizes, trusted maintainers and researchers gain defined authority. Review, compatibility and contribution rules become more formal.
Long-term direction
Durable open governance
Transparent proposals, neutral stewardship, clear implementation rights and open conformance reduce dependence on any one person or vendor.
The later stages need concrete charters, participation rules and defined authority. Their timing should follow the stability and needs of the work. The W3C mission offers inspiration for open standards developed with worldwide participation. MC has no W3C affiliation and has not adopted its governance structure.
Licensing and durable openness
The current website repository includes Apache-2.0. Each artifact's license, attribution and applicable terms determine its scope; the repository license does not establish blanket rights over third-party material, unpublished specifications or future releases. A legal and institutional framework guaranteeing permanent openness has not been completed.
Participation and review
A public contributor register has not yet opened. Inclusion criteria and formal participation rules remain in development. The contribution paths distinguish evidence, analysis, theory and tooling so that useful participation does not depend on mastering the entire system.
Research review should preserve failed cases and counterexamples. Implementation review should identify the contract being checked and the versions involved. Formal changes require a scoped decision with their compatibility consequences made explicit.
The current draft may evolve during development. Historical comparisons are diagnostic; they are not a freeze on content and must not be rewritten to conceal defects or disagreement.
Contact availability
The intended public feedback channel is a project email alias; its address has not been announced. The website repository was verified private on 19 October 2026, so its issue tracker is not a public contribution channel. An actionable public contact destination remains to be supplied. The contribution guidance explains how to prepare material in the meantime.
Principles and availability reviewed: 19 October 2026. Stewardship is the project's declaration, grounded in its retained 23 August register and 5–6 October qualifications. The three-stage path remains intended, with no completed institutional charter claimed.