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Governance

Welcome — if this is your first week with the Appia Foundation, start here. This page is a fast, plain-language orientation to how the project is governed: who sits where, who approves what, and where your own contribution would fit. It's deliberately not exhaustive and not a legal reference — for the exact terms, see Where to find the exact terms at the bottom of this page.

How the Appia Foundation is governed

flowchart TD
    JDF["Joint Development Foundation Projects, LLC (JDF)"]
    APPIA["Appia Foundation"]
    SC["Steering Committee"]
    ARCH["Architecture and Foundational\nSpecifications Working Group"]
    EUAI["EU AI Act subgroup"]
    MKT["Communications, Marketing, and\nMessaging Subcommittee (CMM)"]
    ADV["Advisory board"]

    JDF --> APPIA --> SC
    SC --> ARCH
    ARCH --> EUAI
    SC --> MKT
    SC -.->|advisory input, no vote| ADV

    classDef solidNode fill:#8FADDE,color:#1A2657,stroke:#233474,stroke-width:1px;
    classDef advisoryNode fill:#fff,color:#233474,stroke:#233474,stroke-dasharray: 4 3;
    class JDF,APPIA,SC,ARCH,EUAI,MKT solidNode;
    class ADV advisoryNode;

Solid lines are formal reporting and approval authority. The dashed line to the Advisory board is not — the Advisory board brings outside perspective into the work but isn't a Member, has no vote, and sits outside the chain above.

Governance breakdown
  • Joint Development Foundation Projects, LLC (JDF) hosts the Appia Foundation as an independent project series. JDF's role is limited to confirming the Foundation's activities conform with JDF's non-profit status and policies — it doesn't direct the Foundation's day-to-day work.
  • The Appia Foundation project is the project series itself, established under the JDF Project Charter.
  • Steering Committee governs the project and approves Final Deliverables. Each Steering Member designates one participant to sit on it.
  • Architecture and Foundational Specifications Working Group develops Appia's overall architecture and related specifications, reporting to the Steering Committee.
  • EU AI Act subgroup is a sub-working group reporting into the Architecture working group, focused on aligning Appia's specifications with EU AI Act requirements.
  • Communications, Marketing, and Messaging Subcommittee (CMM) functions as an extension of the Steering Committee, operating under its own mandate as approved by the Steering Committee — it doesn't have a separate charter of its own.

- Advisory board brings academia, government, and civil-society perspectives into the work. It's non-member and has no vote — it sits outside the formal reporting line shown above, not underneath the Steering Committee.

Who's who

The Appia Foundation's Project Charter defines a few membership levels — you'll see these terms used throughout the project, so it's worth knowing them up front:

  • Steering Member — a Member who may participate in every Working Group and (unless waived) designates a representative to the Steering Committee.
  • General Member — a Member who may participate in every Working Group, but doesn't participate on the Steering Committee.
  • Contributor Member — a Member who may participate in the specific Working Group(s) designated by the Steering Committee, doesn't participate on the Steering Committee, and isn't eligible to vote in decisions that require a Supermajority Vote.
  • Working Group Participant — any Member who has joined a Working Group. This is the role that carries the copyright and patent commitments described below.
How decisions get made

Both the Steering Committee and Working Groups try to decide things by Consensus — general agreement, without sustained opposition, and not necessarily unanimous. When Consensus isn't reached, the decision moves to a Supermajority Vote: at least 75% of Active Voting Members in favor. Approval is simply the term for a decision made this way.

For specifications specifically, the path runs: a Draft Deliverable is approved by the Working Group ("Working Group Approved"), then — no sooner than 30 days later, to allow time for the patent exclusion process described below — the Steering Committee approves it as a Final Deliverable. Procedural appeals (lack of due process only, not disagreement with the outcome) must be filed within 30 days and are resolved within 90.

The specification framework, briefly

The Architecture and Foundational Specifications Working Group operates under a specific set of choices from the Appia Foundation's Working Group Charter. In brief, so you know the shape of what you're agreeing to by contributing — not the full terms:

  • Traditional Mode governance — the working group follows the standard JDF governance rules (Consensus, then Supermajority Vote if needed) rather than the alternative "Community Specification" repository-based model.
  • Copyright: Grant to Project — when you contribute, you grant the project a broad, royalty-free license to use your contribution, and the resulting collective work's copyright belongs to the project. Published deliverables go out under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, unless the Steering Committee designates another license.
  • Patents: International Mode — Final Deliverables follow the Common Patent Policy used by ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC, adapted to reference the Appia Foundation instead. There's a standard process for excluding specific patent claims (a 30-day exclusion window opens automatically once a Draft Deliverable is Working Group Approved).

None of this is the full text — see below for where to read the actual terms.

Where to find the exact terms

This page is an orientation, not a substitute for the governing documents. Refer to the Membership Agreement Package for the exact, legally binding language:

  • Project Charter — establishes the Steering Committee, membership levels, and decision-making rules.
  • Working Group Charter — establishes each Working Group's scope and the copyright/patent choices summarized above.
  • Appendix A: Traditional Mode Governance and Appendix B: Traditional Mode Intellectual Property Policy Options — the full decision-making, appeals, copyright, and patent terms; both are sections within the executed charter document rather than separate files.