# Governance

CCFP is created and maintained by Divergent Logic as an open public-good project. Divergent Logic is the steward, not a certification authority.

## Decision principles

1. Public usefulness and participant trust govern commercial follow-up. Required service use, the de-identified improvement opt-out and the separate marketing opt-in are distinct purposes and controls.
2. Specifications, evidence statuses, mappings, and core rules are inspectable.
3. Platform documentation is distinguished from CCFP interpretation.
4. Uncertainty is published rather than replaced by confident marketing claims.
5. Merchant data and operational participation are private by default.
6. A model change cannot retroactively alter a historical validation result.
7. No model or validation result promises discovery, ranking, recommendation, revenue, or growth.
8. Accounts and private workspaces persist so participants can resume their work; retention is purpose-bound and disclosed.
9. Nominations, participation and brand activity remain private unless a later governance decision and the affected brand's separate publication approval both allow disclosure.
10. Signup and representative attestation do not grant brand access. An independent, recorded operator approval is required.

## Change process

Material changes require an issue or proposal that identifies the affected fields, evidence, mappings, rules, examples, migration impact, and versioning consequence. Maintainers may merge editorial fixes without a proposal when semantics do not change.

Breaking changes increment the major version after the model reaches 1.0. Additive compatible fields increment the minor version. Evidence refreshes and corrections increment the patch version unless they change a normative rule.

## Conflicts and appeals

When platform sources disagree, CCFP preserves both destination-specific facts and explains the canonical choice. Contributors can challenge evidence or mappings publicly. The steward records the resolution and its evidence; it does not quietly rewrite the record.