HeartPrefs is stewarded as an open, neutral-by-design standard. This document pre-commits the process and the path to neutral governance, so the standard reads as a commons — not a single vendor's silo.

Licensing

• Vocabulary + JSON Schema + spec text (spec/): CC-BY-4.0. Anyone may share, adapt, and build on HeartPrefs — including commercially — provided they attribute "HeartPrefs (Atelier Gökhan / Numetal)" and link to the license. Attribution (not public-domain release) is deliberate: it keeps provenance and credit with the standard's stewards as it spreads. No share-alike — adopters can borrow freely as long as they credit.
• Code (sdk/, tools/, validator/, reference servers): Apache-2.0 — explicit patent grant + retaliation, added alongside the code.
• Name + conformance mark: "HeartPrefs" and the "HeartPrefs-compliant" mark are protected (trademark). The license lets you implement the standard; it does not grant use of the name to imply endorsement or certification — conformance is asserted via the validator/badge, not by self-claim.

Change process — HIP (HeartPrefs Improvement Proposal)

Changes to the spec go through a numbered HIP process modeled on EIP-1 and the MCP SEP process:

• Lifecycle: Draft → Review → Last Call (14 days) → Final, plus Stagnant / Withdrawn / Living.
• Editor role is format and completeness ONLY — never merit. Editors check that a proposal is well-formed and complete; they do not gate on whether the idea is good. (This neutrality is load-bearing: merit-gating by a single steward is what stalls the move to a neutral standards body.)
• hips/hip-0001.md defines the process itself. Substantive changes (new fields, binding-block changes, breaking changes) require a HIP; permissionless additions belong in the ext namespace and need no HIP.

Path to neutral governance

1. Launch under Atelier Gökhan / Numetal, with Ishtar as the reference implementation.
2. File a W3C Community Group ("HeartPrefs CG") under open, royalty-free / CC0 IPR terms.
3. Donate to a neutral foundation (Linux Foundation) once there are ≥ 3 independent implementations — a neutral technical steering committee, Apache-2.0 IP for the code. This mirrors the path A2A and OpenAPI took.

Compatibility & stability

The schema $id is version-pathed (/0.1/, /0.2/, …) so newer versions never break existing holders. Consumers MUST ignore unknown members rather than reject them. v0.1 is draft — field names and bindings may change until v1.0.

Contact

Proposals, questions, and discussion go through the repository's issue tracker: https://github.com/gokhan-vc/heartprefs/issues (open an issue or a PR). For contact by email, use [email protected].